You may not believe this but some people made some out-of-touch comments Thursday on Fox News.
Enter Jon Taffer, known for hosting the show “Bar Rescue,” who apologized Friday for comparing restaurant workers to military dogs when discussing the perils of unemployment benefits with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
The reality personality appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to complain about the wage and benefits shortage, er, “labor shortage” currently plaguing the service industry. He piggybacked off Ingraham’s call to cut off federal unemployment benefits with some ghastly reasoning, even for a guy that yells at people on TV for a living.
“I have a friend in the military who trains military dogs and they only feed a military dog at night because a hungry dog is an obedient dog,” Taffer said. “Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work, then we’re providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home.”
“I’m completely with you Laura, these [unemployment] benefits make absolutely no sense to us,” he continued. “And on top of the impact of not getting employees and not being able to run our businesses, in my industry, meat prices are up 10 percent, chicken prices are up 15 percent.”
After getting reamed on Twitter for these remarks, Taffer expressed regret on Facebook on Friday.
“Regarding an interview I did yesterday, I want to sincerely apologize for using a terrible analogy in reference to the unemployment situation,” he wrote. “That was not my intention and I greatly regret it. My comment was an unfortunate attempt to express a desire for our lives to return to normal. I recognize this has been a challenging year for everyone, and I am eager for the hospitality industry to come back stronger than ever.”
Taffer already spoke on the “crisis” back in April on Fox Business’ Varney and Co. without the finger-pointing.
When asked by host Stuart Varney if the restaurant and bar industry will get back to normal by summer, Taffer said that they can get back to normal “if – big if – we can get employees.”
“The fact of the matter is the enhanced unemployment is causing the same problem you just talked about in the health care industry. We can’t get our employees back. It’s a crisis for us,” Taffer said. “Customers are coming back….But if we don’t have employees, we can’t serve those customers. So now we’re dealing with that.”
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