Ex-employee calls Stew Leonard’s a toxic and unsafe workplace

“Stew just being Stew” has apparently motivated a former employee of Stew Leonard’s to sue the grocery store chain.

Robert Crosby Jr., former loss prevention manager at the Yonkers store, accused Stew Leonard’s and CEO Stew Leonard Jr. of  creating a toxic workplace and ignoring Covid-19 safety protocols, in a complaint filed June 11 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.

Crosby, of Campbell Hall, Orange County, claims that he repeatedly complained about Mr. Leonard’s practices to the head of human resources, who would then reply, “Stew’s just being Stew” and “he means no harm. He has no filter.”

The company does not comment on pending litigation, Mr. Leonard said in a statement released by public relations director Meghan Bell.

“Robert Crosby Jr. worked for Stew Leonard’s almost 20 years, but unfortunately we had to part ways. We understand he brought a lawsuit and we will review it with our attorneys.”

Stew Leonard’s opened a small dairy store in 1969 in Norwalk, Connecticut and has since grown to seven grocery stores and eight wine stores, according to its website, with more than 3,000 employees and $550 million in sales.

It has been listed ten times by Fortune Magazine as one of the 100 best companies to work for in America, the website states, and prides itself on it concern for the wellness of its employees at work and outside of work.

But Crosby claims that he repeatedly complained about discriminatory practices and failures to maintain a safe workplace.

He describes disturbing conduct going back as far as 2000.

A Christmas party in the early 2000s, for instance, allegedly featured executives wearing sexually suggestive attire, staging a skit with sex toys, and distributing photographs of topless women on a beach.

He claims that Mr. Leonard used racist terms and offensive depictions of Black employees, said Jews were the worst customers to deal with and referred to one employee as “his Jew boy.”

Around 2004, Crosby says, he and co-workers discovered tombstones near the Yonkers store that were later identified as artifacts from an abandoned Orthodox Jewish Cemetery.

He claims that a company executive directed them to “bury them where no one can find them” and threatened their jobs if anyone found out.

About 250 people had been buried in a half-acre cemetery founded in 1899 by the Congregation People of Righteousness, according to a 2004 New York Times story. The congregation had disbanded after it lost its synagogue to a highway-widening project.

A developer acquired the cemetery in 1989, agreed to remove the remains to Jerusalem, and then built a two-story parking garage on the cemetery plot for Costco and Home Depot. But according to court papers cited by the newspaper, 135 children buried in the cemetery were never accounted for.

In 2009, Crosby’s complaint states, he and co-workers were investigating a fire near the Yonkers store and discovered human bones. He says a store executive told them to “get coffee burlap bags and discard the bones in the dumpster.”

He accuses Mr. Leonard of jokingly referring to the discoveries as “the Yonkers Holocaust.” He complained about the incidents, he claims, and was told he would be fired if he disclosed anything to outsiders.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Crosby claims, employees were not permitted to wear masks or distance themselves from one another, no limits were put on the number of customers inside and the store did not follow federal cleaning standards.

He says he complained to two company executives who allegedly responded that if customers see employees wearing masks they will perceive them as sick and not shop there.

About 50 employees did get sick with Covid-19, according to the complaint, but Stew Leonard’s still did not shut down for a deep cleaning.

In April 2020, Crosby tested positive for Covid-19, and according to his account he suffered extreme, life-threatening and long-term symptoms and he was hospitalized twice.

The company granted him a medical leave and later a paid personal leave, according to the complaint, but he was allegedly forced to work from home and from the hospital and pressured to return to the workplace.

Crosby says he repeatedly asked the company to make reasonable accommodations until he fully recovered, but his requests were ignored.

On Sept. 28, 2020, he was fired from the $97,360 a year position.

Crosby argues that his termination was unlawful because the company refused to make a reasonable accommodation for his disability. And he says Stew Leonard’s retaliated against him for repeatedly complaining about discrimination, unsafe working conditions and a hostile workplace.

He is demanding $500,000 on the hostile workplace and discrimination charges, as well as unspecified lost wages and other damages.

He is represented by Croton-on-Hudson attorney Karen Mizrahi.