A Long Island man says his ex-boss is a real beef jerky who fired him after deeming his vegetarianism to be “gay.”
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, former Calyon in the Americas trader Ryan Pacifico says he was mercilessly mocked, labeled “a homo” and canned for not eating meat.
“You don’t even eat steak, dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?” the suit quotes beef-loving boss Robert Catalanello as saying.
“It was bizarre,” said Pacifico, a married triathlete.
He said his work at the Credit Agricole subsidiary had been going “great” until his boss discovered he was a vegetarian.
“Then everything changed drastically,” Pacifico said.
Catalanello did everything he could to make Pacifico uncomfortable – including only ordering hamburgers and pepperoni and sausage pizzas for the weekly team lunches.
“I’m only ordering burgers. If you don’t eat meat, too bad. I don’t care,” he’s quoted as saying.
Pacifico is suing Calyon for unspecified “compensatory, emotional, physical and punitive damages.”
A rep for Calyon declined comment and Catalanello did not return a call.
Pacifico went to work for the foreign currency trader in 2005, and “performed his duties in an exemplary manner” – but things took a turn for the worse when Catalanello became his supervisor, the suit says.
The boss chose a steakhouse as a site for a team building dinner, and another broker suggested they go someplace else because Pacifico was a vegetarian.
“He was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? We’re going anyway,’ ” Pacifico recalled. When a coworker asked what Pacifico would eat, Catalanello said, “Who the f- – – cares? It’s his fault for being a vegetarian homo.”
Pacifico was fired for a minor infraction.