Former LI Postal Worker Sues USPS, Claiming Supervisors Harassed Her

BETHPAGE, NY — A woman who used to work as a mail clerk at the Postal Service facility in Bethpage has filed a lawsuit against the USPS, claiming she was discriminated against, sexually harassed and retaliated against.

The woman, Felicia Bartlett, who lives in Far Rockaway, suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from an incident late at night close to home, when a man tried to grab her and chased after her.

Her lawyers claim that the USPS switched her from the day to the night shift, ignoring her pleas that working at night triggered her PTSD. Her lawyers say she was told to "learn to defend herself or resign."

“Ms. Bartlett has shown an extraordinary amount of courage in coming forward,” said Hilary
Orzick, an associate at Crumiller P.C. who represents Bartlett. “USPS completely disregarded her rights as a person with a disability and failed to take any meaningful action when it received her complaints of sexual harassment by multiple supervisors. We look forward to aggressively litigating on Ms. Bartlett’s behalf and holding USPS accountable for the harm she suffered while working there.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Bartlett was continually sexually harassed by male supervisors, who openly made bets about who would have sex with her and the other "new b*tches" first.

Between the sexual harassment and her PTSD being triggered each night by her commute home, Bartlett developed such severe anxiety that she began having fainting spells, including one instance when she fainted at work as she saw one of her alleged harassers approaching her, according to the lawsuit. Bartlett’s doctor told her that her symptoms were being caused by work-related stress, and that her mental and physical health would continue to deteriorate, with potentially permanent effects on her heart, if she could not find a way to improve her situation.

The lawsuit claims that Bartlett reported the sexual harassment and the disregard of her PTSD to a manager, but the Postal Service refused to do anything. Bartlett says she was forced to resign her job to protect her health. Bartlett worked for the USPS from Nov. 2020 to April 2021.