Commission orders Dorchester pizza place to pay customer $105,000 for racist tirade by worker; yes, the place whose owner is awaiting trial on charges he's a violent racist

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has ordered Stash's Pizza, Blue Hill Avenue at Columbia Road to pay a customer $105,000 for the racist tirade she had to endure when she called to complain about the way she was treated when she didn't get the pizza she had ordered one night in October, 2020.

In a decision released last month, MCAD Hearing Officer Jason Barshak concluded that the woman continues to suffer psychological trauma from the incident, in which a worker told her, among other things, to ponder how many Blacks"like you" are hanged across the street at Franklin Park, only that's not the word he used.

Barshak was unable to identify the person who mistreated the woman, except that it was not owner Stavros Papantoniadis, who had gone to dinner with his family at Davio's on Fan Pier, followed by time at a Greek club called Pontiaki on Albany Street, before heading home to Westwood.

Papantoniadis is currently behind bars, awaiting trial in federal court in May on charges he mistreated, sometimes violently, the undocumented immigrants he allegedly preferred to hire precisely so he could mistreat them at his Dorchester and Roslindale pizza places and a place he formerly owned in Norwood.

According to Barshak's decision, the woman called Stash's around 12:30 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2020 to order a large cheese pizza to go, but that when she got there to pick it up, the white guy behind the counter said he had no record of her order but he told her he had a small pie and that she could "take it or leave it." She left to try another place, but then she called Stash's to ask for a manager to complain to, according to Barshak's ruling:

The person responded "why don't you come here" so "I can put a bullet in your head" and called Thomas a "nigger" or a "fucking nigger." [The woman] was shocked. The person hung up the phone.

Thinking she had maybe gotten the wrong number, the woman dialed Stash's again, and got the same guy:

The person who answered said "stop calling me you fucking nigger" and hung up.

She tried once more:

The person who answered the telephone asked [her]whether she knew "how many niggers like you get hung" at Franklin Park and told her to "[s]top calling me you fucking nigger." [She] said "[y]ou fucking racist" and the conversation ended. [She] was shocked and angry. [She] began crying, as she started to think about how black slaves had been hung from trees.

And then she got a text message from a different number, Barshak wrote.

The text message said "Fucking nigga."

The woman called the number the message came from and:

[T]he same person, who had answered the calls [earlier] told [the woman] that he was "off work" and "ready to hang a nigger" and asked "where are you?"

Barshak rejected an argument from Stash's that it shouldn't be forced to pay for the worker's misdeeds because he kept answering - and texting - after the place was closed for the night and its employee manual specifically states workers should not answer the phone after closing. He wrote:

Those comments and message were made during a patron's attempt to speak to a manager about poor customer service. Interacting with a patron about customer service falls within the scope of employment duties.