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The CEO of the popular breakfast chain Waffle House is calling out lockdown-loving, elitist politicians who have nearly bankrupted the restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic with one-size-fits-all restrictions on indoor dining. “None of the people who make the decisions to shut down businesses and impact people’s livelihoods ever have their own livelihood impacted,” Walt Ehmer declared.
“A lockdown is going to put a lot of people out of work. It’s really not about the business — it’s about the people. These people have jobs, they have livelihoods, they need to take care of their families. The only reason we think that we would shut a dining room down at this point is if the local government made us do so,” he asserted during an interview with Business Insider.
Although 28,000 jobs were put on hold earlier in the pandemic when revenue dropped about 80 percent, nearly all of the about 2,000 Waffle House locations across the country are now open with 95 percent of employees back to work, along with the company implementing extensive safety protocols and operational adjustments for workers and customers.
Ehmer and other senior executives, who cut their pay in half, make numerous daily visits to Waffle House restaurants to check on safety and work alongside cooks and waitstaff. Rank-and-file workers were subject to a much smaller pay reduction.
Public health officials who are advising governors and mayors, the latter cohort made up of mostly Democrat career politicians with law degrees and no scientific background and who almost never met a real-world payroll, apparently consider indoor dining a high-risk activity for the spread of the coronavirus infection.
Even with already reduced capacity, officials in some areas are contemplating further restrictions, if not implementing them already, as COVID cases (which might constitute a conflating of a term describing COVID-positive tests) surge.
As alluded to above, most, if not all, of those employed in the public sector, i.e., the government sector, haven’t lost a paycheck during the coronavirus outbreak, while millions of private sector workers have faced furloughs or found themselves permanently jobless.
“The people making the decisions are not paying the same price that the workers in this country are paying, We’re trying to provide reliable careers and jobs for people….We work side by side with folks. I’m not going to work in an unsafe environment and I’m not going to let our folks work in an unsafe environment,” Ehmers explained.
The Waffle House boss added that the stimulus bill, or a follow-up one, provides only a partial solution to the dilemma facing the industry.
“The stimulus helped a lot of restaurants and more importantly a lot of people early on. But, what you can’t value enough is someone’s peace of mind and security that they have a job that they can count on…Governments can’t replace all of the salaries in the economy that you want to shut down. We’ve got to find safe ways to move forward.”
Ehmer insisted that there is no documented case of COVID spreading at a Waffle House eatery, and that includes between workers.
Waffle House is separately well known as an unconventional exemplar of the severity, or lack thereof, of natural disasters.
After being shared by Trump campaign senior advisor Steve Cortes, Ehmer’s comments attracted a lot of attention on Twitter. Here is a sample from those who shared Cortes’ view.
Waffle House CEO on the incredible harm lockdowns inflict on working-class people.
Those pushing for harsh restrictions are almost all credentialed-class elites who don’t suffer personal professional consequences from lockdowns. https://t.co/XCntxMzcet
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 21, 2020
The lockdowns are the most elitist, anti-working class act in the history of the United States.
— RightlySkeptical (@RightSkeptic) November 21, 2020
I’m glad at least one CEO has had the nerve to stand up.
— 🇺🇸 President-Elect AC WILDCARD 🇺🇸 (@ac_wildcard) November 21, 2020
Lockdowns and masks are ineffective. The data from the CDC, WHO, and universities such as UCLA, University of Basil, University of Paris, and probably more if I search for their articles too, all show mask and lockdown mandates have been ineffective.
— 🇺🇸 President-Elect AC WILDCARD 🇺🇸 (@ac_wildcard) November 21, 2020
Pretty standard from government officials. Mandate policies they themselves will not suffer the direct consequences from. They are insulated from all the damage and destruction they perpetuate onto others without even thinking twice about it. They’re sick.
— Thundersticks (@Thundersticks55) November 21, 2020
Every Democrat politician in this country pushing the lockdown should lose their paycheck like everybody else nobody gets paid and you can bet the lockdown wouldn’t last very long
— steve davis (@steveda45342966) November 21, 2020
Every Democrat politician in this country pushing the lockdown should lose their paycheck like everybody else nobody gets paid and you can bet the lockdown wouldn’t last very long
— steve davis (@steveda45342966) November 21, 2020
Every Democrat politician in this country pushing the lockdown should lose their paycheck like everybody else nobody gets paid and you can bet the lockdown wouldn’t last very long
— steve davis (@steveda45342966) November 21, 2020
Lockdowns were not for our good. They were for the left to perpetrate the mail in FRAUD to try to steal the election.
— PowerHouse16 (@House16Power) November 21, 2020
https://twitter.com/ImpactMadison/status/1330243614614704128
Yeah, it’s the ones who haven’t missed a paycheck or other income, or who never worked to begin with, that are screaming for the lockdowns.
— President-Elect Lena🇺🇸Ann D’Rae (@Lena_Ann00) November 21, 2020
Lockdowns is another way Dems want to cage humans. They have been doing this for years. Cages built at the Boarders and the 1994 Crime Bill. But people keep voting for them. I guess they like to be locked up.
— #KissMyTurkey (@BatesLandon) November 21, 2020
This is particularly meaningful as Waffle House is an indicator of how bad things are in Florida during hurricane season. They are always open unless it’s really dangerous This is a canary in a coal mine warning!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸☀️💞☀️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸— ZenJen ✝️🇺🇸👨👩👧👦🏝🇺🇸✝️ (@ZenJenHan) November 21, 2020
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Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”
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