Julius Booker had a pretty bad week at work last March after dealing with two tenants' deaths at the Battery Park City building complex for which he served as a doorman. This sort of thing might lead one feeling a little shattered, naturally, but instead of granting him some time off, his management company tried to assign him to a 16-hour shift. So, he quit, and now he's suing.
Booker, who worked at Liberty House at 377 Rector Place, says that on March 8th of last year, he was called to an elderly couple's apartment while subbing for someone's concierge shift. According to the lawsuit, he “assumed that the tenants needed something simple, or had something to give him, such as homemade cookies,” though sadly that was not the case. In fact, the male half of the couple was near death and sitting on the toilet "wearing only a T-shirt," his wife screaming nearby—Booker held the dying man's hand and comforted him, according to the suit.
As if that weren't traumatic enough, only six days later Booker got a call from the mother of 41-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student Sailor Tindall, voicing concern that her daughter, who lived in the building, wasn't answering her phone. Booker went to the woman's apartment to check on her and found that she was dead and "lying in a pool of blood" in bathroom, having apparently slashed her own wrists and neck.
Booker was understandably distraught, and according to court papers, he asked his bosses either to give him a few days off or to transfer him to another building. Instead, though, he was assigned to a 16-hour double shift, and he resigned instead.
Booker is suing for damages for "severe emotional distress." The management company, RY Management, has not responded to our request for comment.
