A Central Park maintenance worker who got canned for snoozing on the job insists his cat naps were caused by a legit sleep apnea disorder, according to a new lawsuit.
Gregory Holder, 60, is suing the Central Park Conservancy for damages — alleging he was axed from a longtime position he loved last year due to “daytime drowsiness” from the recognized disability.
“[Holder] was stunned to be terminated after eight years of exemplary service and four promotions,” according to the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“The termination letter claimed that [he] had taken breaks and slept at work over the past year, giving this disability-related reason the most weight and attention.”
But Holder insists his bosses are the ones asleep at the wheel— because they never met with him to discuss the condition after he gave them a doctor’s note about it.
He said he handed over the note about the disability— in which breathing repeatedly stops during sleep, often causing chronic fatigue — six months before he was fired for “sleeping on the job,” according to the lawsuit.
Despite higher-ups’ claims that he turned park cleaning into a snoozefest, Holder told The Post he’s no Rip Van Winkle.
“If I’m sitting down for too long,” he said, “I may close my eyes for a few seconds,” adding that it wasn’t anything close to napping on the job.
“[It’s] nothing real crazy,” he said of the condition.
His lawyer, Chiamaka Echebiri, said that once the Conservancy’s human resources department got Holder’s doctor’s note in early 2025, they should have met with him to work out reasonable accommodations — like shifting his hours slightly to later in the day when his sleep apnea wasn’t affecting him.
“When the employer knows that this person is disabled, then the ball is in their court,” said Echebiri. “They have to identify accommodations that will enable that employee to continue performing their work despite their disability.”
Instead, Holder was fired in August 2025 without warning, the lawsuit states.
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“I was shocked,” Holder, a lifelong New Yorker with five grandkids, said. “I loved my job. I loved working in the park. It was like a second home.
“I honestly had intentions of being with Central Park for at least 12 more years.”
The Central Park Conservancy, a private non-profit that maintains the green space, declined to comment.
Holder said he first started doing park maintenance years ago through The Doe Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park.
He loved the work, and turned it into a career, climbing the ladder in his eight years in Central Park from maintenance worker to supervisor, where he made roughly $110,000 a year and managed a team of 25 workers.
Holder says he adored learning about the park and keeping it clean for everyone to enjoy.
“The way I was looking at it,” Holder said, “I was doing God’s work.”
But he began getting sleepy during the day in late 2024, according to his lawsuit, and a director at work recognized the symptoms of sleep apnea — because he once had it himself.
Holder’s doctor diagnosed him with sleep apnea in January 2025, noting that his condition results in “daytime drowsiness,” according to the letter filed in court.
He handed in the note to his manager, and everything seemed fine — until he received a letter six months later telling him he was being immediately fired for “sleeping on the job.”
The missive claimed Holder had missed a meeting and taken too long of a break two days earlier, and cited “a series of patterns,” adding that he had been given numerous warnings and meetings about his behavior, according to the suit.
Holder said he was “shocked,” and that nobody had raised any issues with him in the months after he notified the Conservancy of his sleep apnea.
“It just happened so abruptly,” he said. “I didn’t think that was the procedure… I didn’t even get an opportunity to explain.”
Holder’s lawsuit seeks lost wages, as well as damages for emotional distress, humiliation and injury to professional reputation.
Since his diagnosis, Holder has lost 80 pounds and says his breathing is “much better.”
“The funny thing is, I feel great. I feel energized, but I’m not working,” he said. “I need to get back to work.”
— Additional reporting by Kyle Schnitzer
