John Faldetta runs a tight ship in his diverse Midtown building.
What’s it like when your building staff is from all over the world? You take lessons from the U.N.
The St. James Tower, a 106-unit condominium seven blocks from the United Nations, is a bit of a mini-U.N. itself. “There’s really a diverse group of international people living in the building,” says John Faldetta, the 31-story property’s resident manager for the last 30 years.
“My staff, too, is very diverse. I think we only have a handful of Americans.” For instance, the receiving clerk is a Christian Iraqi who speaks perfect Arabic, and a couple of the porters are from Guyana. “They were actually farmers back home, and here they service our landscaping,” explains Faldetta.
“We’ve had some issues with cultures in the past,” he adds, “and if someone doesn’t like what someone else is doing – or someone’s not doing something – it’s got to come out then and there. So you have to nip that in the bud. I find that when you have diversity, they learn to respect each other. You lose that, and you lose everything.”