Like ships passing in the night.

This is discrimination, pure and simple. That is my point.

There are various forms of discrimination that are not illegal. Perhaps you would like sex discrimination to be one of those. There may be a valid slippery slope argument to be made, as it seems in this case.

Bottom line: for the sake of fairness, society has chosen to put the right not to be discriminated against above the right to make prudent business decisions. I don’t foresee that changing in the near future.

Allan, I would expect a business owner such as yourself to prioritize better.

As DEM above eloquently noted, why spend precious resources chasing trivialities? We have trouble enough doing the basics like protecting our borders and inner cities.

Ras, I own in all or in part two businesses with 10 or so employees, depending on the season.

I am not saying that Ruby Tuesday should not have offered housing. And I am not saying that it should have offered to house separate sexes in the same housing. All I am saying is that society made a choice that sex discrimination was wrong and what Ruby Tuesday did was sex discrimination. An argument can be made that the law is bad. An argument cannot be made that the law was not broken.

Do you run a business? How many employees? Honestly just curious.

I don’t think Ruby Tuesday’s conduct here was utterly repugnant, but it certainly goes beyond trifling. Jobs with the rule “only people of gender X need apply” were some of the basic things the EEOC was setup to address. Discrimination generally only happens as the cumulative product of many small injustices.

While dealing with the housing situation may be complicated, it really doesn’t take much knowledge of the law to realize that refusing to hire men for your job opening is probably a legal landmine. Any manager with the most basic awareness of the existence of employment law ought to be able to guess that there’s a problem there.

Apparently you’ve never been to / lived in / worked in high end resort towns.

I happened to pass through Jackson Hole Wyoming on a road trip that included Yellowstone Natl Park (side note – the GF loved shopping for the couple of hours we were there).

I was struck by the number of businesses that had “Help Wanted” signs that INCLUDED the phrase “Housing Provided for F/T”, “Housing Available”, or similar.

In posting about this observation on FB later, a hiking buddy related how he’d worked in Jackson hole for a summer and noted that it was common for service employers to provide housing for the seasonal workers. The restaurant he worked at provided a dive apartment above the establishment, else he never would have gone there.

In places like Jackson Hole, or I would imagine, Park City, seasonal service workers simply can not afford to live there on typical wages – it would be a net loss if they had to pay out of pocket.

Also – as for the cash subsidy….hmmm….have to pay social security on that, have to pay other payroll taxes on that, employees have to pay social security on that, plus state and fed income taxes on that….or get an in kind service that Ruby can probably get at a better rate AND is a no hassle, no fuss, no muss for the employee. Which do you think is ACTUALLY going to attract seasonal employees to come work for you?

Perhaps.