Opinion ID: 201705
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ingram's Employment from September 1998 through December 2000

Text: 10 Ingram took her first position at Brink's in September 1998 as Chief Office Employee of its Lawrence, Massachusetts branch at an hourly wage of $11.50. The job was largely administrative and clerical. By November 1998, according to the branch manager, Ingram had become a great asset to the Lawrence branch, and was reclassified from an hourly employee to a salaried employee earning $28,000 per year. Her new job title was branch supervisor, a rare, non-managerial position with flexible duties depending on the needs of the individual branch. 1 11 At the time that Ingram was hired, the Lawrence branch had no assistant branch manager. In December 1998, two months after she began working at Brink's, the assistant manager position was posted. Ingram applied, although she conceded in her application that a co-worker deserved the promotion because of his longer tenure with the company. Neither was hired; the assistant branch manager position was not filled, and the company stopped recruiting applicants until 2000 when the vacancy was posted again. 12 In March 1999 Ingram became pregnant. She claims no adverse employment consequence attributable to her pregnancy except for a dispute about the painting of the Lawrence branch. 2 While on maternity leave, in January 2000, the assistant branch manager position in Lawrence was posted once again. For the first time, the posting stated that the assistant branch manager will be required to learn every run and make recommendations for route restructuring. And it included a new requirement for on-call availability seven days per week, which Ingram, as a new mother, found to be virtually impossible. She nevertheless expressed an interest in the position to David Weinstock, the Lawrence branch manager at the time. He responded that she needed more armored experience. 13 While it is true that Ingram had never worked in the armored vehicle industry before her employment with Brink's, and had no experience working on the armored trucks even within Brink's, Weinstock had never before mentioned the need for her to gain armored experience. Indeed, notwithstanding this supposed deficiency, Weinstock rated her as outstanding in seventeen out of twenty categories on her February 2000 performance review. And in the section assessing areas in which Ingram needed to improve, Weinstock made no mention of the need for armored experience. In any event, when Ingram returned from maternity leave in March 2000 she set out to obtain armored experience by accompanying drivers and messengers on runs. 14 On April 15, 2000, Brink's appointed Jeffrey Hosfeld to the assistant branch manager position that had then been vacant for over two years. Hosfeld was a former corrections officer and had previously served as a Brink's branch supervisor in another branch, the same title that Ingram had, where he earned $4,000 more per year than Ingram despite what Ingram describes as comparable experience and job responsibilities. 3 In support of her challenge to Hosfeld being promoted instead of her, Ingram also claims — contradicting herself — that Hosfeld had no experience in the administrative side of business operations prior to his appointment as assistant branch manager. In any case, Hosfeld apparently had extensive experience in the field working on armored trucks, as required by the assistant branch manager job posting. 4 15 In May 2000, Weinstock was promoted to regional management, leaving the Lawrence branch without a branch manager. Brink's posted the branch manager position, specifying that it required a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. Ingram expressed an interest in the position. Weinstock recommended her to his supervisor, Thomas Szczepanski. Szczepanski disagreed and chose a male, Mark Albright, on the ground that Albright was more qualified because he had a bachelor's degree and Ingram did not. However, Szczepanski offered Ingram a branch manager position at a smaller branch in Rochester, New York, although he acknowledged that she probably was not interested in moving in light of her recent maternity. Ingram did not pursue the Rochester position. In June 2000, Albright was appointed to the branch manager position, replacing Weinstock. 16 In September 2000, Ingram was promoted to the position of Operations Manager. Her salary was raised to $37,000 per year from $28,000 per year. 5 17 Shortly thereafter Albright left the Lawrence branch manager position and the vacancy was posted yet again. Ingram again expressed an interest. 6 In early-October 2000, Szczepanski appointed Tim Messner, the Syracuse branch manager, as interim manager of the Lawrence branch while a more thorough search for a permanent branch manager could be conducted. As interim branch manager, Messner split his time between the Syracuse and Lawrence branches. 18