Employees at an exclusive New York City nightspot allegedly used spray bottles for cocaine during their shifts and had a system to rate the attractiveness of customers and otherwise engaged in sexual harassment, according to a lawsuit.
Polo Bar, a bar and restaurant owned by fashion icon Ralph Lauren, has a “toxic culture” and “rampant drug use and alcohol consumption at work,” Frank Nobiletti, a terminated former server, claims in a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that male bosses groped employees under the guise of checking their uniforms, and managers and servers often openly used cocaine on the job.
One server allegedly sold cocaine at the establishment, and workers “regularly mixed cocaine with water in a spray bottle and used that bottle to ingest cocaine” through their skin during their shift, Nobiletti, 42, says in the lawsuit.
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Nobiletti accuses both Michael Lewis, the bar’s events manager, and Darnell Dodson, its international hospitality director, of touching him inappropriately at different times.
The lawsuit alleges that Dodson was known to hire only attractive men, even if they had no experience, in the hopes of having “a sexual relationship with them.” Nobiletti added that male employees who had a sexual relationship with him “would receive preferential treatment.”
Employees also allegedly played a “Rating Game” in which they judged female customers on attractiveness.
“The male servers frequently made offensive and graphic sexual comments about the women customers,” the lawsuit claims.
Nobiletti claims he was fired last year after he complained to human resources about how he “faced terrible sexual harassment.”
Supervisors informed him he was being terminated “for drinking at work even though, since the Polo Bar opened in 2015, management and staff regularly drank alcohol and used illegal drugs during work hours with little to no consequences for such actions,” he said in the lawsuit.
“While the restaurant and its hard-working staff do everything they can to ensure that their guests have a first-class experience, the defendants completely failed to guarantee that their employees had a safe and legal work environment,” he said in the filing.
Nobiletti is seeking unspecified damages.
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“We have high standards for how employees conduct themselves and no tolerance for misconduct, so we take swift action when these standards are not met,” Polo Bar said in a statement to the New York Post.
“This includes Mr. Nobiletti’s termination that was based on clear evidence of his misconduct,” the statement continued. “Because we take all employee-related concerns seriously, we thoroughly investigated Mr. Nobiletti’s allegations and determined they have no merit.”
Polo Bar, which opened in 2015 and is located on East 55th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, has treated celebrity guests, including actors Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and George Clooney, as well as former President Bill Clinton, his wife and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
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