I'm 22. My birthday was actually two days ago. I grew up in uptown Manhattan. Yeah, so I grew up there pretty much my whole life. All 22 years I’ve lived there.
In this building? Well, I was working on 18th Street initially, and I knew I liked being a doorman. I just didn't like the area I was working in. So, I got to thinking to myself, like, all right, where would I want to work as a doorman? And I thought either Midtown East or Midtown West. So, one day, I literally just printed out like 50 copies of my resume, and I went around. I only got a call back from here.
And would you say it was a quick turnaround between when you handed out the resumes and your first day?
The turnaround wasn't quick because I actually did it on a Thursday, so you know it took a couple of business days to get back to me. So, I think the fastest turnaround was probably Monday. It was on Central Park East, but they weren't, they weren't… Ok, one, they didn't have doorman positions, and two, they weren't paying as much, and the schedule just wasn't working out for me in that first place in Central Park East.
April. Since April 23rd [of 2023].
In terms of my routine? I'll come in and get changed. I come to relieve my co-worker because he starts at seven or eight. By the time I come upstairs, it’s already around 2:50. I give him 10 minutes between 3 and 2:50, so he can have 10 minutes to change. I check the mail to see if there's anything that I have to give out later, such as packages or deliveries. I check all the memos to see if there's anything left behind by my co-worker, just in case there’s anything left or they're expecting a special guest or special mail, you know, anything like that. And basically, I just check in with everything that's going on around the building while I've been gone, and that's pretty much it. After that, whenever a delivery comes in, you know, I send it up to the tenant. Whenever there's a package, I let the tenant know, “Hey, how you doing today? I’ve got this package. Would you like me to send it? No, you want to later? Ok. Oh, you want it now? Sending it up right now.” I mean, that’s pretty much it, man. That’s the day in the life of a doorman, at least in this building.
I kind of like Mondays because I start early and leave early. I used to work overnight, so I really prefer to stay away from anything remotely close to the nighttime in terms of a shift. But you know, sometimes you don't really have a choice.
Like managing packages or deliveries? I would say the busiest time of the day is usually the morning. You have people coming in and out, out and in—they’re going to work. But, yeah, the busiest time is definitely the morning because you’ll have people leaving for work. Some people work overnight, so you have quite a few people coming in from work, some people order breakfast, and some people have guests come early in the morning. You'd be surprised. Pretty much everything happens. You get the majority of the packages here. They're here early in the morning, anywhere between 7 and 11. Anything after that is pretty much a taboo. Amazon, they'll come in the afternoon sometimes, but a lot of times, they'll be here by 12 pm. Yeah, that's the busiest time of the day, and it's definitely the morning around here.
The busy part of the day (chuckle). It just makes the day go faster. You know, here, t's not a team job. You know, you're just sitting down; you're opening the door. You're greeting people, you're sending the packages, their food deliveries, stuff like that. So, you know, when you have a lot going on, it makes the time pass by much faster than, you know, you just sitting there and staring into space. So, no, that basic part of the day is the best part of the day, you know. You have USPS coming in, UPS, delivery here, delivery there. Some apartments, you know, will have a couch order coming in, so I have to get the service entrance ready for them and make sure everything's up to par. I clean. I clean the sidewalk. Usually, I have a daily clean. I just got in, but in a few minutes, I'll definitely clean the sidewalk. I like to keep everything neat when people come. I want them to think, you know, in this building, they have nice upkeep, they have people who care about the way that everything looks around here. I like to make sure that everybody sees that, you know?
Yeah, when there’s no activity, yeah.
It usually comes in waves. So, if UPS, Amazon, and all the other delivery companies come in in the morning, and USPS hasn't gotten here by two, then that means that they're gonna get here by around five or six. So, and that's when, you know, as a doorman, you're sorting the mail. You're logging in packages; you're putting everything in order. I would literally like to have all the packages from the lowest to the highest in terms of requirements. So, 2B will be all the way to the left and then going all the way up to 16. So, I do all of that sorting. I sort the mail. Just, you know, just to keep myself busy. Then, after that, I'll hand out the mail. So, I'll have to call the porter up to watch the door for me. And then I’ll go ahead and distribute the mail from floor to floor. But yeah, mainly in waves. I would say that, as a doorman, it's not an even distribution.
It's packages and food deliveries. If a tenant has any sort of request, like, maybe the super won't be on-site because he went to the hardware store, and a tenant is going to go ahead and report a leak in their apartment, like a water leak. Yeah. Then, the next person that the super is going to call is me. You know, he's going to tell me, hey, Justin, so and so’s apartment has a leak. Can you go up and check for me when you get there? You know, FaceTime me so I can see everything that's going on or take pictures. And then we don't leave the door alone here, so I'll call the porter and let him know, “Hey, just watch the door. I have to go do something for the super.” And I'll go do what I have to do. Besides that, everything is pretty much the same. Either you're doing nothing, or you have something on your hands.
Oh, the holidays are hectic. It's a package every three seconds, every three seconds, especially where I was working before. But I haven't done a holiday here, so I don't know. I've been told that they get a lot of packages, but in the last building that I worked in, there were over 150 tenants, so you can only imagine how much. Well, yeah, here there are only 49 apartments. Compared to where I was working out before, floors 3 through 14 had apartments A through G. And then everything after that, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 had a penthouse. The penthouse was one apartment—15 through 19 has A and B, so I can’t even do the math on those apartments. And some of those apartments have multiple roommates. Some of them have just the right number of people in the apartment, either two or three, and some of them have four because, you know, each roommate can have a partner, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever. So, over here, I want to say that it would end up being much slower, but where I was working on the floor, it was definitely not.
I'm used to it at this point. I've been a doorman since I was 19 years old. Now, I’m 22, so yeah, three years. At first, like your first Christmas, it definitely can feel overwhelming, but Christmas is always the hardest part. It’s always the hardest part because you have so much happening on that one. A ton of mail, you know, family sending each other letters, a ton of packages from family, you order gifts, it's a variety of different things. That's what Christmas is about. And that's not everything.
Customer service. A lot of the time, if a tenant is angry about something, a lot of people nowadays don't know how to disconnect their emotions from the job, and they get a little emotional and upset back at the customer because, you know, it's not like a fast food restaurant. They're not complaining about the food; they're not complaining about a drink. They're complaining about, you know, services that they pay for. They pay thousands of dollars for it. In the city right now, a studio is $2,400. So, if something's not up to par and I'm paying for service, then I would be pretty pissed off too. So that's what I mean. I just know how to deal with tenants. I've also done multiple facets of customer service. I've worked in fast food. I've worked in the catering business. I've done waiter, cashier, server, and food prep. I've done everything. So, definitely customer service. Whenever a tenant is upset, you definitely want to comfort them. Hey, Mr. X, I understand you're upset about so and so. I understand that you pay rent here, or you pay a mortgage, whatever the case is, whether they're here to own or buy. I just want you to know that I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure that everything is set right and I'll keep you in the loop. Or I'll even directly have you speak to the super or whatever the case may be. You know, you always wanna make sure that everybody's happy. Then, at the end of the day, these people are gonna look out for you, the super's gonna look out for you, you have to look out for them too, you know what I mean? These jobs are a lot bigger than just jobs. A lot of the time, you become a second family to these people. You know what I mean? These aren't buildings that people stay in for only two to five years. Like a lot of these people stay 20, 30 years. Like my co-worker, he's been here for 22 years. This job, specifically, is a job where people get to know you for a really long time. You know what I mean?
Realistically, my list of priorities would have to be requests from the super and the tenant, and then other smaller tasks come after that. Those are the only two ways, well, only three ways to categorize everything, but super and tenant, depending on how urgent it is, is the one I do first. So, if the super wants me to go downstairs to check something out, it could be like a gas leak or a water leak or a flood or something like that, and a tenant is telling me that their mirror just broke in their apartment or something like that. I have to go to the gas leak. There are way bigger problems than a mirror being broken. But if it's vice versa, like, “Oh, the mirror downstairs is broken, and the porters are on break, Justin, can you go sweep it?” “Oh, I think I have a gas leak in my apartment.” I go to the apartment. Yeah, it's mainly what seems more urgent at the time. If it may be life or death or, you know, if it's a special request because the tenant may be disabled, they can't walk, or they can barely walk. You just have to have a certain amount of experience, I feel, in the business for you to understand what comes before what. If you had spoken to me about this three years ago, I would not have been able to answer a simple question, to be honest.
This one, like you, said frequency. There are definitely some guests that are a lot more frequent than others. A lot of the time, tenants tell me, “You don't even have to tell me that he's coming. Just let him up.” You know, sometimes it can be a cousin, brother, mother, a friend. I'm just not allowed to not announce friends, you know, that's just a building policy. So, I have to make sure that friends sign in, and I have to make sure that I call up, “Hey, your visitors is on his or her way.” Now we have, I want to say, a handful of Jewish tenants here, so when it's Shabbat or Sabbath, they're not really allowed to use electricity or write or anything because they're not supposed to do anything work or creativity related. So, I'll just send them up if they need help. If they want to take the elevator, then I'll press the button for them. If they want to take the steps and you know that's up to them, but I have to give them that courtesy, “Hey, do you want me to help with the elevator?” If not, you let them go on their way. But yeah, there are definitely some tenants that, I mean some guys that I do announce to the tenants more than I would others because, like I said, frequency, and I understand that they probably just have some sort of arrangement set up where it's like alright you just come to my house. But for that, the follow-up question is, how do I know? I just communicate a lot with my tenants as well. You know, I like to know not everything, but I like to stay in the loop with anything that has to coincide with our policy.
The only thing that will stress you out is not having anything to do with this job. When you have experience, the job can be stressful at first. You know, you have a lot of tenants, you have a lot of packages, like the question prior. You don't know what to prioritize first. You don't know what comes last. You don't know if you have to go to that request for the tenant first or if you have to log these packages first. It's just, at first, stressful, but once you know what you're doing, it's just another day. You know, it's like walking.
At least ten a day on average. But on holiday weekends, there’s less because a lot of people are away on vacation. This weekend, quite a few tenants are away for vacation, so you can expect fewer packages, you can expect fewer deliveries. But I want to say even then, it's still somewhere around 10.
Yep, usually around morning, a lot of deliveries. Sometimes after 3-4 too, so mail, packages, all of that, is in the morning, but in the afternoon and evening, there’s a higher volume of food deliveries.
I see them morning or night only once because I'm a person who you won’t see once I’m off the shift. The porter, me and him, he relieves me for my noon break, so that’s one guaranteed time of day. Then, we have to clean the lobby every single day. We’re gonna have to spend at least an hour and a half after these guys (workers renovating the lobby) leave, so that's twice. I wanna say, on average, at least five times between me and the porter, between me and the morning door, man is going to be once.
Between me and my co-workers? I would say a few minutes a day. We tend to keep ourselves busy.
For example, in a day, I would say a few hours in total with the tenants.
A ballpark? After the morning time, the tenants leave anywhere between 8–11 am. And then, they’ll come back in the evening around anywhere between 5 and 7, some of them later. But yeah, I want to say I'll see some more people in the afternoon because some people even leave for work. The outliers are before 8 and after 11, but the average is between those times in the morning when people are leaving for work. And like I said, the outliers for people coming back from work are before five and after seven. But I would definitely say I have to speak to more people after they come back home from it.
In the building or out of the building? In.
I wasn’t working here when COVID happened. I was working in a different place, but I don't want to say it was at really that low of a volume. It just wasn't. It was just a little bit of a lot, I want to say. The volume is in terms of the volume and frequency of packages. I will say that the time from which different companies deliver was way more widespread. LaserShip is usually coming later on in the evenings and the nighttime. USPS, religiously coming later on, anywhere between 12–2 pm. And you know, it was a little bit of a lot. UPS, Amazon, CDL, DHL. Usually, an hour apart, anywhere between three to five.
Um, maybe just people with masks. It's pretty much just masks. I wouldn't say anything besides that because, you know, there are some people who are hyper-risk and are still very, very susceptible to contracting COVID. So, they make sure to stay extra careful. You'll see some tenants around here with masks and anything like that. I think that's the only thing that's sticking around a lot.
Hmm. I wouldn't be able to speak here because, again, during that time, I was working in a different place, and there were just a lot of tenants in the building. You just wouldn't see them coming in with guests. You wouldn't see people invite over as many guests. You would see families of four or five actually coming in in split groups of two and three or three and three if their family of six. I see the older people get home later from work, and then the kids get home from school. But also, I wouldn't say that there was less. It was just more widespread for most of them because people were just trying to slow down the rate at which people were contracting COVID.
If anything, tenants actually gained a lot more relationships with other tenants. I feel like a lot of the times, other people were just trying to stay home. Where I was working before, there was a rooftop patio, so the tenants would run into each other. I feel like a lot of them, who usually wouldn't have spoken to each other, got to know each other a lot better. Um, and yeah, I feel like COVID actually did a good thing for inter-tenant relationships.
Yeah, because COVID or not, they were gonna see me no matter what. When I came upstairs with a package or delivery, or if they had any questions for me before they went to the super, they were coming to me. Nothing really changed.
