Netflix Tiger King Spoilers: Did Joseph ‘Joe Exotic’ Maldonado-Passage Take Advantage of Disabled Employees?

Netflix Tiger King spoilers finds that on episode two, Saff, one of the employees of Joe Exotic’s G.W. Zoo, detailed the day she got her arm ripped off by a tiger. The thing is they didn’t just tell the tale, they had live footage of the moments after it happened and while things were blurred you could clearly see that the tiger had taken the arm clean off. Some might argue that Saff asked for it because she had stuck her hand in the cage, but seriously? No one ever asks to get attacked by a wild animal that they are helping to take care of and feed. I think that’s when the attack happened, during feeding time. (I could be wrong but that’s when it happened.)

Were proper precautions made? Well, I’m certain that Saff knew of the proper precautions beforehand, but when dealing with wild animals sometimes you have to play it by ear and sometimes you have no choice but to reach into the cage. That aside, there were some pretty sketchy things that happened on this episode of Tiger King that I’d like to address. First off, the second he got back inside the office of the Zoo, Joe Exotic didn’t seem to be all that concerned about Saff’s health or if they were going to be able to reattach her arm or what, the first words out of his mouth were,  “I am never going to be able to financially recover from this.”

Netflix Tiger King Spoilers: Did Joe Exotic take advantage of disabled employees?

That could have been a bad edit, but the last thing I would be worried about would be my own financial wellbeing when an employee of mine had gotten their freakin’ arm ripped off by a tiger. I would be worried about whether or not that person was going to bleed out on the way to the hospital! But no, Joe Exotic has fallen victim to ‘millionaire syndrome’, only caring about the bottom line. Joe was only concerned about how this was going to affect his pocketbook. He then went and announced in the giftshop to all his guests that he would be shutting down for the day because of what had transpired with the Tiger. Okay, at least he didn’t keep things running, at least he had enough respect for the situation to shut things down for the day.

But then, Saff said something odd. She said one of the employees, Reinke, came into her hospital room the next day and asked her to write her name. Now, I’m not sure of all the details of this hospital visit because they didn’t go into it but it sounds suspicious to me that they would make her write her name that soon after an attack. Also, I’m pretty certain that Saff was under the influence of a lot of painkillers at the time of this incident, and even so if her arm was hurting, why would you force her to possibly do more damage to the affected limb? Sounds awfully suspicious.

Saff also said that at the time of the attack that it sounded like they had managed to kind of reattach what remained of her limb, and then when the doctor told her the next day that it would be about two years worth of reconstructive surgery to get her arm back to full functionality then she said to amputate it. Okay, if that was her decision then it was her decision but why would she say this pretty much directly after talking with Reinke and the other employees that came to visit her? Was it truly her decision or did they manage to convince her that if she didn’t go through with it that something could happen to the park? Guilt can go a long way when one is already frightened and in pain.

And that may have not been the only card they played. They could have played up the old money card. They could have played up the fact that all those reconstructive surgeries were going to cost Joe a pretty penny and then he wouldn’t be able to finance the park and it would close and she would be out of a job. People will do a lot of things to keep their livelihood intact, even coming back to work 5 days after a major surgery, like amputation. They could have framed it as if it were all her fault, like she knew better than to stick her hand in the cage and now thanks to her they were in a bad position. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had actually outright demanded that she come back or not, if they took advantage of her already guilty conscience, then she would have come back to work anyway.

Saff is not the only disabled employee that Joe Exotic employed that came back to work after having an amputation. Reinke is a double amputee because of an unrelated ziplining accident, but he literally came back to work after this ziplining accident where he broke both of his feet, his hip, and his back and he kept walking around on his feet (probably against doctors orders, no one outright said) until he ultimately lost them both because they couldn’t heal. He said that he was literally walking 20 miles per day, on bone, there was no muscle or anything to build up and ultimately it resulted in the loss of both of his feet and now he walks 20 miles a day… on prosthetics! (Or at least he did at the time of filming.)

But you have to wonder about the psychology behind why these employees insisted on working, even through the most excruciating pain that you can go through, surgically. I can’t really say that these people were forced, but Joe gave all the clues himself when he bemoaned about never being able to financially recover from Saff’s accident in the opening moments of episode two. If Reinke did indeed work there at the time of his accident, he was probably, at some point, given an ultimatum by Joe to either come back or else. Again, this is all speculation, but people will do a lot to keep their livelihood. Also, you can’t be a millionaire when you’re paying workman’s comp, now can you? So, did Joe Exotic strongarm these disabled people into working when they obviously couldn’t? You decide. Stay tuned!!!

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