News »   Worker suspended at The Grand Movie theater for...

this was WXII's "big story" tonight. slow news day in the triad.

FishInABox:this was WXII's "big story" tonight. slow news day in the triad.

"...living in ameeericaaaaa..."

NC labor laws are stupid and don't always make sense. While what Matt says is true and that NC is an "at will" state and they don't need a reason, the catch is that depending on their reasoning (or what you can claim is their reason) you have ammunition to get your job back or to file a lawsuit.

nc labor laws are some of the worst on the country. "right to work" is just about the most unfair act ever put into a post-union workforce.

there is no line to be drawn david. the employers should be glad they have us as employees and let us do whatever we want no matter the possible negative effects it could have on business.


i worked at lone star when i was younger, back at 16/17 and this girl came to work with pink hair and they sent her home until it was a natural color. she tried suing for racism. it didnt work out for her.
its sorta OT i know, but just thought id bring it up as it sorta relates.

I know at the Grand in Greensboro people have hair like hers. She should look around and ask more, because it's messed up for them to enforce the rules unevenly. Plus red is a natural color occurring in humans, maybe not fire engine red but I mean really. It sounds kind of racist to me. If it was a white girl with blonde highlights in her brown hair I bet they wouldn't say shit.

companies aren't glad they have employees. employees, like her, are no more valuable then the butter warmer thing or the computers that prints out the tickets.

I have had a bit of experience in this predicament. When I was 16-19 I worked at a dry cleaners followed by a grocery store. I started my dry cleaning job with normal colored hair fashioned in sort of a white girl afro. One day I came in with BRIGHT PINK HAIR!!! AAAAA... it was luminous to say the least. I came in in like nothing changed and displayed the same cheery quirky personality I had been sporting with "normal" hair. My boss saw my bold new look and giggled. She calmly came over to me and asked me to get rid of it. I worked at a grocery after that, and started with my same "normal" look. About halfway in, I shaved my head into a mohawk and dyed it kool aid blue. It was kinda neat, it looked like a wave was breaking ontop of my head. On top of that, I pierced my eyebrow. I knew people had been fired from that same store before for dyed hair and facial piercings, but I didn't change my goofy outlook on life one bit, and marched in their just as I had been doing for the previous year. One of my bosses told me they liked my hair, but to cover my piercing with a band-aid. The head honcho of the store laughed at me and asked why I did it. I replyed that I read the style was the summer's freshest look according to Cosmo. He laughed and told me to wear a hat and band aid. I looked ree-cock-you-lus while at work with my oversized hat and band aid on my face, but I didn't get fired. These days I'm still dying my hair and it's still in a mohawk, and while I do work at a record company, I strongly feel that if you make a friendly connection with your co-workers and their customers/clients, they will see you from the inside out, as corny as that sounds. I don't know the girl that got fired from the theaters, but I think you should understand the position your employers are in, and demonstrate through actions that it's possible to be a great employee while still wasting money and time getting drunk with your friends and poking holes in your face and destroying the chemical makeup of your hair.

she didn't get fired.

also, nobody on here knows if the girl who got fired had a history of being late, poor work ethic, bad attitude, etc..

many kids are born with fire engine red hair. come on, you cant really buy the bullshit you just said, can you? its nowhere close to being 'almost passale color for being natural'

why is it 'sketchy' that someone possibly broke the rules and was sent home for it? i say possibly cause ive never been an employee of the theatre and not sure exactly what thier guidlines are.

Its hilarious to see you still feel that its almost a natural color and that it should be ok cause you can MAYBE buy it at Target.

Youre so full of shit.

And if you dont like their policies then dont work there, its that simple.

Also, are you sure its a chain thats owned by a single person/company? Or is it a franchise kind of thing? Cause its possible they have different rules based on who owns/manages the locations.
Regardless, I love the 'natural color' talk and the 'racism' approach to it all.
Got to love when it has to be racist if shes not white. White people get away with everything.

ok, so you know the unnatural hair color rule but yet its racist that they suspended her for doing it?
tight.

but what she hasnt said so far is if the red hair in greensboro is on a white person or a black person.
so what happens if its on a black person in greensboro. i guess your racism idea just went out the window....

i think it IS a hard concept to understand, but maybe because (unlike you and jackie) i havent been a victim of racism.....
no i just dont think all things that happen to a black person or anyone non white is racist, im not as quick as some to jump on that bandwagon.

I can see it being way easier to get away with unnatural hair in Greensboro than in Winston, even if the rules are the same across the board. But even if the rules are the same, different employers might enforce them to different degrees. Probably as with any business, the manager has to make a demographic decision about how their employee's appearance will effect business, even if they personally don't care what color the employees hair is. Most manager's are looking out for the good of the business and making sure money is coming in. Sometimes this means being an asshole and telling a girl who happens to be black that they can't have red hair. People from Winston in my experience are a little more sheltered and traditional with things like hair color, whereas people in Greensboro take a more "big city" approach to it. But this is all in my experience.

I must observe that I forgot how obscenely touchy the issue of race is, especially at home in NC. I've been living in Boston for a while now, and if an incident like this happened in Boston, racism would be less under the magnifying glass here. I'm not saying the south is stupid, I love the south. It's just good food for thought on this Wednesday afternoon.

Also, other guest who is defaming my good nature, relax, please. Kindness is contageous.