We go to the nail salon for an hour or so to escape from drama and our hectic days to get a little pampering, don’t we Madames?
Imagine the stress and embarrassment Michelle Fonville felt last week when she went to pay for her manicure, pedicure and eyebrow arch at Natural Nails in DeKalb County, and noticed she was being charged an extra $5. The store owner, Kim Tran, said the overcharge was because Fonville was overweight.
“I was humiliated. I almost cried. Tears were forming in my eyes,” Fonville told WSBTV.
You would think Tran, the salon owner, would be apologetic–maybe even deny the claims by made by Fonville–but Tran told a news reporter on camera that this was “not discrimination.” Tran said that the pedicure chairs in the salon can only hold 200 pounds of weight. Since the chairs cost $2,500, they charge overweight customers a fee.
Sounds as close as discrimination as you can get. Also, the fact that the salon serviced Fonville with all three treatments and then charged her the fee seems curious to me. If Natural Nails is so concerned about their chairs then why wouldn’t they just be blatant about it and turn those that they deemed “overweight” away?
Instead, they charge their customers just in case the chairs break?
“Do you think that’s fair when we take $24 [for manicure and pedicure] and we have to pay $2,500? Is that fair? No,” Tran says she told Philips. Tran also said she refunded the $5 surcharge, and told Fonville to take her business elsewhere, and said if she was in the shop when Fonville walked in she would have indeed turned her away from service.
I say a boycott is in order for Natural Nails in DeKalb County, Georgia.
