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Andrew Puzder

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Entrepreneur

The Resume

    (July 11, 1950- )
    Born in Cleveland, Ohio
    Trial lawyer (1978-95)
    CEO of CKE Restaurants (2000-17), parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurant chains
    Nominated for Secretary of Labor by Donald Trump (December 8, 2016)
    Nomination withdrawn the day before his scheduled confirmation hearing (February 15, 2017)

Why he might be annoying:

    During their divorce hearing, his first wife accused him of being abusive (1987). While he was CEO, CKE paid $20 million to settle class action suits filed over failure to pay employees overtime wages.
    He was criticized for using scantily clad babes (Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton, etc.) biting suggestively into juicy burgers in ads for Carl’s and Hardee’s.
    In two speeches, he called Hardee’s workers ‘the worst of the worst.’ (2011)
    He outsourced CKE’s technology help desk – a practice that the President who nominated him had derided as ‘anti-American worker’ while on the campaign trail.
    His confirmation hearing was delayed three times over his failure to submit disclosure documents on how he would avoid conflicts of interest.
    His nomination for Labor Secretary drew a solid wall of Democratic opposition over his resistance to increasing the minimum wage.
    He then started drawing Republican opposition following the revelation that he had employed an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper and initially failed to remit payroll taxes for her.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was the first member of his family to graduate from college.
    Although a prominent pro-life attorney, he teamed with abortion clinic director B.J. Isaacson Jones to found the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice, with the goal of helping ‘activists get beyond their differences’ to assist pregnant women and children.
    His first wife repudiated the abuse allegations, saying she had been ‘misled by faulty advice’ to use the accusation ‘to gain leverage in our divorce proceedings.’
    He was credited with turning around the foundering Hardee’s brand and returning CKE to financial stability.
    His comment on the Carl’s/Hardee’s ads: ‘I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 6 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 90.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 9 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 28 Votes: 53.57% Annoying