You can’t smoke in bars, restaurants, your apartment, the office, the beach or in city parks — and now you can’t even smoke on the Internet.
A Brooklyn woman claims she was fired from her job in a doctor’s office after one of the physicians saw a picture on Instagram of her lighting up, according to a lawsuit.
Philipa Quito, 36, says her bosses at Doc Care, a medical office in Ridgewood, Queens, initially accused her of having someone else sign her time card, but then a human resources rep called her and shared the stunning claim.
“That’s the reason they gave to me. I said, ‘Anything I do outside my job, in my social life, is your problem?’ ” Quito recalled. “I never smoke on the job.”
The medical assistant had worked at Doc Care for just eight months last year when she was canned.
“I do smoke outside of my job,” the single mother of two said. “I took a picture when I was taking a smoke. It was a get-together, and I can’t even remember what it was [for]. It was a fun time.”
Quito said the office had no rules against being a smoker.
“Anything I do outside of my job, I have a right to do,” she fumed.
New York is one of 28 states where an employer is prohibited from hiring or firing a worker because of their off-duty smoking habits, according to NYC CLASH, or Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment.
Smoking in city restaurants and bars was banned in 2002, and lighting up in public places like parks and beaches was prohibited in 2011. Condo and co-op buildings in the city are increasingly going smoke-free, and more apartment dwellers are filing successful lawsuits against neighbors who send second-hand smoke through the walls and vents.
In 2006 a Manhattan judge ruled that secondhand smoke is a breach of the “warrant of habitability,” a provision of state law that entitles tenants to “livable, safe and sanitary” apartments.
Quito believes the smoking issue was simply a pretense, and that she was really fired because she’d been asking to be paid for the roughly 10 hours of overtime she says she worked each week.
“It was really about her complaining and trying to get paid her proper wages,” her lawyer, William Rand, said.
The Brooklyn mom says in her Brooklyn federal lawsuit that she was required to work through lunch as well as extra hours before and after each shift.
In a statement, Doc Car denied the allegations and said there’s no requirement that its employees be non-smokers. Doc Care said, “Ms. Quito was terminated for cause, unrelated to any issues regarding any postings on social media.” They would not say what the “cause” was.