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I was a hiring manager for years and my store manager did this.
First 2 weeks as i was getting to know the crew, i noticed they were all in high school, mostly women, and on the better looking side. Then as the months we on, he put me in charge of hiring and i actually hired based on skill and personality since that's what matters in retail.
He always had the final "approval" interview and i could tell he never liked the smart ones or ones that weren't blonde and white. He refused to hire several of them till i reminded him we pay $9 an hour and we have to take ANYONE who is willing to work for such a poor wage.
I'll never forget the last hire he did before i quit. He had this like 18 year old girl come in for an interview since she shopped in the store with her parents a couple days before. He hired her ON THE SPOT without consulting me and i wasn't happy. The VERY next day, her parents send us an email saying she had a complete mental breakdown and is in the psych hospital being treated.
It is a conundrum with retail. In a bike shop environment, women are only 5%-15% of the market in objective unbiased total, (based on numbers from the largest wholesale distributors).
Women will buy from women in a bike shop but not from men in most cases. Likewise, the demographic of male cyclists that shop in brick and mortar retail stores, is very partial to female staff. Therefore, by the back office numbers, a girl is statistically far more valuable for shop staff in almost every circumstance regardless of personality, intelligence, or skill. I would like to say otherwise, but the numbers in the shops with ~60 employees across 3 stores and years pointed otherwise. The thing that really sucks is how women's retail stuff for cycling is always a loss or breaks even at best. The lack of volume leads to major issues with overburden inventory over time. Overburden is why most nice shops fail within a decade or are a hobby business with someone willing to inject considerable funds in the $100k-$300k range to bail out the shop about once a decade. Every time a wrong part is ordered or a poorly planned size run of clothing sells lopsided, or some niche lineup of bikes is suddenly unpopular, it chips away at cash flow and eventually strangles the business slowly from the back office causing a default on a major distributor's credit account. This causes all the mainline distributors to pull the shop's credit for cash only access. Next preseason order cycle, the margins will be garbage and no popular products are accessible. No shop will last more than 2 years like this.
So like, I hired any female cyclist at a much higher starting wage. I was the Buyer and back office manager for the chain. From my perspective, I viewed women on staff like a life vest and triage. My job was to keep the thing alive for as long as possible without losing access to credit. Women were an opportunity to triage a large open wound where my alternative is to give up entirely on 5%-15% of the entire market.
Maybe that is an interesting counter perspective. I only cared about the unbiased numbers. In most instances I rarely interacted with these people. And at work, I have a strict policy of 'never shitting in my own back yard.'
Was in a talk with one of the co founders of that British folding bike company and he said men and women prefer women selling them bikes apparently