“Bar Rescue” host Jon Taffer 86’ed male employees in favor of attractive women. At least, that’s the story being served up against the Spike TV star.
In a suit filed in district court in Nevada, Tsang Han Wang — described in the complaint as “an Asian-American male in his late 20s” — claims he was hired as a project manager for Taffer in April 2015.
However, Wang says, he was fired that August because Taffer “preferred to have young, attractive females employed.
“Taffer enjoys being surrounded by women, and acts like a bachelor despite being married,” the suit reads. “He has spoken publicly on methods of picking up girls from bars and there are multiple pictures of Taffer on social media with him surrounding by [sic] his female employees.”
Wang claims that after Taffer began hiring young attractive females as clerical support and “charging them with duties outside of their depth and scope,” while also giving them duties that had been assigned to Wang and a male colleague, he asked what was happening. After which, the suit says, Wang and his colleague were given a 30-day action plan that he “properly recognized as a form of constructive discharge.”
Wang claims that he was assigned tasks that were outside of his area of expertise that “they knew he would be unable to accomplish,” such as programming and writing code for the BarHQ app.
After the action plan had reached an end, Wang claims, he was given the heave-ho, as was his male colleague.
Wang is claiming sex discrimination, as well as racial discrimination, as Taffer allegedly “discriminated against Plaintiff by unfairly targeting him, due to his race, by treating him disparately and terminating him in order to hire Caucasian females.”
A spokesman for Taffer has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Wang also alleges that he was stiffed out of overtime pay.
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages “in excess of $10,000,” as well as back pay and benefits.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.