Britt Jones
A former computer salesman is suing his old company after his bladder issues got him fired.
It’s not every day you hear that someone’s need to pee is the cause of their dismissal, but that’s exactly what happened in this instance.
Richard Becker was a former computer executive at a top-notch tech company who had been working there since 2022.
The 66-year-old suffered from a debilitating disability, which meant that he was incontinent and needed to use the restroom several times within a short period of time.
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But it wasn’t his frequency which got him the boot - it was where he chose to go.
During a work meeting at a Times Square hotel, Becker explained in the court filing that he had to use the bathroom many times, but when it ended, he became ‘overwhelmed’ by his bladder needs and had no choice but to urinate in the lobby.
According to the lawsuit, which is asking for $1.5 million from Lenovo, he physically couldn’t hold it in for the 12 blocks it would have taken to get back to his room at the Westin New York.
So, he had to ‘discreetly urinate on the ground’ in the hotel’s ‘vestibule’ area where a higher-up saw and promptly told human resources.
Becker claims that the person tattled on him ‘out of spite and malice’, despite the company knowing that he had been suffering from the chronic medical condition since 2016 and was even seeing a urologist about it.
It was only four days later that Becker was booted without notice or severance pay, leading him to sue Lenovo for discriminating against him because of his disability.
According to court documents filed Friday August 23 in Manhattan Supreme Court: “With knowledge of Becker’s bladder condition (a disability under the law).
“Lenovo summarily terminated Becker because he suffers from that condition, following an incident that had no impact on Becker’s job performance or Lenovo’s business.”
In court documents, Becker claimed to have helped the company increase its business growth by 200 percent and was an award-winning Lenovo Global Account Sales Executive.
Becker said his company and co-workers were aware of the issue, and even went as far as to poke ‘fun at him for how frequently he needed to use the bathroom.’
At the hotel, Becker explained that he only made it ‘as far as the hotel vestibule’ which is ‘a deserted area located on a different floor from the lobby.’
It read: “At that point, embarrassed, panicked, and faced with an emergency, Becker had no choice but to discreetly urinate on the ground behind a column in the vestibule.”
However, an employee at the Westin told The Post that there isn’t an area known as ‘the vestibule’ and his only option of space with columns would be the first-floor entrance or the concierge desk on the second floor.
The worker also stated that there were lobby toilets available to use.
Becker’s final blow to the company was that he had seen ‘far worse conduct’, recalling a time employees who were drunk stuffed someone inside of a ‘toy vending machine’ in 2021.
UNILAD reached out to Lenovo for comment.