Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Weighing waitresses

Two ex-waitresses at an East Side bar are suing their former employer, having filed a multimillion-dollar sex-harassment lawsuit, accusing their former bosses of ordering female employees to be weighed as part of a scheme to keep track of their weight.

Alexandria Lipton, 25, and Kristen McRedmond, 27, filed suit in New York Supreme Court against the Sutton Place Bar and Restaurant on Second Avenue near 54th Street.

The two women claim they were humiliated and sexually harassed by their boss, whom they knew only by his first name, Neil. Lipton claims the manager kept tabs on waitresses' poundage by ordering some of them onto a scale in the restaurant's office.

"When they got in the office, they were told and/or coerced into getting onto the scale," Lipton said. Lipton said she didn't work that day, but when she came back and refused to tell the manager her weight, he guessed it.

"He looked me up and down, looked at the bouncer standing next to him and goes, '135,' and he looks at the bouncer and they nod to each other, and he writes my weight down on a pad of paper," Lipton said.

The two ex-employees are represented by attorney Rosemarie Arnold, who said Redmond physically resisted when a beefy manager tried to pick her up to get her on the scale while another manager looked on.

Arnold said no men were subjected to being weighed; only female workers were singled out for the weigh-ins.

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