Apple must face a lawsuit lodged by Industrial Janitorial Service which accuses Apple of canceling a contract with a janitorial service because the owner is a woman.
In a tentative ruling Wednesday in California state court in San Jose, Judge Cynthia Lie ruled that the conduct alleged in the lawsuit — which includes an Apple manager referring to the service’s female owner as a “typical woman in business” who “thinks she is assertive, but she’s just pushy” — was enough to allow the case to proceed to trial.
The problems started in mid-2013 when Apple managers discovered that the service was selling some of its unpaid invoices — according to the lawsuit Apple was typically three to four months late in paying its bills — to a third-party broker.
The managers asked the owner, Darla Drendel, to come to Apple headquarters for a meeting and when she arrived were “rude and dismissive,” the cleaning service said. A few months later, an Apple manager made the comment about her being “pushy” in a phone call with her husband, according to the complaint.
In 2017, after Drendel notified Apple of $1.5 millions in unpaid invoices, the tech giant terminated the contract, according to the cleaning service.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like the contract was terminated because the owner was a “rude, dismissive, and pushy” person, not because she was a woman. She just happens to be a woman and, if she were a man who were “rude, dismissive, and pushy” Apple likely would have moved on to another janitorial service that was easier to work with as well. It’s not smart business to be “rude, dismissive, and pushy” with anyone, but especially with those with whom you’ve been contracted to do a job.