Jeff Varner From “Survivor” Lost His Job After Outing Another Contestant
Jeff Varner became THE MOST HATEST GAY DUDE IN THE COUNTRY last week when during an episode of Survivor: Game Changers, he desperately tried to save his torch from getting snuffed out (that’s Survivor talk for “voted out”) by telling his tribe mates that Zeke Smith is transgender. Jeff wanted to show his tribe how “deceptive” Zeke was and he used Zeke not telling everyone about being transgender as an example of that. Jeff’s pathetic and gross attempt to save himself majorly backfired and not only was he unanimously voted out of the game, but he also ended up unemployed. And as Varner heads to the back of the unemployment line, Richard Hatch basks in the glory of no longer being the biggest gay villain on Survivor.
Right after the episode aired, Zeke said in an op-ed piece for The Hollywood Reporter that he’s not “wild” about everyone knowing he’s transgender and that he’s having a hard time fully forgiving Varner. CBS got a lot of shit bombs thrown at them for airing Varner’s outing of Zeke. CBS defended themselves by saying that they worked with Zeke and GLAAD for months on the best way to handle the episode. Zeke also defended CBS by saying that he’s “been granted unprecedented autonomy in how I wanted to tell my story.” While Zeke, CBS and GLAAD do a group hug, Jeff Varner is probably looking into legally changing his name to Not Jeff Varner so he can get a job interview.
Jeff Varner, who’s a news anchor turned North Carolina real estate agent, had just started working with Allen Tate Realtors. Jeff told the Greensboro News & Record that after just 17 days with the company, he learned that they also snuffed his torch out. Jeff called his firing “an ugly, knee-jerk reaction” during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. He also said that Allen Tate Realtors didn’t even personally tell him that they were done with him. They locked him out of the system and he had to call them to find out what was going on.
“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. It was an ugly day. My former boss told me that I was in a news story they wanted nothing to with.”
Varner claims he warned his bosses at Allen Tate about the chunky diarrhea storm that was headed his way. He couldn’t specifically tell him what he did in the episode because he signed a confidentiality agreement with CBS. Pat Riley, the CEO of Allen Tate Realtors, gave this statement to ET about their decision to drop Varner:
“The Allen Tate Companies were built on core values of honesty, integrity and respect. Those fundamental beliefs led us to end our relationship with Mr. Varner, a real estate agent who had become affiliated with our firm just 17 days earlier.
To be clear, at no time before the airing of the Survivor episode on Wednesday evening was our management aware of his actions on that episode. We make all decisions such as this one with careful consideration of our clients, employees and our agents.”
Jeff Varner claims other real estate companies have already contacted him about working with them.
Yes, getting fired from a job you don’t want to be fired from sucks, but he should look on the bright side. At least he didn’t get dressed and drive down to the office only to find out that he’s been locked out of his computer. I’d much rather find out that I’ve been fired while still at home in my sleeping clothes than deal with my co-workers throwing me that look after asking them, “Um, did any of you tricks have trouble logging in today?”
But then again, doing the walk of newly fired shame in front of a handful of co-workers is a cake fucking walk compared to millions of people watching you make someone cry on the inside after outing them on TV.
Pic: CBS