Hollister Bedbug Infestation Shuts SoHo Store

What's the only thing that could harsh the mellow at Hollister's "epic" SoHo store? Bedbugs, dude.

The good times are indeed over -- at least temporarily -- for the popular teen clothing company after the bloodsucking bugs were found in the store.

A spokesman confirmed the outbreak, but said that the bedbugs were only "affecting certain isolated areas of the store."

Not true, says a store source.

In an email to Gothamist, an employee detailed the store's slow response to complaints about the bugs and claims that the problem is much larger than the company would have people believe.

The first report of bedbug bites in the store was three weeks ago by and employee and a manager, but that was ignored. On Tuesday the 29th, an employee found that she had been bitten, and also found a live bedbug and an exoskeleton on her borrowed Hollister outfit. All of the employees were forced to continue working even though more and more bugs were being discovered.

Multiple employees were covered in bites. Hollister was more concerned about losing money than the health and safety of their hundreds of employees and thousands of customers. If they were concerned in the least, the store would have been shut down the moment the first bugs were discovered. Just today they closed the store down, but who knows how many employees and customers were exposed to the outbreak in the past three weeks, only jeopardizing the rest if the stores in the area as bedbugs spread like wildfire.

The company claims it is working on eradicating the bugs in the 40,000-square-foot store as quickly as possible.

Luckily since the employees barely wear any clothes on the job the chances of them bringing some of their "work" home with them are probably substantially lower than most companies.