SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND – APRIL 19: A Burger King restaurant is seen closed due to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on April 19, 2020 in Southampton, England. In a press conference on Thursday, First Secretary of State Dominic Raab announced that the lockdown will remain in place for at least 3 more weeks. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread to many countries across the world, claiming over 140,000 lives and infecting more than 2 million people. (Photo by Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
Burger King really put the cliché "all publicity is good publicity" to the test yesterday. It was International Women's Day yesterday, and Burger King U.K. decided to celebrate the day by tweeting, quote, "Women belong in the kitchen." That's it. That was the whole tweet. They followed up with other tweets saying, quote, "If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We're on a mission to change the gender ratio." And they talked about a scholarship program for female employees. But it was too late. The first tweet got HAMMERED all day. As one person tweeted, quote, "Please don't use sexism as clickbait." And things got toxic when sexist trolls came out in full force to go after people who had problems with the tweet. Burger King U.K. tried to defend the tweet at first, but eventually wound up tweeting an apology, quote, "We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we're sorry." They deleted the "women belong in the kitchen" tweet last night.
