Giants fan: I was fired for tearing down a Tom Brady poster
This Big Apple football fan just discovered another reason to hate Tom Brady.
Solomon Chu, a 37-year-old Flushing, Queens, underwriter, was walking through the lobby of his Manhattan office last week when he saw a life-sized poster of the pretty-boy New England Patriots Super Bowl quarterback on the wall.
Thinking it was some Beantown prank, he, as any proud Jets or Giants fan would, ripped down the poster and tossed it in the trash.
“We live in New York — come on now, why would it be there?” he thought.
Little did he know, he had just fumbled away his career.
The next day he was hauled into the HR office of his company, National Debt Relief, and confronted about “destroying” Tom Brady.
Turns out the poster had been placed on the wall by none other than the head of HR herself, Joanne Murray, who happens to be a huge fan of the Patriots — and Brady.
“Did you think you were going to get away with this?” Murray asked, according to Chu, while confronting him with the damning surveillance video.
Chu immediately began to grovel.
He apologized over and over and explained that he thought he was just playing into a gag. He even ­offered to pay $50 to replace the Fathead-brand poster.
That night, he groveled some more, sending Murray this e-mail: “Again, I’m terribly sorry. I sincerely believed it was a prank and treated it as such. There was no intent to be malicious or underhanded . . . I’ve made an order to replace your property with expedited delivery.”
There was another meeting with HR, but Chu apparently did not handle it well, which “cemented” his fate, according to company officials heard on an audio recording that Chu presented to The Post.
On Wednesday, after four months on the job, the HR bosses pulled a Belichick and fired him.
“They . . . told me I was leaving due to the Tom Brady incident,” said Chu.
It might be the first time anyone has been sacked by a quarterback.
Employment lawyer — and Giants fan — Robert Ottinger said, “People get fired for dumb reasons like this all the time, but I’ve never heard of anybody getting fired over a Tom Brady poster — it’s ­unprecedented.”
Unfortunately, he said, when it comes to being terminated by an employer, “You don’t have protected First Amendment rights when it comes to disparaging Tom Brady.”
Murray did not return repeated messages seeking comment, and an HR rep at National Debt Relief declined to comment.
Chu said he feels “wronged.” He said he was a good employee, and showed The Post a Jan. 26 pay stub that included a performance bonus. He claimed he had a perfect score on his customer-service calls.
He had simply failed to read the Brady blitz.
“Patriots fans are crazy,” he said. “Boston fans are known for their fanaticism, but this lady took it too far out of Boston.”
Chu, a Giants fan, said he’ll be rooting for quarterback Nick Foles and the ­Eagles on Sunday.