It Was a Day at the Beach . . . Almost

Four-day weekend, eh? Not so fast.

As the sun sizzled Friday, thousands of Southern Californians spent hours lounging--not on the beach, but in near-empty, air-conditioned offices.

Sure, they wore casual clothes. Sure, they took long lunches. Sure, some of them earned overtime cash for little more than cleaning off their desks or updating files.

But after all, they had to work. Well, sort of.

“This is a wonderful day to work. Nobody’s here to bother you--you can actually get something done,” said Stephanie Bradfield, an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (who spent the day--actually the whole week--on vacation in Idaho). “I’m catching up. I’m planning ahead. And I’m leaving early.”

Freeways heading downtown were blissfully empty during the morning rush hour, and the lines at Starbucks were short--just a few folks getting iced lattes, rather than the usual crush of coffee-mug-toting commuters.

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Most schools, even those on year-round schedules, were closed. Many courtrooms remained dark. The Los Angeles City Council canceled its meeting. The stock market had a half-day.

Studio executives, corporate CEOs and high-powered attorneys also seemed in short supply--except on the links.

“There’s been more of a trend in recent years for employers to give a couple of floating holidays, and days like today and the day after Thanksgiving, you get a skeleton crew,” said Al Paisner, interim commissioner for the western region of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose office was staffed at about one-third capacity Friday. Many businesses close because, Paisner said, “It’s not worth it.”

Paisner had no statistics on how many employers offer July 5 as a paid day off, or how many workers take the day as vacation. It was a tough question to track Friday: Nobody answered the phone at the U.S. Department of Labor’s main number, or at the national headquarters of the AFL-CIO.

But the anecdotal evidence was clear: There wasn’t much to do, so few people showed up to do it.

Roy Dercola had his sneakers firmly planted on a desk at Video Monitoring Service in Hollywood as he pocketed $23.50 an hour, double his normal $11.75. VMS, which provides tapes and transcripts of radio and television programs, was officially closed, so there were no orders to fill, no bosses to please. But someone had to be around to change the tapes every hour, and Dercola was glad to oblige.

“I have 16 [TV] screens in front of me. I have my choice of what I want to watch,” he said. “I’m all by myself. The lights are off. I get double time. That’s not too bad at all.”

At the Trillium office towers in Woodland Hills, most of the foot traffic was bound for the L.A. Fitness Center. Even those heading for work looked more ready for play in their T-shirts and jeans.

On a cigarette break near the center’s tennis court, art director Indra Ghosh, 32, chose to skip the four-day weekend so he could stack up days for an August vacation, and reveled in the fact that the phone stayed quiet and he could “take extra-long breaks.”

Ernesto Leon of Burbank, whose crew was sandpapering and painting a tennis court railing in the office center, said he never takes holidays off.

He worked the Fourth and Fifth of July. His only recent time off was to return to his native Mexico for a family emergency.

“It’s kind of lonely here today, but the parking was great and the roads were nice and clear so I got here easily,” said Pat Contreras, 36, a health care worker, as she sat around the office center’s tennis court. “If my husband was home, I would have felt really bad.”

No problem for 28-year-old Dave Landress, a computer technician who proffered his phone number in hopes of snagging a date. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said, “so I came into work.”

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For others, there was no choice.

Cabdrivers Chatee Leetanarung and Samie Abdul Mehrzai slumped in their seats on Hope Street, flipping through magazines. Leetanarung had one fare--to the Commerce casino--in six hours. Mehrzai had two in five.

“Today’s dead. Nothing’s happening,” Mehrzai said. “It’s terrible.”

Same story at other business-support services: UPS on Hope Street had zero packages dropped off by 1:30 p.m. None. Legal Source Inc., a documents processor, seemed more like a library. At Bright Horizons, a downtown day-care center, only 34 of the 85 children showed up.

Inside the Wells Fargo building, suits were scarce. But three guys in ties were dutifully heading back to their desks at Tokai bank after lunch at Kachina grill, ignoring the tourists relaxing on the patio as they passed.

“Banks can’t close four days in a row,” said Tom Aita.

Asked why the trio was working Friday, the responses came quickly and without sarcasm:

“Because we want to get paid,” said Bob Bartlett, the bank’s head of commercial credit.

“Two kids in college,” added his friend, Bruce King.

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In fact, Friday was a surprisingly busy day in the financial world, as the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 114 points.

Martin Krull, a vice president at Merrill Lynch, said that despite the day’s drama, he fielded only four financial transactions--a pittance compared with his typical day’s haul of 50.

“I’ll get a lot of calls over the weekend when people find out what’s happened,” Krull said.

“But the smartest thing to do is go to the beach. There’s nothing they can do at this point, so why worry?”

Some Wall Street-watchers at least went on holiday with their wardrobes. At Oaktree Capital Management, casual Friday usually means khakis and button-down shirts. The Fifth of July, however, was about jeans and jerseys.

“In the money business, there’s always something to do,” Vince Sedula said when asked why he bothered coming into the office. “I’m a workaholic.”