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I Spy With My Little Eye... Hotel Baker Gets $3 Million from Starwood

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 270 WEST 43RD STREET [map], New York, NY, United States, 10036
March 11, 2010 at 12:20 PM | by MsRebecca | 1 Comment

We don’t know about you but if a jury awarded us $3 million in a workplace lawsuit, we probably wouldn’t go back to work. But this guy did! And if you’re staying at the Westin New York Times Square, he’s making your muffins.

Hotel baker Moises Mendez sued the hotel for $38 million in damages after co-workers bullied him with racial slurs and jokes about his surgical scars. We’ve heard that restaurant kitchens are hardcore places to work, but throw a vat of nastiness like that into a place with scalding water and sharp knives, and you have yourself a spot in hell, not a job.

Which is why we’re puzzled that Mendez would go back to work, as his lawyer told New York Daily News he would do today.

The paper also explains that it wasn’t just the verbal abuse that convinced the jury to grant Mendez the three mill—he got $1 million for pain and suffering, but $2 million in punitive damages after Starwood was busted for installing a camera about his workstation after he made his complaints.

"They spied on me and wanted to find ways to get rid of me,” said Mendez. “It shows what I went through just trying to do my job."

According to reports, Starwood said the camera was “supposed to protect Mendez from harassment and was approved by his union.” The company will seek to have the verdict overturned.

Meanwhile, Mendez says:

"It is like a big building has been lifted from my shoulders.”

In this case, make that a fugly, fairyland-gone-wrong kind of big building. (This Westin is perfectly nice inside but the exterior is an eyesore.)

P.S. If you do order pastries at the Westin this week, look out for errant hundred-dollar bills in your croissant …

[Photo: Via New York Daily News ]