Macy's says no fancy dress clothes for the fat chicks (Oh, unless you go to the "black" store)

Really, Macy's? Really?

From The Consumerist:

Me: Hello, could you help me please?

Pam: Yes ma'am. What can I do for you?

Me: I'm going to a formal Christmas party and I need a nice dress, but everything over here seems to stop at a size 12. I wear a 16 or 18, so I guess I need to know where the women's department is.

Pam: It's right here. You are standing in it.

Me: But all that's here are jeans, t-shirts, and sweaters. As I said, I need something dressy for this event. A cocktail dress, or an evening gown, or even a nice business suit.

Pam: I'm sorry, ma'am. Macy's does not cater to your size.

Me: I beg your pardon?

Pam: It's a demographic thing, ma'am. We do not carry plus sizes of formal wear or business suits. We find, demographically speaking, that most of our upscale clientele is smaller, so we have a really large petites department and just the basics for our plus sized customers. It's nothing against you, ma'am. It's just demographics.

Me: Let me make sure I understand, please. Your "upscale" customers who buy party dresses and business suits are all petite? And your plus sized customers are not "upscale"?

Pam: Yes ma'am. The demographics tell us that plus sized women just don't need social wear.

Read more, cause it gets so much better...

See now, I always liked the Macy's Women's section here. But now that I know the company thinks my larger-than-size-12 rump is low class and lacking a social life, I'll be sure to take my dollars elsewhere. Funny, in the marketing world there is a saying that a satisfied customer might tell one person about their experience, a disgruntled customer is sure to complain to 11 people or more. In the age of the InterWebs, woe is the company with a stupid size-ist (Is that a word?) policy and an even stupider employee delivering it. The blogger at The Consumerist is telling her tale to far more than a handful of acquaintances.

Win a book Wednesday: The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones (and open thread)

If you've been hanging around here a while, you know that I am a bibliophile. I love books and I love reading. I step into a neighborhood bookstore and my purse starts hemorrhaging money. All the uncracked spines, the crisp pages, the new book smells...oh! The minor success of my blog also means some publishers share new books with me to share with all of you. As a result, there are stacks of well-read and unread tomes scattered around my house, overflowing the shelves I keep buying to house my obsession. So, this weekend I got an idea: I will periodically give away new and used books here on What Tami Said. This way, I share some good reads with all of you and clear my shelves for more and more books. (Squeal!)

Today's book is a new copy of "The Green Collar Economy" by Van Jones (Harper One, $25.99)

Provocative, personal, and inspirational, The Green Collar Economy is not a dire warning but rather a substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country—the failing economy and our devastated environment. From a distance, it appears that these two problems are separate, but when we look closer, the connection becomes unmistakable.

In The Green Collar Economy, acclaimed activist and political advisor Van Jones delivers a real solution that both rescues our economy and saves the environment. The economy is built on and powered almost exclusively by oil, natural gas, and coal—all fast-diminishing nonrenewable resources. As supplies disappear, the price of energy climbs and nearly everything becomes more expensive. With costs and unemployment soaring, the economy stalls. Not only that, when we burn these fuels, the greenhouse gases they create overheat the atmosphere. As the headlines make clear, total climate chaos looms over us. The bottom line: we cannot continue with business as usual. We cannot drill and burn our way out of these dual dilemmas.

Instead, Van Jones illustrates how we can invent and invest our way out of the pollution-based grey economy and into the healthy new green economy. Built by a broad coalition deeply rooted in the lives and struggles of ordinary people, this path has the practical benefit of both cutting energy prices and generating enough work to pull the U.S. economy out of its present death spiral.

Rachel Carson's 1963 landmark book Silent Spring was the pivotal ecological examination of the last century. Now, rising above the impenetrable debate over the environment and the economy, Van Jones's The Green Collar Economy delivers a timely and essential call to action for this new century.

This New York Times bestseller has a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Read an article about Jones, an African American activist and visionary in Time magazine.

Enter to win this book by participating in this open thread by Monday, Dec. 22. All names attached to this thread will be entered into a random drawing. The winner will be announced next Wednesday and that person can e-mail me with their mailing address. The book will be sent via USPS Media Mail.

The winner of the book is invited to post a review on What Tami Said.

Good luck!