So, I was browsing the internet today and I stumbled across a blog post that intrigued me. It was by ‘A Black Girls Guide To Weightloss’ by Erika Nicole Kendall, and it highlighted a story that was on the news in the USA. The news report was about a woman that went in for a pedicure/manicure and was charged an extra $5 for exceeding the weight limit of the salon chair (which has a limit of 200 pounds). Apparently the salon had a problem with their chairs being broken by clients exceeding the weight limit. To fix or replace the salon chair would cost $2,500.
When I read the beginning of this article I instantly thought “oh, she was charged an extra $5 because the nails she needed to be done are bigger.” But when I found out that the extra charge was for an insurance sur-charge for the potential of the breaking of the chair, I was confused. What is the $5 for? It wouldn’t pay for the chair if it had broken, and the owners would need to have a lot of customers who are over the 200 pound weight limit that are having their nails/toenails done to mathematically make the charge make sense. In order to be able to replace a previously broken chair, the owners would need to charge this surcharge to at least 500 customers. So what is the point? I can understand why that customers feelings would be hurt. After finding out that she was charged for that over chair limit reason, would be shocking. At the same time the technical reasoning for charging the extra money doesn’t actually make sense. I think personally, I would be more upset that I was being conned out of $5, even after hearing the reason that the employee of the salon gave for the added charge. Now, about the chair issue itself, it used to be that on airplanes no matter what size and weight you were you could purchase one seat and that would be that. But what started happening was that people got bigger and bigger, increasing weight to the point that they were the size of two people. Soon enough those big people purchasing one seat and would be pouring over into the next one, so that the person they were sitting beside would have to lean over to allow the hangover onto their seat. The next person beside the overweight person was only able to get half their chair that they purchased a full rate for. It was determined that wasn’t fair. So now, it is a requirement on the airlines that people who are over a certain weight must buy two chairs. So, wouldn’t it make more sense when there is a weight limit for anything that the owners need to put up a sign that says that there is a weight limit (like on the elevator) that these chairs at this salon have a weight limit? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have at least one chair that can hold over 200 pounds if this is their clientele? I feel like, if when I walk into a store and see a sign that says ‘if you break it, you buy it’ then I would know as a client that I know my responsibility to take care as I walked around the store. As the business owner, wouldn’t it make sense to post the weight limits of the chairs. Also, there could be an added statement that if the chair breaks based on weight over this noted limit that the patron has the responsibility to pay for the broken chair, then this would add pressure to the patron to leave before sitting in the chair. Personally, I believe that it is pretty easy to see if a person is about 200 pounds. The employee could point to the sign and suggest that the patron might be close to this limit and give the patron the option of leaving before damage is done. This way, if the weight limit was determined that it was going to surpass the weight limit of the chair the patron had the opportunity to leave before there is any issues or the patron at least has full knowledge before they took the risk of sitting in the chair, and therefor had full knowledge of the repercussions of doing so. That would make sense to me, and it would make sense that at that point the client is therefore responsible for the damage. I used to work at a restaurant and when there was a certain amount of people or they were being over demanding, we would charge a ‘gratuity charge’. My father who was a large animal vet had an ‘aggravation charge’ in case he had to go out of his way, or he felt he was in jeopardy. The truth is, people have the choice, the right, the privilege, to be whatever they want to be, do what ever they want to do, look however they want to look, and be whatever weight they want to weight, but everything has consequences, and the bottom line is, everyone needs to be able to accept whatever those consequences are.
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Emerald HillOn the quest to lose 50 pounds in a year. Can she do it? Only time will tell....with the help of this blog. Archives
October 2019
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