They treated her like crap – literally!
A Westchester sales rep for a celebrity-favorite handbag company was transferred to toilet duty when she refused her boss’s sexual advances, a new lawsuit charges.
Ramona Lester, 31, landed a full-time job at upscale Dooney & Bourke in the Westchester Mall in January 2012 and was immediately subjected to harassment by store manager Alex Price, according to the suit.
The Connecticut-based company counts Julia Robert’s niece, actress Emma Roberts, Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton among their many models and clients.
Price peered up Lester’s skirt while she was standing on a ladder in the stock room and announced to other employees that he could “see everything,” the suit says.
He also openly discussed with female workers their menstrual cycles, says the suit filed Thursday in White Plains Federal Court by Lester’s attorneys, Michael Borrelli and Jeffrey Douglas.
Lester complained to an assistant manager, who gave Price a heads up, the papers state.
As a result, Price allegedly retaliated against Lester by demoting her to store janitor.
He and another supervisor, Raymon Spivey, ordered Lester to “clean the restrooms and scrub toilets,” the suit says.
In a separate incident, an unidentified manager, acting at the behest of Price, allegedly threatened to “hit [Lester] in the head with a tape gun and proceeded to call her crazy and bipolar.”
The suit contends that the never-ending harassment Lester suffered was part of a grand scheme to make her quit, but she refused to step down for fear of being unemployed.
In September 2012, she was fired after her bosses stopped putting her name on the work schedule and hired other workers to replace her, the suit says.
Lester is seeking an unspecified amount of money for severe mental anguish and emotional distress.
An assistant manager at Dooney & Burke declined to comment.