7-Up vs. Coke, Part 2: From dot-com darling to disaster, the spectacular flameout of Andrew Gladney. Heir to a fortune, Andrew Gladney went from John Burroughs to Yale and came home to found Savvis Inc. Then he squandered it all.

Boss states that the general manager, Gregg Doyle, stood behind the bar "the whole time Mr. Gladney made these comments," and that after an hour, she escaped to the building's loading dock and burst into tears. When Doyle and Schmitz found her outside, she asserts, the former "excused Mr. Gladney's behavior by saying, 'He's on too much blow.'" She states that Schmitz apologized for Gladney's actions and Doyle tried to talk her out of quitting.

In interviews with Riverfront Times, Doyle and Schmitz tell a different version of the encounter. They say Boss was shaking so hard she couldn't articulate the problem, other than to suggest that Gladney had been rude. Schmitz says he summoned Gladney outside and the two got into a shouting match. The chef says Gladney denied acting inappropriately and suggested that Boss wanted to sleep with him. Whereupon, Schmitz says, he banned Gladney from the premises.

Adds Doyle: "I was unaware of drug use. If I'd observed anything like that, he would've been evicted even sooner."

Boss left work that night and never returned. Doyle says he tried unsuccessfully to call her for several weeks afterward in an attempt to get the full story.

In her discrimination charge, Morgan Hagedon echoes many of Boss' allegations. Hagedon notes that Gladney "often had a large crowd with him" and "would run up nightly tabs of $200 to $300." She states that if he found a female employee unattractive, "he would refer to her with derogatory terms, such as 'fat cow.'" The attractive employees, on the other hand, were invited to "party" with him.

Hagedon claims that Gladney proposed sexual threesomes and touched female employees inappropriately. She states that he drew pictures on napkins of the outfits he thought she should wear and wanted to take her shopping for "sexy clothes."

Hagedon also states that she related Gladney's "offensive" behavior to Schmitz and Doyle but that they "did not do anything to actually stop or change the situation."

The women both claim they were forced to quit because Gladney made them uncomfortable, and because they believed that Schmitz and Doyle would permit him to do whatever he wanted, rather than risk alienating a part-owner and high-paying customer.

"As far as I'm concerned, he did what Aimée said he did," Schmitz says today. "I have no reason to believe she lied. Out on the loading dock, it was clear she was frightened."

He adds that Gladney had crossed boundaries from the start. "I'd have to say, 'Get out of this kitchen, this is not your business!' or, 'Stop playing with this music! This is my music!'"

But he and Doyle both strenuously deny that they turned a blind eye to Gladney's alleged harassment. Prior to the January incident with Boss, Schmitz says, "Nobody told me anything."

Schmitz says he convened the female staff after Boss left to ask whether any other employees had had problems with Gladney. "They all said something generally, like he's exuberant and sometimes rude, but other than that, no problems.

"Morgan continued to work [after Boss quit], and never said a word," Schmitz adds. "Nothing ever happened to Morgan, I assure you."

The women's discrimination charges were forwarded to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which conducted its own investigation. In January of last year, Schmitz was informed that the agency had concluded Mosaic had violated the bartenders' civil rights, and in September the EEOC filed a civil lawsuit against Mosaic in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

Hagedon did not return several phone calls requesting comment for this article. Boss could not be reached. Felix Miller, the EEOC attorney handling the case, did not return repeated messages.

But, says Mary Anne Sedey, a plaintiffs' attorney who represents the women, "There are statements from independent witnesses corroborating two things: One, Mr. Doyle and Mr. Schmitz were around to observe Gladney's behavior, and two, other female employees observed him and experienced him behaving in the same way. At this famous meeting that Gregg and Claus called after Aimée quit, they put it on the staff: They said, 'You're not to fraternize with customers,' as if [the incident with Boss] was the staff's fault.

"Gladney was very conspicuous. He came in and behaved like a big shot, and they permitted him to do that," says Sedey, adding that the EEOC's advocacy in this case is worthy of note. "It is very rare that the EEOC brings one of these lawsuits, because they have limited resources, so they only do so when they feel there's a meritorious claim."

(According to EEOC statistics, the agency received 12,679 sexual harassment claims in fiscal year 2005, the year Boss and Hagedon reported their complaints. Of those, 50 percent were deemed meritless; only 8 percent — about 1,000 — were found to have reasonable cause. The Boss-Hagedon case is one of 87 sex-harassment lawsuits filed by the EEOC in 2007.)

Schmitz plans to fight the suit, which is slated for trial in March 2009. He says the government offered him a settlement of $75,000 a year ago, but he refused it. Last fall Schmitz rebuffed another olive branch, this time for $100,000, he says.