2B or not 2B — what’s the difference?
An Upper East Side resident came home to find his apartment cleaned out of everything but a TV and a PS3 video game system after a bumbling rubbish removal service carelessly hauled the contents of his unit 2D — instead of their assigned work order of 2B — to the city dump last October, according to a new lawsuit.
“Everything else was gone. My bed, everything,” 27-year-old Deloitte consultant Nilay Shroff told The Post Tuesday.
“I thought I’d been robbed. I just called 911,” Shroff said of his shock upon returning to his rent-stabilized East 74th Street pad.
“When the police came, they said they’d never seen anything like this,” Schroff continued, “because they said my TV and the PS3 would have been the first thing gone. And a New York City robbery would not involve your bed being taken.”
When he asked the management company for the five-story Yorkville building what happened, an employee admitted that the contractor had mistakenly targeted his apartment instead of the neighboring unit 2B, the suit claims.
“The next day, the landlord says, ‘We made a mistake,’ and that’s how I found out,” Shroff recalled.
“They were like, ‘Oh, it’s some 80-year-old contractor, he might be a little senile,’ that’s what the landlord was saying. For me, it’s like, ‘I don’t give a damn. It’s still your fault.’
“I mean, there’s dirty dishes in the sink. There’s a wet towel. Clearly someone’s living there,” Shroff fumed.
He said the landlord did not send anyone to oversee the clean-out of No. 2B. That apartment had just been vacated and the renter had left belongings behind, Shroff said.
Shroff lost everything — furniture, clothes, a government security clearance, photographs and Social Security documents — in the mix-up.
The sloppy job has left him at risk for identity theft and forced him to take a week off work to rebuild his life.
Shroff, a die-hard baseball fan, also lost a Mariano Rivera bobblehead — though the movers left behind two, less coveted figurines from the Cleveland Indians and the Oakland A’s.
“We had waited in line for like four hours at Yankee Stadium for it,” the upset tenant said. The apartment was his first home in New York City after graduating from college and moving out of his family’s house in New Jersey.
“It was kind of suspicious, because they took that bobblehead, which was right next to my stuff. At the time, it was going for like $400 on eBay because it was a really hot item.”
The workers even removed collectible magnets from ballparks around America off Shroff’s refrigerator, he says.
He salvaged only one magnet of Camden Yards that fell on the floor.
“I’ve done something like 22 out of 30 [ballparks]. My entire fridge was just magnets of all the stadiums I’ve been to. I had a lot of souvenirs,” Shroff said.
He was also robbed of family photographs, including snaps of his mom, who passed away when he was 13 years old.
Shroff is suing the management company, Mautner-Glick, his landlord and the contractor after he was told that his stuff would be replaced, but he still has not been compensated.
“My passport was here, my Social Security card, credit cards, all my bank accounts,” said the technology consultant, who travels frequently for work.
“I was distraught,” Shroff said.
He pegged the damage toll at around $40,000.
An attorney for the management company and the building owner declined to comment.