Opinion ID: 6331804
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Perez’s performance during the plan period

Text: Perez also responds to Staples’s arguments that his deﬁcient performance under the associate success plan caused the company to ﬁre him. He disputes that he failed to improve his performance during the plan, as he believes he met each of the plan’s three requirements. But although we view the evidence in the light most favorable to Perez, he did not satisfy at least two of the three plan requirements. First, the district court correctly concluded that during the plan period Perez did not close a minimum of $75,000 in Salesforce.com wins per period. Coha reported that Perez closed $48,000 in wins in March, $75,000 in April, and $25,000 in May. In Exhibit 31, discussed earlier, Perez has recalculated those ﬁgures as $115,000 in March, $75,000 in April, and $90,000 in May. To reach the May number, Perez includes a $50,000 win for a sale to the Elk Grove Village post oﬃce. But the basis for claiming that win is not clear. Initially, Perez says he was not informed about the sales to the Elk Grove Village post oﬃce until discovery in this lawsuit commenced. Later, he oﬀered that his ﬁrst-time sale to that buyer “projected into a yearly opportunity pipeline of $50,000.00.” Perez thus eﬀectively concedes the district court properly declined to credit this as a $50,000 win. As a matter of law, then, Perez failed to meet the ﬁrst requirement. Second, on the plan’s requirement that Perez maintain $1,000,000 in his Salesforce.com pipeline, there is no genuine dispute that he fell well short of the mark. Perez contends Staples improperly adjusted his ﬁgures and failed to credit additional accounts toward his pipeline because of a retaliatory motive. But there was an insuﬃcient evidentiary record to 22 No. 21-2601 draw either of those inferences. Pipeline credits were properly denied where the opportunity was already won. Perez contends on appeal that by Staples’s criteria, his pipeline averaged $354,420. He claims that $350,000 was the pipeline amount required for an account manager—his position—rendering irrelevant the $1,000,000 requirement in the associate success plan that he signed. Perez’s novel argument is that his inadequate performance was a pretext for retaliation because Staples held him to a standard for a position he did not hold. But the undisputed evidence is that Perez agreed to the associate success plan, which had a $1,000,000 pipeline requirement, before the point at which his jury service could have become a consideration. Perez fell short of that expectation, even if all the accounts he claims were improperly excluded were included. On these facts, no reasonable juror could conclude that Perez’s poor performance under the associate success plan was a merely pretextual reason for his termination.