It is time to check in on American Apparel, our most favorite near-bankrupt beauty-positive spandex-based fashion retailer. Employees are stealing! Employees are emailing us funny stories! And AA is trying to class up its porn!

The Boston Dig has an unsurprising story today consisting of lots of 19 year-old former AA employees talking about how easy it was for them to rob the place blind while they were working there. We imagine that is still true! Now, enjoy this amusing tale of classic AA management practices that a former American Apparel District General Manager from Chicago sent to us—which reads even better when juxtaposed with AA's newest Vice magazine ad, like so:

I'm remembering one of the many times some 19 year old girl, who knew Dov "personally", showed up without warning acting like she owned place, saying she had been sent there to do a hiring event (we had just had one the week prior, in which I hired for all the staffing we needed..based off of resumes and experience as well as personality and style). We hosted the hiring event a day or two later and interviewed potential workers for about 10 minutes each all day long. There were some really good applicants. After each one that I thought was promising, the girl would hmm and haw and start in about "natural natural natural", "Oh, I don't think so...she had a tattoo on her arm. We're really trying for a natural look" "Nooo she had that tiny little nose ring..we really want natural looking girls" "She was wearing make-up..we want girls who are comfortable looking natural". At the very end of the day, after hearing the word "natural" at least a thousand times, there I was sitting next to this girl in our store's office. I reached up to grab something off a shelf, and that's when she realized that I didn't believe in shaving my armpits (I actually did trim them regularly..it was just a tiny little bush strip haha). She squealed and started yelling about my armpit hair and then she started to say something about the company's image and did I really not shave them ever...to which I replied "naturally".

Zing.