A nail salon in Georgia tried to charge an overweight woman $5 extra for her day of pampering because of her girth. Apparently the salon had been having problems with fat customers exceeding the 200-lb weight limit for the pedicure chairs, and since the chairs cost $2,500 to repair, they tried to recoup the costs by charging fat ladies an extra five bucks to get the cheese scraped off their feet.

The article mentions that sometimes overweight people have to pay extra for the same service, like when flying (the extra large folks have to pay for two seats) or when buying certain plus-sized clothing (more fabric and materials costs more money). I don't see anything wrong with charging extra for overweight customers if there's a weight capacity for your equipment that they use -- think of zipline tours, kayaks, and other stuff that has a maximum allowable weight.

Unfortunately, there's a difference between a zipline tour and getting a pedicure. One pretty much weeds out overweight people because it's a somewhat athletic physical activity, whereas the other one involves sitting on your ass while someone paints your toenails. More overweight people are likely to go to a salon than jump out of an airplane, so you'd expect more outrage over increased salon costs vs. being told a parachute won't support your girthy arse.

What do you think, is it fair for salons to charge overweight customers extra in order to protect their equipment? They could use the extra money to invest in chairs with better weight capacities. On the other hand, they're kind of guessing as to which customers exceed 200 lbs, and that can get insulting very quickly. Your thoughts?

Should salons charge overweight customers extra?