Ellis Cochrane
Many of us have a good working relationship with our managers at work, but could you ever imagine donating a kidney to them? Well, that’s what happened when a Long Island mum offered to donate their organ only for them to be fired two years later.
Mum-of-two Debbie Stevens first met her manager, Jackie Brucia, back in 2009 when she started working at Atlantic Automotive Group as an assistant. And even though she left the company in the summer of 2010 to move to Florida, she stopped in at her former workplace when visiting her daughter later that year.
It was then that she discovered that her former boss needed a kidney transplant.
Speaking to ABC News, Stevens admitted: “She said she had a possible donor, a friend or something. But I told her if anything happened that I'd be willing to donate my kidney.
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"She kind of jokingly replied, 'You never know, I may have to take you up on that one day.'”
A few months later she moved back to Long Island, which is when she asked Brucia if there might be any job openings. And within a few weeks Stevens was hired.
In January of 2011, her boss called her into her office to see if she would still be open to donating her kidney.
"I didn't want her to die," Stevens explained.
However, after a round of tests, it was revealed that Stevens was not the best match for her boss. Yet, her kidney could still go to someone in another state, with Brucia moving up the organ donor list.
This was just the beginning of Stevens’ ordeal.
During the surgery doctors hit a nerve in her leg, which caused her discomfort and issues with her digestion and upon returning to work four weeks later, the working atmosphere between the two women is reported to have changed quite considerably.
"I don't have words strong enough or large enough to describe her treatment of me," Stevens outlined. "Screaming at me about things I never did, carrying on to the point where she wouldn't even let me leave my desk. It was constant, constant screaming."
She lost out on overtime opportunities before being moved to another car dealership further from her home and give fewer responsibilities,.
Stevens exclaimed: “She just started treating me horribly, viciously, inhumanly after the surgery. It was almost like she hired me just to get my kidney."
Eventually being fired in 2012, with the company citing 'performance deficiencies', Stevens claims she wasn’t given any written warning or placed on a performance improvement plan.
Brucia's husband told the New York Post that Stevens' claims were 'far from the truth' and added: "She didn't fire anyone."
In the end, after Stevens' legal team filed a lawsuit against Atlantic Automotive Group, the case was settled confidentially with the company not admitting fault or that she was fired due to the complications that arose from donating her kidney.