Court Opinion

ID: 9471798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:41:26.242073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:35.076002
License: Public Domain

SCALIA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
When disagreement with the majority of the court ultimately pertains to the probative value of the evidence unique to the particular case, a lengthy dissent is seldom worth writing or reading. I think otherwise here for two reasons. First, because the majority’s analysis of the evidence involves a basic error of law — that evidence of differential treatment constitutes evidence of racial motivation for differential treatment. And second, because analyzed under correct legal principles the evidence is so utterly deficient that the message which the majority’s holding conveys to our District Court is that all § 1981 cases must go to the jury.
The plaintiff here had to establish two elements in order to make out a violation of § 1981: (1) that she had been discriminated against — that is, treated differently from others who were, for the relevant purposes, similarly situated; and (2) that the reason for that discrimination was her race. I address each of these elements successively below. As to each, it should be borne in mind that the universe of conclusions theoretically deducible from the evidence is not merely (a) the element was present (differential treatment occurred, or racial motivation existed); and (b) the element was absent (no differential treatment occurred, or no racial motivation existed); but also — and most important to the defendant — (c) it’s really impossible to tell. If either (b) or (c) was the only reasonable conclusion that could have been reached here, a directed verdict or judgment n.o.v. should have been granted. In my view, that was clearly the case. No reasonable person could have concluded that either differential treatment or racial motivation was established, and the case should therefore have been withdrawn from the jury.
I. Discriminatory Treatment
Demonstration of disparate treatment is usually made in the context of a large business, where many individuals perform essentially the same job. There it is easy to make a preliminary identification of “similarly situated” employees — for example, stenographers — and hence to find significance in the fact that the salary, promotion and perquisite treatment of a particular stenographer has been “different.” It would be absurd, of course, to extend this approach to the entire personnel of the business, finding significance even in the fact that the stenographer is not compensated at the level of the company president. *1240But, except for the fact that the plaintiff here was a samples librarian rather than a stenographer, that is quite literally what the majority opinion does. It deems worthy of note, for example, that “[ajppellee’s starting salary of $7500 was markedly less than the salary of any other then-employed Duncan-Huggins worker,” Maj. op. at 1229 —despite the fact that the only other then-employed Duncan-Huggins workers numbered precisely three, one of whom was the company’s president and the other two personnel who (1) performed an entirely different job from Carter’s, (2) had been with the company for several years before Carter’s arrival, and (3) had supervisory authority over Carter. The plaintiff herself understood the relevance of such factors; when asked why she supposed she was assigned the job of samples librarian she said it was a function of her being the “new employee.” Tr. at 124.
The reality is that in this tiny business, which at no time during plaintiff’s employment had a work force of more than six, including its president, few if any of the employees were self-evidently “similarly situated.” The record is replete with references to the differing specialized skills of various personnel, and to the need for filling a particular sort of “slot” when one or another of them departed. E.g., id. at 81, 85, 89-90. Carter above all was evidently not similarly situated to anyone else. From the time she began work she spent, according to her own estimate, “about 90 — about 100 percent” of her time, id. at 189, performing a job (samples librarian) that no other employee performed and that evidently required the least degree of skill.1 One might reasonably find significance in the fact that the attributes of Carter’s employment did not match those of her successor as samples librarian (which, however, they did); but that they failed to match those of all the other employees of the company, up to and including its president, Suzanne Perez, is meaningless. The majority’s response to this — that unless small employers can be convicted of racial discrimination for compensating people with different jobs differently they will escape the lash of § 1981, Maj. op. at 1233-1234 — is nothing short of Orwellian.
Accepting, however, the irrational premise that Carter is to be compared with everyone else in the company, I proceed to analyze the evidence bearing upon the claim that she received “different” treatment. What it shows is that she was treated precisely the same as (if not more favorably than) the other person to hold the same job, and even substantially the same as equivalently junior personnel holding different jobs. It is only when Carter is compared with the president of the company and the two experienced and supervisory sales personnel who were there when she arrived that any large discrepancy appears. That is not evidence of discriminatory treatment in this small company any more than it would be in a major corporation.
1. Salary. I have already noted the utter absence of any evidence of disparate treatment in the fact, observed by the majority, that Carter’s starting salary was “markedly less than the salary of any other then-employed Duncan-Huggins worker.” Id. at 1229. The majority also asserts that “no full-time employee had a salary lower than Carter.” Id. This statement is true as applied to the period during which Carter was employed. It is incomplete, however, since it omits the fact that she was at the same salary level in 1979 as Eileen Barlow, and at the same in 1980 as Carey Sales;2 that her starting salary was $1260 *1241higher (20% higher) than the starting salary of Timothy Lovern, who had been hired two years earlier; that her replacement as samples librarian, Nancy Voorhees, started at a salary $1,000 lower than Carter had been making, and only $500 higher than Carter’s starting salary despite two intervening years of high inflation; and, most importantly of all, that Carter’s salary differed from those of other employees to no greater extent than the other employees’ salaries differed from one another, as the following break-down indicates:
Name 1979 1980 1981
Suzanne Perez $12,000 (Not in record) (Not in record)
Timothy Lovern 9.000 (Not in record)
Augusta Moravee 9,600 $ 9,600
Geraldine Carter 8.000 9.000
Eileen Barlow 8,000
J. Courtney Hook 10,400
Carey Sales 9.000
Nancy Voorhees $ 8,000
The majority notes particularly that two experienced salespeople hired in 1980, Virginia Gwyn and J. Courtney Hook, started at salaries higher than Carter’s. But the fact that employees with different experience,3 and performing different tasks,4 were paid different salaries, is evidence of nothing except the normal course of commerce. If one were to seek a significant salary comparison, it would be with Nancy Voorhees, Carter’s replacement. As noted above, that comparison favors, if either of the two, Carter.
2. Incentive Payments. The majority claims that the asserted “disparity in compensation was aggravated by Carter’s consistently lower incentive payments.” Maj. op. at 1229. This alleged disparity is based solely upon comparison with the president of Duncan-Huggins and the two senior employees who were Carter’s supervisors. The majority dismisses the company’s explanation of what one would consider obvious— that incentive payments would reflect the *1242quantity of sales the employee accounted for and the employee’s seniority — by noting that these criteria were not set forth in the company’s announcement of the plan or in any of the company’s written policies. Id. at 1229-30,1234. There is of course no legal requirement for such specification. Nor did the plan set forth other criteria, so that these were implicitly negated. It recited no criteria at all, but merely described how the total funds available for incentive payments would be computed, and stated that these would be distributed by president Perez “with the advise [sic] of the other principals of D & H in an equitable manner.” Plaintiff’s Deposition Exhibit H (S. Perez) (also introduced at trial). Under such a plan, it is simply not reasonable to conclude that giving the company’s president and two most senior and experienced sales personnel higher incentive payments than Carter was discrimination.
Apart from the payments to these individuals, the only incentive payments shown to have been paid to any employees were as follows: Carter — $350 in 1979 and $1,200 in 1980; Nancy Voorhees — $350 in 1981. Moreover, one of Carter’s incentive payments was given to her after she left the company’s employ, Tr. at 46-48, even though the governing policy statement provided that only current employees were eligible. All this is scarcely evidence of discrimination adverse to Carter.
3. Aggregate Compensation. In any event, the crucial figure for purposes of comparing Carter’s compensation is neither salary nor incentive payments alone, but the total of the two. In that regard, as the following table shows, Carter’s compensation in both years of her employment exceeded that of all employees other than the president and her two supervisors, except that Courtney Hook received $200 more in 1980. This is not the picture of an employee singled out for adverse treatment.5
Starting Base Salary Name_(year) Base Salary Plus Incentive Payments 6 1979_1980_1981
Suzanne Perez $ 9,600 (president) (1977) $14,700
Timothy Lovern 6,240 (1977) 13,926
Augusta Moravec 9,600 (prev: part-time) (1979) 11,700 $11,800
Geraldine Carter 7,500 (1979) 8,350 10,200
Eileen Barlow 8,000 (1979) 8,000
J. Courtney Hook 10,400 (1980) 10,400
Carey Sales 9,000 (1980) 9,000
Virginia Gwyn 10,000 (1980) 10,000
Nancy Voorhees 8,000 (1981) $8,350
*12434. Job Responsibilities. As noted earlier, Carter’s job was that of samples librarian from the outset. She claimed at trial that she had accepted employment on the assurance that she was being given a sales job. Assuming that to have been the case,7 she might have an action for breach of contract, but it has no bearing upon whether assigning her to librarian duties constituted differential treatment. She acknowledged that she was the logical person to take on the librarian duties (the “new employee”) at the time she arrived, and once she had developed an expertise in that job and was prepared to perform it at a modestly increasing salary, there is nothing whatever remarkable about the fact that she remained in it. (When she left Dunean-Huggins, she took on another job as a full-time samples librarian; and another full-time samples librarian was hired by Duncan-Huggins.) It simply is no evidence of disparate treatment that an employee is not transferred from one job to an entirely different one.
5. Work Station. Carter testified that after the company moved to its new showroom, her work station was moved to a separate room, far from customers and other employees.8 She stated that she felt “confined” to the sample room and was able to leave it only to go to the ladies’ room. As her attorney argued, “[t]he only black employee there was confined, segregated in the sample room, out of sight, out of view, and as we suggest, out of mind.” Id. at 336. No reasonable jury could believe this, since it was contradicted out of the plaintiff’s own mouth.
Q: Did anybody tell you that you couldn’t go to them [the other employees]?
A; Did anybody tell me I could not go to them?
Q: Yes.
A: I don’t understand what you are trying to ask.
Q: Well, I got the impression from your direct examination that you were confined to the sample room. Now, is that really true?
A: I was confined to that sample room, that is correct.
Q: You were only allowed to go to the ladies room?
A: I was confined to that area in terms of my working.
Q: You mean you couldn’t get up and walk around to other parts of the showroom when your work required you to do it?
A: If the work required me to do it, as I said, to go get samples or to assist and clean up samples. But that was *1244where I was to be stationed and not outside into that showroom.
Q: And if things were not busy, you could go out and chat with another employee, could you not?
A: I did not go out and chat with any of the employees.
Q: But you could if you wanted to, could you not?
A: I suppose.
Q: Did anybody tell you that you could not go out and talk to other employees in the showroom when you were not busy in the sample room?
A: Not to my knowledge.
Q: Did anyone tell you that you could only leave to go to the ladies room or on work missions?
A: That was where — no one told me that.
Id. at 200-03 (cross-examination). It is true, of course, that Carter’s work station was the samples room. But it is unremarkable, and no evidence of disparate treatment, that a samples librarian should work in the samples library. Nor that a separate room for that purpose should exist. Many witnesses, including the plaintiff, noted that samples “cluttered” the showroom and rendered it unattractive, e.g., id. at 148, 290; uncontroverted evidence indicated that it was customary for a business such as Duncan-Huggins to have a separate samples room. Id. at 275. And — returning once again to the only comparison among the employees of this company that is truly telling — Carter’s replacement, Nancy Voo-rhees, was likewise assigned to the samples room and was not offered sales responsibility-
6. Staff Meetings, Parking and Keys. The majority states that Carter was “singled out for unique treatment” with respect to her participation in staff meetings, parking privileges, and access to keys to the showroom. Maj. op. at 1233. That is not so.
As to staff meetings: Even if Carter had been the only employee excluded, it would hardly constitute disparate treatment, since she was also the only employee whose responsibilities consisted entirely of library duties. In fact, however, there is nothing in the record to show, nor does the majority here assert, that all or even most employees other than Carter attended staff meetings. As far as appears, participation may have been limited to the president of the company and the two senior sales personnel whose job superiority to Carter the majority continually ignores.
The latter is undoubtedly true with regard to assigned parking spaces, the number of which was limited in order to reserve space for customers. The record shows that only three employees received them: the president of the company and Timothy Lo-vern and Augusta Moravec, Carter’s supervisors. Tr. at 101.
As for keys to the showroom: It is easy to see why counsel for the plaintiff would seek to play upon this factor. (“A key is a very small and insignificant thing, but it’s one of the things that your boss places trust in you: ‘Here is a key to the building. I trust you to open up and do what is right.’ But even those decisions shouldn’t be made on the basis of race. This one was.” Tr. at 338 (summation of plaintiff’s counsel).) But it is impossible to understand why the majority believes a reasonable person could find any substance in it. The record shows that arrangements were ultimately made to issue a key to Carter. Id. at 232-33. Before that time, only one employee junior to Carter had received one, and for a quite specific reason — she regularly drove to work with her father and arrived at 7:30. Id. at 218. (Carter, on the other hand, usually arrived ten or fifteen minutes before the opening time of 9:00. Id. at 101, 165.) That this white employee junior to Carter who had received a key “taunted her” about it, Maj. op. at 1230, is of great human interest and undoubtedly had its *1245effect upon the jury — but it surely has no relevance to the case.
In all these areas — compensation, job responsibilities, work station, staff meetings, parking space and keys — there is simply no evidence that Carter was treated “differently,” except to the same understandable degree that all the employees of this enterprise were treated differently. No reasonable person could conclude that she sustained the burden of establishing discriminatory treatment, the first element of a § 1981 case.
II. Racial Motivation
Even if a plausible showing of discriminatory treatment had been made, however, in order to get to the jury the plaintiff would still have to introduce some evidence that would enable a reasonable person to conclude that the basis for this discriminatory treatment was race. Here again, it must be remembered, the burden was on the plaintiff to establish that race was the reason, not upon the defendant to establish that it was not; and if, on the basis of the evidence introduced, a reasonable person could not conclude either way, the defendant was entitled to a directed verdict or to judgment n.o.v. Here again — and here even more starkly — there was nothing to the plaintiff’s case.
It is much easier to analyze this aspect of the appeal, because in the entire trial there was only one fragment of attempted proof of racial motivation. That consisted of reference to what the majority calls a “racially derogatory anecdote” or an “offensive joke,” Maj. op. at 1230, but what would more accurately be described as use of a racially derogatory or racially offensive phrase in the course of telling an anecdote. The butt of the joke was not a black man, but a white customer of Duncan-Huggins who “put on airs of being very wealthy,” Tr. at 277. The joke was told by Timothy Lovern who was, as the majority takes the pain to note in this portion of its narrative, Carter’s “de facto supervisor,” Maj. op. at ■1230-1231. (For other purposes of the majority opinion he is just another employee whose treatment should presumably be equal to Carter’s.) Lovern was describing the elderly designer’s customarily pretentious arrival at the showroom in a large, chauffeur-driven limousine. At one or more points in the story — and not, as the majority suggests, as the “punch line,” id. at 1230 — he referred to the chauffeur as a “buck” or “black buck.” Accepting the plaintiff’s testimony, Suzanne Perez, the president of the company, was present and laughed at the anecdote.
Plaintiff’s counsel made much of this derogatory language — so much, in fact, that at one point the trial judge cut off further examination on the point. (“That is just a bloody shirt, and I don’t want it waved.” Tr. at 302.) Such frequent reference was understandable, however, not only because of its anticipated emotional effect upon the jury, but because this was the only shred of evidence, gathered from Carter’s one-and-one-half years of employment at Duncan-Huggins, that could conceivably suggest any racial animus against her. It is plainly not enough to support the plaintiff’s case. It strains credulity enough to regard the incident as evidence of racial animus against Carter on Lovern’s part — especially since Carter admitted that she remained on good enough terms with Lovern to contact him when she was planning to visit Los Angeles, after he had left Duncan-Huggins to work in that city, id. at 206. But one must pass beyond credulousness to sheer irrationality to deduce from this incident the further conclusion that Duncan-Huggins’ employment decisions with regard to Carter were race-related. Yet there was literally nothing else to support that conclusion. Though Carter was familiar with her rights under antidiscrimination laws, having filed an EEO complaint against a former employer, id. at 175-76, during her entire period of employment with Duncan-Huggins she never mentioned her feeling of racial discrimination to the president of the company, beside whom she worked and to whom she brought a number of other complaints about her working conditions. Nor did she mention it to either of her supervi*1246sors; or, as far as the record shows, to anyone else. Except for Carter herself (whose conclusory assertions do not suffice to establish a case, see Douglas v. Anderson, 656 F.2d 528, 534 (9th Cir.1981); Houser v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 627 F.2d 756, 759 (5th Cir.1980)), every witness questioned on the point denied the existence of racial bias at Duncan-Huggins — including Lovern, who was no longer employed there, and including Carter’s own witness Moravec, who was not only no longer employed there but was sufficiently disaffected that she had joined Carter (after the departure of both of them) in going to see Perez to complain (unsuccessfully) about failure to receive incentive payments due.
I think it entirely obvious that no reasonable person could rely upon the incident of the racial slur alone to reach the conclusion that Carter’s allegedly differential treatment was race-related. The majority apparently concedes that point — albeit grudgingly, as the lack of precise parallelism in the following excerpt suggests:
The law at the extremes is relatively clear. A pervasive pattern of racial jokes of which the employer is aware can give rise to liability.... At the other end, a single isolated racial joke, unattended by any indicia of discriminatory animus, may not be sufficient in itself to establish a violation.
Maj. op. at 1236 (emphasis in original). The majority finds this principle inapplicable, however, because “[h]ere, the single racial joke was presented to the jury together with numerous other pieces of circumstantial evidence.” Id. at 1236.
While each piece of circumstantial evidence alone might have been an insufficient basis from which to infer discriminatory animus, the cumulative impact of the many discrete instances of disparate treatment and broken promises reasonably may have led to an inference of discriminatory intent.
Id. at 1233 (emphasis in original). Assuming (as is essential to the argument) that by “discriminatory intent” the majority means an intent to discriminate on the basis of race, this is the most demonstrable illogic. It is the equivalent of saying, “When I saw the defendant strike Racozy the first time I did not know the reason, but when he struck him another ten times I knew it was because he was ... Hungarian! ” The “numerous other pieces of circumstantial evidence” the majority refers to — the “many discrete instances of disparate treatment and broken promises” — are not circumstantial evidence of racial motivation, but only (if they were established) of an intent to disfavor Carter. That is not against the law.
The majority’s rejection of the defendant’s requested instruction concerning statistical evidence is related to this point. If Duncan-Huggins’ work force consisted of not just six but several hundred employees; and if Carter showed that discriminatory treatment which she received was also received only by all the other black employees; it would be reasonable to infer a causal connection between the discriminatory treatment and race. Such a showing is often part of the circumstantial evidence of racial motivation in employment discrimination cases. But where one employee of six, who has received disfavored treatment, happens to be black, no such inference of causality can reasonably be drawn. It seems to me that the district court should have given the requested instruction that
Defendant’s work force is too small to make any statistical analysis of the treatment of black and white employees useful in deciding whether it purposefully discriminated against plaintiff because she was black.
And for the same reason it should have given the instruction it should have dismissed the suit. For without such a statistical inference there was no evidence of racial motivation in Duncan-Huggins’ employment decisions, except for the plainly inadequate instance of the racial slur.
I do not assert, as the majority would attribute to me, that “proof of discriminatory treatment and proof of discriminatory animus are completely unrelated.” Maj. op. at 1231 (emphasis in original). To the con*1247trary, I fully acknowledge that the fact of discrimination suggests an intent to discriminate. But that intent may be based upon an infinite variety of factors. In the present case, for example, the company may have decided to save money on Carter because she was the least assertive of the employees, and thus the most likely to take it. Or Perez may have picked her out for unfavorable treatment because she was the most assertive, and thus the most obnoxious. I am willing, in other words, to accept discriminatory treatment as circumstantial evidence of discriminatory animus, but only race-related treatment as circumstantial evidence of racial animus. By treating the one as evidence of the other, the majority effectively eliminates the second element necessary to establish a § 1981 case.
The majority’s fallacy lies in using the word “discrimination” as a synonym for “discrimination on the basis of race.” Such usage may suffice in common parlance, but for purposes of analyzing the proof in a § 1981 suit it is, if I may not be misunderstood in so expressing it, too undiscriminating. Even assuming she had established discrimination (a subject discussed in part I of this opinion), the plaintiff had further to establish that the reason for that discrimination was her race. She offered nothing to support that point — neither direct evidence, nor circumstantial evidence, statistical or otherwise — except the single racial slur.
♦ ^ sf: sf: :jc sfc
The majority takes note of the Supreme Court’s recent comment that “the question facing triers of fact in discrimination cases is both sensitive and difficult.” United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens, -- U.S. --, 103 S.Ct. 1478, 1482, 75 L.Ed.2d 403 (1983). The reason it is sensitive is that without careful and conscientious fact-finding the anti-discrimination laws can either be frustrated by, or be converted into instruments of, the very evil they are designed to prevent. The court’s decision facilitates the latter development, permitting juries to render awards where no solid evidence exists, leaving them to decide “on the basis of sheer speculation, ultimately tipped, in view of the impossibility of choosing rationally between mere ‘possibilities,’ by impermissible but understandable resort to such factors as sympathy and the like.” Lovelace v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 681 F.2d 230, 242 (4th Cir.1982). If this case did not call for a directed verdict, it is difficult to imagine any small business hiring a minority employee which does not, in doing so, commit its economic welfare and its good name to the unpredictable speculations of some yet unnamed jury. That is a net loss, rather than gain, for the cause of equal employment opportunity — and no less important, for the cause of justice in the courts. The motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict should have been granted.

. Carter made no claim that the reason she was originally put to work on samples was that she was black. To the contrary, as noted above she acknowledged that assignment was attributable to her being the “new employee.” Tr. at 124. The possibility of disparate treatment in being retained in that job will be discussed below.

. The majority dismisses this with the observation that “[b]ecause Barlow and Sales were hired after Carter, they were her junior and, applying the analysis the dissent itself suggests in its attempt to justify Carter’s initial lower salary, thus should have received lower, not equal salaries.” Maj. op. at 1229 n.*. What this dissent considers significant with regard to Carter’s initial salary is that the personnel who *1241were at Duncan-Huggins when Carter arrived had “several years” of experience with the company, in addition to performing jobs different from Carter’s and having supervisory authority over her. Supra, page 1227. Barlow was hired about five months after Carter. Tr. at 84-85. It is impossible to believe that failure to accord a salary preference for five months’ seniority constitutes differential treatment. As for Sales, she was hired about fourteen months after Carter — but came to the job, as Carter did not, with experience in the very business Duncan-Huggins was engaged in, since she had been working as an assistant to an interior designer who was one of the company’s customers, id. at 17, 90. She was hired to replace Augusta Moravee, who had been one of Carter’s supervisors. Id. at 89-90.

. Gwyn was a carpet expert who had worked for two carpet firms. Hook had worked for a competing showroom. Carter’s experience, by contrast, was with Grand Rapids Furniture Store, a furniture store that “sold some carpets,” Tr. at 120, Sears, Roebuck, where she “worked with fabrics and custom draperies,” id., Accent Wall Coverings, where she sold “paints, carpets, anything for the interiors,” id. at 121, Cogart, Duff Revere Company, where she worked on a project for Peoples Drug Stores, doing “layouts for the drug stores, placement and illustration boards,” id., Concept Merchandise, where she did “small drafting and illustration boards,” id. at 121-22, B & M Office Furniture, where she was an outside sales representative and commercial designer, Ceramic Tile Sales, “where there were a lot of building supplies,” id., Winslow Paints, McDonald’s, Reveo, Cooper Equipment, McLaughlin Research Corp., a company called ITG, the Friday Design Group, and Pleasant Valley Memorial Park, Inc. Id. at 123, 173-86, 285. Except as stated above, the only relevance of these jobs to Duncan-Huggins’ specific business was that they were all, according to Carter, “in connection with the field of design,” except for the job with McDonald’s, id. at 186. Between 1971 and 1979 when she came to work for Duncan-Huggins, Carter had had twelve different employers. The employment which she accepted after leaving Duncan-Huggins has since been terminated, one of the reasons assigned being that she did an unsatisfactory job in cataloging fabric samples.

. The assertion that the company’s failure to assign Carter sales duties was itself evidence of discrimination will be discussed in detail below. In the context of this discussion of salaries, however, it is worth noting that Carter admitted she did not perform well when required to work for a commission, as were Sales, Gwyn, and Hook, e.g., Tr. at 174, and that she declined an offer of a job with sales responsibilities, id. at 171. Nothing, then, can be made of the fact that she did not earn the higher salaries paid to the company’s sales people.

. The majority asserts that these figures regarding aggregate compensation are misleading because, as to Hook, Sales and Barlow the failure to receive any incentive payments “may have reflected only a failure to qualify for the program or a failure to participate in the program for any meaningful period.” Maj. op. at 1229 n.* Maybe. But it was the plaintiff’s burden to establish differential treatment — and this is not achieved by asserting that there may have been reasons why evidently equal or even preferential treatment was perhaps not what it seemed. The chart in text sets forth what the evidence showed, and the majority seeks to refute it by speculating upon what other evidence not introduced by the plaintiff could conceivably have established.

. Incentive payments are added to an employee’s salary in the year received, rather than *1243earned. Incentive payment data are available in the record only for 1979 and 1980, the years Carter was employed, except with regard to Nancy Voorhees. The record indicates that Perez and Lovem were paid commissions total-ling $1,500 and $2,300, respectively, in 1980. These figures are omitted from the table because the record does not disclose their salaries for that year.

. Her contention at trial was not supported by her earlier testimony on deposition that she was hired “to work in the showroom to help the designers when they come in for assistance. I would be helping putting up wings and also librarian, taking care of the samples,” Tr. at 187-88; and that she did not discuss at the time of hiring the sales opportunities she would have. Mrs. Perez, who had done the hiring, testified that the job was represented as “primarily librarian with some sales work,” id. at 81.

. The majority, Maj. op. at 1230, 1234, like many of the plaintiff’s witnesses, refers to the samples library as the “back room,” contributing to the impression that it was secluded from the rest of the business. Although the samples library was at the back of the store as viewed from the street, it was adjacent to the showroom’s reception area, Tr. at 218, and next to its main customer entrance, for the store’s customers entered the showroom from the parking lot at the “rear” of the building, id. at 99.