Being the mayor of a major metropolitan city with 8 million people, a crumbling subway system, and the Times Square Olive Garden sounds exhausting. So one could almost forgive Mayor Bill de Blasio for needing to catch up on some shut-eye once in a while. But naps are reportedly a regular feature of the side-burned mayor’s schedule, according the New York Post.
Sources told the paper, “Mayor de Blasio’s daily exercise routine at a Brooklyn gym often leaves him too tuckered out to stay awake at City Hall, where he catches up on his shut-eye by crashing on a couch in his office.”
One ex-staffer reportedly said that the mayor would arrive at the office at the leisurely hour of 10 a.m., before promptly boarding the midday express train to Snoozeville.
“He would tell his front-office staff: ‘Don’t bother me for the next 30, 45 minutes. I’m going to take a nap.”
Another frustrated source claimed the mayor’s sleep schedule interfered with the office’s work.
“We couldn’t plan our days that first year at City Hall. Regardless of what you think of [previous Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, that guy was professional. Now, we’ve got this incompetence.”
Part of de Blasio’s exhaustion seems to be a result of the fact that he allegedly insists on working out at the Park Slope YMCA, a full 12 miles from Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side.
Although these sources sound like disgruntled former employees, Mayor de Blasio’s lax approach to “time” and “being conscious” has landed him in trouble before. In November 2014, he was 20 minutes late for a memorial ceremony for the 265 victims who died on American Airlines Flight 587, and blamed a “late night” and “sluggishness” for his delayed arrival. He was even reportedly late to his own wedding to Chirlane McCray in 1994, though it’s unclear if it was the result of an ill-timed nap.