On Saturday evening I received a series of text messages from an unfamiliar number that seemed to belong to an employee of American Apparel, in reference to the "I Work Retail" feature I wrote last week on how working at American Apparel in many ways proved my theory that the American workplace was rapidly reverting us all back to high school.
You never worked at the les and no one ever offered you coke. You really need something better to write about ... its really fucked up how you tired to play everyone. You are an ugly ass bitch who stays inside all day writing bullshit stories about ppl you know nothing about for a little excitment in your boring ass life....If you are any kind of real write you would of had your ugly ass transfer to the les so you could see what was happening. I'll see you around moe. Good lucky with everything asshole.
There was other stuff, in reference to specific people I'd rather not name, but she brought up some fair points: while I wrote about the Lower East Side, which was the undisputed hotbed of the American Apparel social world, I knew about its activities mainly through close friends. My impression from visiting the shop was that I was too old, unfashionable and probably fat for that particular store; I worked in two other locations.
Also I do spend my days inside writing bullshit stories about people I know nothing about, which I try to balance by writing bullshit about myself, and I spent enough time working for and researching American Apparel to feel confident in the veracity of what I wrote. Although if my story in any way implied: "I was part of the cool ruling clique of American Apparel that got mountains of free coke and watched models suck off Dov Charney," I am sorry. I was in no way a part of the "inner circle." I just knew a tremendous number of people who were, or who wanted to be, because I'm a journalist and a gossip and I'm not really good at standing around with co-workers for hours on end talking about nothing.