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Why I won’t boycott American Apparel

I’ve never been an avid customer at American Apparel, but I have to admit that when they first came up on my radar I was pretty impressed with some of the things the company stands for as a whole. Their big ticket item is immigration reform, which has always been something I’ve believed in and has gotten especially close to my heart since I moved to Los Angeles. Their Legalize LA campaign is, in my opinion, a great cause that’s working hard to restore the US back to its roots — which are, if you may remember from your school day history classes, in immigrants. I was also impressed with some of the other core beliefs of the company, including exceptional wages for factory workers (on average more than twice the wages paid to similar workers in other companies’ factories), sweatshop-free production, free ESL classes for their workers, green power initiatives, etc, etc, etc. All in all, I’ve thought from the beginning that AA is a pretty good company.

So when I was perusing SEXmb earlier today and came across a topic titled “Boycott American Apparel,” imagine my surprise.

It turns out that there’s been a massive call for a boycott of American Apparel due to some comments made by Dov Charney, founder and CEO, which were allegedly printed on an AA advertisement (left).

The text reads: “Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases of domestic violence, maybe one is involving a man. And this has made a victim of culture out of women.”

While the ad itself is actually fake, the quote itself is real, and comes from an interview with The McGill Daily conducted back in November 2004. In the interview, Charney laments an “unbalanced culture that’s unnaturally constraining,” feminism and a “lawsuit culture.”

Reading through the interview, it becomes increasingly apparent that Dov Charney is a giant douche, and I’m not hesitant to join some fellow bloggers in saying “Fuck you, Dov Charney.”

But I’m not going to actively boycott American Apparel. I don’t shop there very often as it is, and I can even name all of the things I own from them and it’s not much (three thermals, one hoodie and a pair of socks), but I’m not going to go out of my way to not shop there.

First of all, Dov Charney is entitled to his opinion. Let’s just put that on the table and leave it there for a while. It may be a really stupid opinion, and not politically correct by any means, but, judging by that interview, he doesn’t really care. And no one can lock him up for saying stupid shit. He’s just as entitled to be an asshole as I am to write this blog entry calling him one.

And yes, you have every right to choose to boycott American Apparel because of the words of this douchebag.

But boycotting American Apparel is not going to hurt Dov Charney, or make him feel sorry for what he’s done. If their sales go down, the people who are going to feel it are those workers in the factories. Right now, they’re making pretty decent wages and have really good benefits, but AA would have every justification to change that if their sales were to fall. (And because the workers themselves haven’t unionized, AA can do that.) If I were to place any bets, I would say that’s the first thing that would happen if there were a successful boycott. They don’t have to offer all of those benefits to their employees, and they don’t have to offer them higher-than-competitive wages. Sure, the PR backlash associated with things like that would be pretty bad for the company, but not really for Dov Charney at all.

After all, it’s the individual who made the statement, not the company. So it makes pretty decent sense that the individual should be the one to suffer the backlash, not the company, not the factory workers, not the salespeople. Just one person: Dov Charney.

And the real way to make Dov Charney feel that backlash is to remove him from his position as CEO. American Apparel is a publicly held company, meaning there are plenty of stockholders who are keeping it afloat, and, if I remember my economics class correctly, they do have the power to have some say in what goes on in the company. What really needs to happen is that the stockholders and/or board of directors (if applicable) and/or other, more level-headed executives need to stage a coup of sorts and throw the douchebag out. No company wants the bad publicity that comes from having someone like him at the helm.

It’s just like the Blagojevich scandal (Illinois governor who tried to sell President Obama’s recently vacated senate seat). Don’t penalize the little people, who had no part in it, and don’t trash an otherwise pretty good company that looks out for its workers — after all, we’re seeing just how rare those are, with all of the banks and automakers going under but conveniently acquiring golden parachutes for their top-level execs. Don’t fault the company for the individual. Just throw the douchebag out.

Impromptu Dinners

Derek has this weird schedule at work, basically kind of like a swing shift, where he works two weeks 9am to 6pm, then two weeks 3pm to midnight, then back and forth and so on. The first two weeks he was on the 3pm to midnight shift, I got really depressed because I would leave for work at 9:30am and not see him again until 12:30am when he’d get home from work, so I talked to my boss and he lets me work 1pm to 9pm, so I can be home in the morning when Derek’s here and we can have lunch together.

A really great part about having the 1pm to 9pm shift is that I get to have dinner with some of my coworkers. Granted, when I work my normal shift (10am to 6pm), I get to have lunch with a bunch of them, but dinner is a little different. When we go to lunch, we’re pretty much tethered to the main street in Glendale (Brand Boulevard), because no one wants to get in the car and drive somewhere on an hour-long lunch break. But, since most people are going home at dinner time, either because their day is done or because they plan on working from home for a few hours, we can end up pretty much anywhere.

Tonight, we ended up at one of mine and Derek’s favorite restaurants — the Oinkster. It’s basically a barbecue and burger kind of place, where their focus is “Slow fast food” and that slow fast food is amazingly delicious. We don’t normally go there for lunch because it’s a good 10-15 minute drive away and it’s not the fastest restaurant in the world to eat at, but with the more laid-back dinner meal… it’s perfect.

So my friend Jeff and I decided around 5:45 that Oinkster was our destination, and we started asking around for more attendees. Our normal meal crew had either left for the day or had some other plans to attend to, so we figured we’d be on our own and just grab some quick burgers. But, on our way out, we ran into the lead designer, Graeme, and one of our mobile team coworkers, Michelle, who decided to join us.

I love impromptu dinners with coworkers.

It’s such a strange thing to see the same people you see stressfully running around all day to suddenly hit the breaks and relax. You get to see a different side of them — hear more about their lives, their interests, their true feelings toward work. And you get to see them smile — genuine smiles, this time; not ones that are clouded over by the fact that they have to hurry back to their desk and work on some crazy pressing project.

Gradually, you have more and more meals or happy hours with them outside of work hours, where everyone can kind of let down their guard and be themselves, and they slowly start to drift out of the “coworker” section of your mind and into the “new friend” section.

I love impromptu dinners with friends.

Welcome to the U-Verse

A few days ago marked the end of the promotional deal I’d received through my cable company, wherein I got a boosted high-speed internet package for about $35/month. The price is jumping up to $55/month for just the internet… lame. I used to get cable TV, internet and phone service for $100/month back in New York. I don’t want to pay half that just for the internet.

So I decided to take advantage of the fact that I work for AT&T and use my employee discount to get U-Verse TV and internet. Derek’s parents have it, and love it, and so we’re going to give it a try. At the very least, if we decide we don’t want the TV package, I’ll only be paying $30 a month for boosted internet again (and not just for the length of a promotion).

We’re pretty excited about having cable TV in the house. I haven’t really had it in over a year, since I moved to LA (we had cable when I was living with my ex’s family, but his sister had to be in bed by 9pm most nights and her room was right next to the TV room, so it was pretty much a bust), and Derek hasn’t had it in at least two years that I know of. We’re especially excited about having HGTV, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, TLC, all those dorky channels that dorks like us like to dork out with, and it’ll be fun to be able to watch some of the shows our friends tell us about, since we’re so out of the loop lately.

Even cooler, we’re going to have DVR too, so even if Derek’s working late or we go out to dinner we’ll still be able to keep up with some of our favorites.

Our installation appointment is next Wednesday, February 4th, so we have a little over a week before we jump back into the 21st century (if only we had an HDTV… considering we get the HD channels for free).

We’re pretty out of the loop when it comes to TV, so I’m looking for suggestions. Some of our favorites that we try to keep up with online are Mad Men, the Office, the Daily Show and (our guilty pleasure) Momma’s Boys.

What else should we schedule our DVR to record? Got any suggestions? Favorite shows?