Let ‘em eat storm water!
A janitor at Goldman Sachs Battery Park headquarters was forced out into the dark and dangerous streets in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy because a drunken supervisor accused him of stealing $100, according to a new, $10 million lawsuit.
“They threw me out like a dog after working so many hours– no sleep, hauling sandbags, for no reason,” raged Mefit Zecevic, 42, of Staten Island.
The Albanian immigrant was employed by ABM Industries for 11 years.
The company supplied blue collar staff to Goldman Sachs and Zecevic was ordered in to work at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 28 to secure the building before the superstorm struck.
Zecevic toiled around the clock packing sandbags and moving equipment to higher levels of the office tower.
On Tuesday a supervisor named Eric Holt, slurring his words and swaying on his feet, allegedly accused him of taking money from a 7th floor closet reserved for Goldman Sachs employees, the suit says.
Holt then allegedly kicked Zecevic out of the building, forcing him to wade through fetid, waist deep water on a 13-hour odyssey back home to Staten Island.
“I told my supervisor, ‘Please leave stay until tomorrow. I have nowhere to go. I live in Staten Island!”
But his pleas fell on deaf ears, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
“When I walked in the water, I didn’t know where I was walking,’ Zecevic recalled, noting that he still has nightmares from the harrowing journey. “There was wires in the water, sewer backed backed up , I didn’t know where I was stepping, I just kept going, I had no choice.”
Supervisors even tossed Zecevic out a second time after a police officer tried to return him to the building, saying that they were “placing this man in danger,” court papers allege.
Nearly hypothermic and fearing electrocution by the time he reached the Brooklyn Bridge Zecevic says he contemplated suicide.
“He felt humiliated and degraded wondering what could possibly have brought about such inhuman treatment,” his attorney William Perniciaro said in court papers.
Zecevic, who’s lived in the U.S. for about 20 years, finally made it home to his worried family only to be notified a few days later that he’d been fired for the alleged theft.
Perniciaro, said his client has been financially and emotionally “wrecked” by the incident. He noted that Goldman Sachs is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit and a senior manager for the financial giant even wrote a letter in January saying he wanted Zecevic back on the job.
Security footage from the building proves Zecevic’s innocence, Perniciaro said.
A member of the Service Employees International Union, Zecevic filed a grievance proceeding to get his job. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
A spokesman for Fifth Avenue-based ABM Industries said: “Mr. Zecevic’s claims and characterizations are inaccurate and misleading, including but not limited to his descriptions of the circumstances surrounding his termination for theft and his departure. Because this is pending litigation, we intend to let our legal filings speak for themselves.”