Upscale eatery boss treated her like property, forcing her to call him “boss man,’’ sleep in the pool shed and even unclog the family’s toilet: Nanny Lawsuit

A manager at the tony Upper East Side eatery Scarpetta treated his kid’s nanny like a slave — forcing her to call him “boss man,’’ sleep in the pool shed and even unclog the family’s toilet, a new lawsuit alleges.

Cindy Carter lived in “modern-day indentured servitude’’ and was “treated like property” by assistant manager James Ragonese and his wife, Nicole, according to the Brooklyn federal-court suit.

“It hurt so bad I cried,’’ Carter told The Post. “I didn’t know what to do.’’

The 44-year-old was paid a pittance — about $300 a week while toiling 71 to 120 hours weekly between March 2016 and this past February, when she was fired, according to the complaint and her lawyer, Justin Marino.

While James Ragonese works at the high-end eatery — which features such dishes as Wagyu strip with truffled spinach — Carter “was typically offered only leftovers,’’ the suit says.

She also “was prohibited from cooking food when Defendants’ were home (because, as Nicole Ragonese stated, “Caribbean food is disgusting”),” the papers state.

Meanwhile, Carter was required “to perform duties completely unrelated to being a nanny, such as plunging a toilet,” the suit says.

The nanny “spent her entire day either taking care of Defendants’ child (cleaning, feeding, monitoring, entertaining, etc.), cleaning the house, weeding the lawn and flower beds, watering the lawn during the Summer (as Defendants did not have a sprinkler system), doing laundry, or otherwise responding to Defendants’ every whim,” the 16-page document states.

Carter first lived in the family’s attic and then in the basement of their home in Williston Park, LI, she says.

The family moved to a new home in Port Washington in October 2018, where Carter was given a bedroom on the second floor — though the lawsuit claims they began constructing yet another basement room just for her.

When her bosses went to the Hamptons to have fun in the summer, she was taken along — only to be stashed in an unventilated storage room where pool chemicals were kept, she says.

“Nicole Ragonese said she could ‘leave the door open,’ ” the suit reads.

The Ragoneses’s lawyer, Dustin Levine, said Carter’s lawsuit is in retaliation for the couple having her arrested for keying their car. She’s now facing misconduct charges for the incident.

“I think they’re completely exaggerated and unfounded,” Levine said of the lawsuit’s claims, adding that his clients paid for Carter’s hotel stay after her arrest because they didn’t want her to be homeless.

“She lived in their home, they treated her as family.”

Carter’s lawyer, Marino, said that before his client’s arrest, Carter had called the police herself after a male Ragonese relative allegedly made inappropriate comments to her.

Carter — who is currently in a homeless shelter — is suing for alleged violations of state and federal wage provisions and noncompliance with notice/record-keeping requirements, among other things.

She’s requesting various damages, plus an award of unpaid wages for overtime with interest.

via: https://nypost.com/2019/04/07/upscale-eatery-boss-treated-me-like-property-nanny-lawsuit/