Customer apologises for making ‘insensitive’ complaint about meal costing $78 at Newark Airport

A man who complained about his meal at Newark Airport costing so much has offered an apology after the place that served him hit back.

If you're out of the loop on this one, the long and short of it is that New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks posted a picture of a burger, fries and salad along with a drink on the camera.

He captioned it: "This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible."

While he didn't say which restaurant in the airport he'd eaten at they soon jumped on his tweet as 1911 Smoke House Barbeque hopped onto Facebook to respond.

They wrote: "Looks like someone was knocking back some serious drinks. Bar tab was almost 80 percent and he’s complaining about the cost of his meal, keep drinking buddy - we get paid off everything."

X/ @nytdavidbrooks

Someone in the comments chipped in to show that the burger and fries meal cost about $17 in total, while the restaurant later joked that it was offering the 'D Brooks special' of a burger, fries and a double shot of whiskey for $17.78, marked down from $78.

Brooks has since offered an apology for his tweet, telling PBS that he had been 'insensitive' for posting it to social media and saying he'd been trying to make a point about inflation.

He said: "First it started out hatched in my mind as a joke, 'cause if you looked at what I was eating it was bourbon with a very fattening hamburger and fries, I can't afford to make bad lifestyle choices.

Facebook/ 1911 Smoke House Barbeque

"The problem with the tweet, which I wrote so stupidly, was that it made it seem like I was oblivious to something that was blindingly obvious.

"That an upper middle class journalist having a bourbon in an airport is a lot different from a family living paycheck to paycheck.

"When I'm getting sticker-shock it's like an inconvenience, when they're getting sticker-shock it's a disaster. And so I was insensitive, I screwed up, I should not have written that tweet, I probably shouldn't write any tweets.

"I made a mistake, it was stupid."

Facebook/ 1911 Smoke House Barbeque

Brooks then went on to talk about inflation and 'sticker-shock', where 'something costs way more than you anticipated' when you actually look at the price of what you're buying.

He said it was a 'disaster' for poorer families that were suffering from rising costs on items they used to think were affordable.

Topics: US News, Money, Food and Drink, Twitter, Facebook, Social Media

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker