Italian Abercrombie & Fitch staff 'punished with press-ups'

Male staff at Milan outlet made to do 10 press-ups for each mistake and female employees 10 squat thrusts, says union

guardian.co.uk, Tom Kington in Rome, Wednesday 7 March 2012

Shelves of Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirts. Photograph: Tim Boyle /
Getty Images 

Dropping to the floor and doing press-ups for punishment is a common experience for cadets at an army boot camp. But for pouting shop assistants at one of Milan's upmarket clothes stores, the policy has come as a rude shock.

Male staff at American-owned Abercrombie & Fitch have been forced to do 10 press-ups each time they make a mistake, and female employees must do 10 squat thrusts, according to the union CGIL, which has complained about the policy.

An email sent to staff by a manager and obtained by the union states that the physical punishment will ensure "we will learn more from our mistakes".

One former employee quoted by Corriere della Sera said staff would be ordered to perform the exercises in front of a manager for minor infractions. "It just works like that, take it or leave it," he said.

Perfect abs are a key policy at the store, where young male assistants greet shoppers with torsos bared. "To ensure they have the right look, female staff are told to scrub their makeup off if they wear too much and men are ordered home to shave if they have stubble," said a union officer, Graziella Carneri.

In 2004 Abercrombie & Fitch was hit by a US class action lawsuit for discrimination by a group of black, Hispanic and Asian people who claimed they were not hired or kept away from shoppers. The store settled for $40m while admitting no wrongdoing.

In 2009 a London staff member with a prosthetic arm won damages after she told how Abercrombie & Fitch "hid" her in the stock room because she did not fit the firm's look.

Separately, workers in a factory in southern Italy recently claimed they were ordered to stand up and say "I am a shit" in front of collegues after making mistakes.