After Jeff Varner outed his fellow castaway Zeke Smith as transgender on Survivor, the three time player was fired from his North Carolina real estate job. Varner received the news on Thursday that Allen Tate Real Estate would no longer require his services. He tells Entertainment Tonight that he was fired in “what I felt was an ugly, knee-jerk reaction kind of way.”
“I wasn’t even given the chance to explain or right the wrong,” he explained. “In the real estate world, buyers and sellers want to know they’re signing up with a company that won’t dump them or turn their backs on them in time of trial. So I’m talking to several firms now that I know will care about and believe in their employees. I have had several reach out [and] I’m confident I’ll find a better home.”
“As I’m spending hours doing press [on Thursday], I discover I can’t access my email. Then the MLS association emails to say, ‘You’ve been terminated.’ I didn’t even find out from my company. Suddenly my real estate license was inactive and my current clients [were] left in the dark. It took hours after my press junket to get anyone with the company on the phone to tell me personalLy, and even longer to calm my clients, all of whom, by the way, are coming with me to my new firm,” Varner continued. “It was an ugly day. My former boss told me that I was in a news story they wanted nothing to with.”
“I was devastated,” he added. “[I warned the company that headlines might be coming], but apparently not the people who needed to hear it.”
It’s not the first time a reality show star lost a job in the real world after making stupid and/or bigoted remarks. Remember when several Big Brother season 15 contestants lost their jobs after making a slew of bigoted remarks?
