A pretty, Ivy League-educated executive compensation consultant is suing her boss, claiming he’s turned their Fifth Avenue office into a sex-crazed, skirt-chasing scene right out of “Mad Men.”
When Cornell grad Christina Young joined Steven Hall & Partners in 2011 as a managing director, she says, she had no idea what she was walking into.
“Hall actually fostered the pervasively hostile work environment by engaging in improper conduct himself,” Young, 36, huffs in the Manhattan Supreme Court suit filed Thursday.
In the suit, the blond former city schoolteacher claims a male colleague at the 650 Fifth Ave. office said “he would sit on [her] lap until it made her smile,” told her Hall liked her in a skirt, and simulated “performing sexual intercourse with an office chair.”
She also claims male bosses encouraged women employees to do whatever it took to make clients happy, à la the fictional Sterling Cooper from the hit TV show about ad execs in the ’60s.
“A male managing director encouraging formal managing directors to perform oral sex on potential clients in order to sign up new deals,” the suit claims.
On another occasion, a male managing director was watching a female managing director eat a sandwich and began “inquiring about similarities between how she bites the sandwich and performs oral sex,” the suit says.
In yet another instance, “a male managing director [asked] another female managing director about her husband’s erections,” according to court papers.
The suit also says the office hosted informal open mics where employees “read erotica out loud.”
And what was one male consultant’s excuse for the randy antics?
“Some men must masturbate in order to compose themselves,” the unnamed joker explained, according to the suit.
Young, who is still at the job, says she was sidelined after complaining to Hall and others about the alleged inappropriate behavior.
When she expressed concern that the firm didn’t have a sexual harassment handbook, “several managing directors … expressed concern that if SH&P adopted a sexual harassment policy Hall would violate the policy immediately upon its implementation,” the suit states.
Colleagues assured Hall it was all harmless, and when she persisted with the complaints, another managing director “suggested that [she] should agree to leave on ‘good terms.’”
Before making the reports, Young, who also has degrees from NYU School of Law and City College, won an $80,000 performance bonus.
A press release from the firm touted Young’s hire as “a tremendous addition to our already strong technical staff.”
Hall declined to comment. Young is suing for unspecified damages.