Ever since the near doorman strike back in April, I’ve taken more notice of doormen in the buildings I enter. The NYTimes article about doormen pointed out the haphazard ways that one can become a doorman(woman). I still wonder how one finds a job opening for a doorman position without word-of-mouth referral. I’ve never seen any advertisements for doorman jobs.

I became curious enough on the workings of the doorman world that I decided to ask José, a doorman whom I’ve known for 6 years now. He staffs a 31-floor residential building (that I don’t live in) 4 days week. I befriended him when he allowed me to park my car on the sidewalk of the building when I was moving some furniture. I usually chat with José about once a month, whenever I pass by campus. We usually speak about general world matters, and I was always impressed that José never failed to educate me in politics. Last week we chatted about medicine, and I became sidetracked (from asking him about doorman life) when I commented on his esotropia (ET).

It turns out (no pun intended) that José developed a squint when he about about one year old. He was living in Cuba (!) at the time. His mother had pushed the doctors to straighten his eyes every week for 3 years, without success. Apparently there was a huge deficiency in physicians in Cuba, and the waiting list was infinite. He finally had surgery after 3 years, only to have his ET regress after months. He waited in line for surgery for almost another year before being approved by the government. The day of his surgery, he found out that his ophthalmologist had fled to Spain by means of a fishing boat earlier that morning!

Several years later, José emigrated to Madrid with his mother and brother.  However, ophthalmologists in Madrid determined that it was too late for his amblyopia to improve with surgery, and he fell off the waiting list for surgery to straighten his eyes (non-emergent). He never got around to getting repeat surgery. The interesting part of his journey was that he decided to emigrate again, this time to the US.

“Unemployment is just too high in Spain,” remarked José, “I wanted to come to the U.S.”

Why did he become a doorman?

“I have one bad eye. It’s not safe to drive a cab.”

Too bad taxi drivers with half of José’s vision don’t have the insight to find a different job…

misc life