We've written a lot lately on American Apparel's disturbing beauty-based hiring policy. Let us acknowledge: other retailers are similarly inclined. Take Abercrombie & Fitch, for example.



A tipster sends us this photo of a note that a district manager left for managers at a Ruehl, an upscale Abercrombie spinoff brand. "The district manager would come in every couple of weeks and inspect and then fill out this report about the store. This was hanging on the bulletin board above the managerial desk in the back stock room. I snapped a cell-phone picture of the first page...When Regional managers (or anyone higher up) would visit the store, they would actually import the best looking people from other stores for the day to impress the higher-ups."

"The standard of the people we hire is THE most important part of the job," the note says in part. Perhaps that's why Ruehl folded last year.

Unsurprising, perhaps, but a good reminder of the breathtakingly superficial (to a harmful degree) nature of these all-American retailers. [If you already knew all this, see here.]