Moron:

1. a person who is notably stupid or lacking in good judgment.
2. Psychology. a person of borderline intelligence in a former classification of mental retardation, having an intelligence quotient of 50 to 69

You are free to disagree with how people respond to this resturant.
You are free to disagree with why people have chosen to support the former employee.
You are free to reiterate facts.
However assuming anyone’s motivation is hate and adding in name calling is not part of the blog policy. Play nice.

http://www.restaurantica.com/on/owen-sound/nathaniels-restaurant/23004468/

Well, after 40 years, I suppose we have finally come full circle.
Back in the olden times, 1968 to be exact, I was a student at dear old Hickory High School, concerned about recent assassinations, Vietnam and the ‘68 presidential election between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon.

If I’m honest with you, I’ll tell you that another concern of mine was between me and my dad, who kept insisting that my hair was too long and I needed a haircut. I was lucky that my dad never got full-tilt gonzo crazy over my hair, but my guess is that if you are a male baby boomer, you may have also had a conversation or two with your father who thought your hair needed to be cut to make you respectable.

I reckoned that we’d all moved past the “length of hair” controversies, especially now that everything from shaved heads, to buzz cuts, to cornrows, to pony tails on men and women are seen in most of the workplaces around the world. Self-expression is alive and well in today’s world (and rightfully so), and it’s probably inevitable that every generation thinks the next one may be taking things a tad too far.

But it turns out that up in Canada, one restaurant’s owners haven’t moved past this controversy at all - as a matter of fact they’re so mired in the ’50s that it might take a miracle or H.G. Wells’ time machine for them to catch up with the rest of us here in the 21st century. Turns out the restaurant’s owners fired one of their employees the other day because she came to work after she’d shaved her head.

But here’s the real kicker.

Seems that Stacey Fearnell, a waitress at Nathaniel’s restaurant up in Ontario, Canada, was fired because she shaved her head all right. But the genuine gold-plated “sine qua non” of this controversy is Stacey Fearnell shaved her head to raise money for a cancer research charity near her home.

Oops.

Even after hundreds of e-mails, newspaper articles and phone calls lambasted Stacey’s bosses in the media, and folks stayed away from the restaurant in protest, Stacey’s bosses, the owners of Nathaniel’s, told reporters they didn’t care why Stacey shaved her head; their restaurant had certain high standards and waitresses with shaved heads couldn’t work at their “casual fine dining” establishment.

Mercy. Forty years ago youngsters were getting kicked around for wearing their hair too long, and today they are getting fired from jobs because they have no hair. Is there no end to lunacy?

One of the great lessons a parent can learn is to love your children no matter what they do to their hair. They may grow it, show it, cut it, bob it, color it, shave only parts of it, cornrow it or put Heinz 57 sauce and Elmer’s Wood Glue on it to make it stand up two-feet high, but hey, the bottom line is that even if you cut if all off, hair grows back (not for ALL of us, but that’s another column).

The point is that every generation mistakenly thinks the current generation is nuts compared to “the way we were.” Know what? Every generation is wrong. Youths of today or teenagers who will graduate in 2075 will attempt to break away from the patterns set by their parents, and I can guarantee you that different hairstyles will be part of that expression.

Jeff Ferris and Dan Hilliard, owners of Nathaniel’s restaurant in Ontario, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. What you did ranks as one of the dumbest business decisions ever made but even more importantly, on the compassion scale, was nothing short of morally reprehensible. You judged a young woman by her hair, or lack of it, and to top it off, she did what she did for charity, and you did what you did in the name of making a buck.

The latest word is that because of the firing, Stacey Fearnell has received numerous job offers all over Canada from people who don’t have a problem with the way she looks. They do, in fact, like her because she is obviously a compassionate person who went to extremes to donate money to a worthy cause.

I’ve got a feeling this is going to have a happy ending. I hope Stacey accepts one of these new job offers, makes a ton of money and can afford to buy Nathaniel’s restaurant in Ontario when it goes out of business.

Dr. Lee Jessup is president of United Way of Davidson County. He can be reached at leejessup@unitedwaydavidson.org.

Maybe he can write a book based on the experience:

“How to Destroy a Business with One Really Bad Decision”

Enough disagree however to over double the donations under her name to The Cancer Society.
Employers all over the country offered her a job.
Nathaniels owners and fine dining customers won’t be subjected to not beautiful - a woman who lost her dad to cancer, has a best friend fighting cancer and who was an excellent employee.

I agree she made her choice, talking the talk and walking the walk. Good for her and everyone who supported her. She raised the most money in the Owen Sound event even before it was more than doubled by the public when this story broke.