Pajama bottoms at issue in case of temp worker
By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer
A temp who quit her job as a legal secretary to go back to work at her original job, only to be dismissed because she showed up in “pajama bottoms,” apparently brought her entire legal office to a standstill Tuesday.
The law office of David Reeder — a bankruptcy lawyer in Century City — is a one-partner office. He appeared to bring the bulk of his staff, including his wife and a temp, with him to court.
Ruthie! — exactly her legal name — complained that Reeder got her to quit her job last December, luring her back to work, only to refuse to hire her because the replacement temp felt she showed up to work in “pajama bottoms.”
Ruthie! has 28 years under her belt as a legal secretary, lives in Marina Del Rey, and moved from Berkeley to pursue her dream of becoming a stand-up comic. Today, she is neither temp nor comic, the victim of a stagnant market overstocked with both. She claims she hasn’t had a job since Reeder dissed her in January.
She worked for Reeder until March of last year, when she asked for a raise from the $19 an hour she was making as a temp to the $25 she said she needed. Reeder, noting he had a contract with the temp agency that penalized him for hiring its temps directly, declined. Ruthie! then said she left and got a job at a law office a stone’s throw from her Marina Del Rey residence.
But last December, both she and Reeder agreed, he called her pleading for her to quit the job and return to his law office, offering her the $25 hourly she sought.
When Ruthie! showed up in late December, she found another temp, Regina Woods, filling in, so she agreed to let Woods work a couple of days and start later instead.
But Reeder, who was in Israel at the time, said he’d heard from his wife, who’d heard from Woods, that Ruthie! had shown up with an armful of office supplies looking “unkempt” and made disparaging remarks about how Reeder was chronically short of them.
Commissioner Kyman became skeptical of Reeder’s defense because the attorney based his refusal to take Ruthie! back on the say-so of his wife and a temp. Such say-so is known as “hearsay” in legal circles and doesn’t carry much water in court cases. Kyman also lectured Reeder that he lacked “standing” when he tried to impeach her credibility by bringing a temp recruiter in as a witness.
Ruthie! miffed the temp agency by appearing to quit another job at $19 an hour, then appearing on the payroll at $25. It’s a ruse commonly used by employers and employees to eliminate the temp agency’s markup. But when the recruiter was brought in as a character witness against her, he didn’t get very far under the scornful eye of Commissioner Kyman.
Kyman noted that the temp agency’s beef against Reeder and Ruthie! wasn’t the issue in the case. The move by Reeder to call the recruiter as a witness appeared to work against Reeder, although Kyman didn’t rule on the case Tuesday.
Ruthie! appeared in court Tuesday in a purple smock and print pants which could have been mistaken for pajama bottoms. She noted that the outfit was fine with her later employer and that when she returned in late December to Reeder’s office, others in nearby offices were excited to see her.
Her complaint asked for the $5,000 limit in small claims court in damages. She noted that her new employer was so “hurt” when she quit to return to Reeder that he wouldn’t even speak to her when she tried to return after Reeder’s rebuff.
The case isn’t over. Kyman must now rule on it, while the temp agency could sue Reeder, or Ruthie! or both.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 13, 2003. Read the original PDF.