ALEXANDER B. DENSON, United States Magistrate Judge
This civil action was heard before the undersigned, sitting without a jury, beginning December 13, 1999, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), on Plaintiff's claim of discrimination in employment on the basis of race and gender, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. § 2000(e) et seq.), specifically by failing to promote her to the position of Audio Division Manager in March, 1997. Ruling was delayed at the request of counsel to allow time for preparation of the transcript and submissions of counsel thereafter. Plaintiff was represented by Mr. Richard Glazier and Ms. Vickie Burge of the law firm of Beaver, Holt, Richardson, Sternlicht, Burge Glazier, P.A., and Defendant was represented by Mr. Kevin V. Parsons and Mr. Jonathan Harmon of the law firm McGuire, Woods, Battle Boothe, LLP.
Having heard the testimony of the witnesses, observing their demeanor, noting any interest in the outcome, and noting the extent to which their testimony was supported by or contradicted by other credible evidence, and in this manner assessing their credibility, and having evaluated the documentary evidence and having considered arguments of counsel, the undersigned finds from the credible evidence, and by its greater weight, the following
FINDINGS OF FACT
1. Plaintiff is an African-American female adult, married and the mother of four children.
2. Defendant is a corporation doing business in Fayetteville, North Carolina, within this judicial district, and in other states. It is engaged in interstate commerce and regularly employs more than fifteen (15) employees.
3. While one aspect of Defendant's business is retail sales of furniture, another aspect is the repair of electronic equipment. Defendant operates three service centers in the United States for this repair work. One such center is located in Fayetteville.
4. Plaintiff graduated from high school and thereafter served in the United States Marine Corps from December 1980 until she was honorably discharged on December 29, 1986. While Plaintiff was in the Marine Corps, she was trained and worked as an electronic technician. She successfully completed several courses and was given significant responsibility.
5. Immediately following her military service, Plaintiff focused on raising her four children. Later, however, Plaintiff enrolled at Fayetteville Technical Community College, majoring in electronic engineering technology. She was awarded the degree of Associate of Applied Science on June 4, 1992 with a grade point average of 3.5.
6. Following her graduation, in June, 1992, Plaintiff was certified by the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies ("NICET") as having attained the grade of Associate Engineering Technician in Electronics Engineering Technology.
7. In July 1992, Defendant published an advertisement seeking to employ qualified electronic technicians to work repairing TVs, VCRs and audio equipment.
8. At all relevant times, the manager of Defendant's Fayetteville Service Center was Randy Russ, a white male. Mr. Russ had the final say as to whether Plaintiff was hired. In everything he did, Mr. Russ acted as Defendant's agent and in the course and scope of his agency.
9. Plaintiff applied for the position, was interviewed, and hired on August 3, 1992 as an audio technician at a starting salary of $5.75 per hour plus bonuses. Her gender and race were obvious and known to Defendant at the time she was hired.
10. Defendant's Fayetteville Service Center had four repair departments: Audio, TV, VCR and Appliance. At the time Plaintiff was hired, she was assigned to the Audio Department.
11. On April 6, 1993 Plaintiff resigned her job because she felt her technical ability was not being recognized and that she was not being paid adequately. Plaintiff left the company.
12. On learning of Plaintiff's resignation, Mr. Russ called her and asked her to come to his office to talk about it. He persuaded Plaintiff to return to work effective April 15, 1993 and granted her paid vacation and leave days for the period between April 6 and April 15 so that she did not have a gap in pay.
13. Plaintiff met the qualifications of Technician Level IV in 1993 by taking and passing the Associate CET examination.
14. Plaintiff met the qualifications of Technician Level V in 1993 by taking and passing the Journeyman CET examination.
15. Plaintiff became a Level V Journeyman in 1994 by taking and passing an examination by the International Society of Certified Electronic Technicians ("ISCET"). Level V Journeyman is Defendant's highest technician position.
16. Plaintiff was the most skilled technician in the Audio Department and was routinely given the most difficult jobs. She was the one to whom the other technicians went for help with repair problems they could not solve. She willingly helped other technicians in those situations.
17. Plaintiff was given the following hourly rate pay increases, all approved by Mr. Russ:
Effective Date Amount ________________ ________
11/09/92 $ .25 3/15/93 .60 9/27/93 1.90 3/28/94 .40 9/26/94 .55 3/27/95 1.00 9/25/95 .55 3/25/96 .55 9/23/96 .95 3/24/97 .25
18. In September, 1996 the pay of the thirteen technicians in the Audio Department ranged from a low of $6.00 per hour, or $12,480 per year, to a high of $12.50 per hour, or $26,000 per year, plus bonuses. of these thirteen technicians, which included white males, Plaintiff was the highest paid. Plaintiff's salary was $26,000 plus bonuses of about $100 per week, or a total of about $31,200 per year.
19. At all relevant times, the internal structure of Defendant's Fayetteville Service Center was a Center Manager, Mr. Russ, below whom was a Service Manager, Steve Hinson, who supervised the four repair departments, including the Audio Division. The Audio Division Manager was Kenny Brown, who was Plaintiff's direct supervisor. Russ, Hinson, and Brown were all white males.
20. Kenny Brown has been employed at Defendant for fifteen or sixteen years. He was originally hired as a "prepper" or "wrapper person" in the Audio Department, was promoted to technician, and then to Audio Division Manager. Mr. Brown was a Level III technician prior to being promoted to management. When he was promoted to Audio Division Manager, Mr. Brown had taken, but had not passed the ISCET exam and he had no prior management experience.
21. Mr. Brown found it difficult and stressful to be a supervisor and did not enjoy it. In particular, he found it problematic to discipline and supervise his former co-workers and never felt that he was able to command their respect.
22. In March 1997, Mr. Brown asked to be relieved of his managerial position and to return to being a technician. His request was approved. He earned more as a technician than he had earned as a manager.
23. Defendant solicited candidates for his replacement and advertised the position. Mr. Brown recommended to his superiors that the position be filled with an outside candidate because of the problems he had experienced in supervising former peers.
24. Mr. Russ and Mr. Hinson considered the Audio Division to have morale and organizational problems as a result of Mr. Brown's poor supervision and decided that the most important attributes in a new manager would be management and supervision experience first and technical background second. This was a shift in emphasis for that position, as prior managers had been strong technicians but with little management experience. The division had a strong cadre of skilled technicians, foremost of which was Plaintiff, but needed leadership and supervision.
25. Plaintiff applied for the position of Audio Division Manager. From a pool of eight to ten applicants, Mr. Russ and Mr. Hinson interviewed four candidates for the position: Plaintiff and three white males. Two of the white male candidates, Phillip Lover and Jeffrey Valentine, were already employed by Defendant, Lover in the Audio Division and Valentine in another department. The other candidate was James Young.
26. The same series of questions was asked of each candidate during the interviews and their answers were rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Mr. Russ then evaluated each candidate, using a company form.
27. The interviews and evaluation process focused primarily on the managerial and supervisory experience and ability of the candidates. Mr. Russ ranked the candidates in the following order, beginning with the most qualified: Jeffrey Valentine, James Young, Phillip Lover and Dorothea Mixon.
28. Plaintiff's management training and experience was gained in the military and at Defendant's business. As a corporal in the Marine Corps, Plaintiff had some responsibilities to maintain order at the barracks. In a six month detachment to Japan, Plaintiff trained persons in repair and maintenance of certain aircraft systems and had four people report to her. After Plaintiff became employed by Defendant, she demonstrated technical proficiency in her repair work. At some point in 1996 the Audio Division Manager, Mr. Brown, began training Plaintiff as his assistant so that she could fill in for him when he was away on vacation or sick leave. She learned how to do some of the paperwork and to respond to customer complaints and inquiries. However, this experience was of a limited duration, from about September 1996 until February or March, 1997. In that period of time, Mr. Brown was away from work about two weeks. During those two weeks, Plaintiff was given only a portion of the responsibilities and authority of the manager's position. She was not authorized to and did not discipline or counsel the other technicians or evaluate them or make any personnel record entries, nor was she involved in the full range of paperwork.
29. Mr. Valentine's management training and supervisory experience was gained entirely in the military. Before being employed by Defendant, Mr. Valentine completed a 20 year career in the Air Force, including 12 or 13 years of management experience. Mr. Valentine attained the rate of Tech Sergeant, E-6, and received an honorable discharge. During his military service, Mr. Valentine had the responsibility of supervising nine people with the direct responsibility for $1.2 million of electronic equipment; managing over 35 people in meteorological or navigational aid facilities in Alaska, and managing five weather radar maintenance personnel. Mr. Valentine also had considerable training and experience as an electronics technician.
30. Jeffrey Valentine was hired in the position of Audio Division Manager.
31. The decision to hire Mr. Valentine was based on Mr. Russ's assessment that he was the strongest candidate in terms of management experience and supervisory skills.
32. At the time of his selection for the position of Audio Division Manager, Mr. Valentine was already employed by Defendant, but in a different department, so that he would not be placed in the posture Mr. Brown faced of having to supervise former peer employees.
33. Plaintiff believed that she was not selected for the position because of her race and gender, a conclusion she reached from assessing her qualifications to be superior to Mr. Valentine's and from her belief that she had been underpaid as a technician. She filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, received a Right to Sue letter, and instituted this civil action.
34. Defendant has a corporate policy against discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age or disability. Mr. Russ subscribed to and agreed with that policy. Although a co-worker claimed to have heard Mr. Hinson say he would never hire another black person as a manager, he denies having made such a remark. There is no evidence that Mr. Russ, the final decision maker, ever thought in racist terms. Mr. Russ had a grandson whose father was a black man and he publicly displayed with love and pride his grandson's photograph at a time before this hiring process. He even had the grandson's photograph installed in his computer as a screen saver. It was Mr. Russ who hired Plaintiff as a technician, who encouraged her to return to her job after she quit, and who approved ten pay raises for her to the point that he paid her more than any other technician in the department, including white males. Defendant's management has included and currently includes both blacks and females. A prior Audio Division Manager was Doug Monroe, a black man.
35. The race and gender of the candidates were not considered by Mr. Russ and played no part in the selection process. In light of the unsatisfactory experience of Kenny Brown's management, it was a reasonable, race/gender neutral business decision for Defendant to chose to emphasize supervisory and management experience and skills in their selection of his replacement. Obviously, Mrs. Mixon was a highly skilled technician and a valuable employee to Defendant. However, it is also clear that Mr. Valentine had many years of supervisory experience and considerable management skills. Moreover, since he came from another department, Mr. Valentine was not placed in the position of becoming the supervisor of former co-workers, as would Mrs. Mixon. It is not for the courts to assess the wisdom of Defendant's decision to hire Mr. Valentine rather than Mrs. Mixon in the position of Audio Division Manager. The court need only determine whether the selection process was free of bias or prejudice based on race or gender. In this case, it is clear that race and gender played no role in Defendant's choice.
The foregoing Findings of Fact engender the following
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
1. Defendant's decision to hire Jeffrey Valentine instead of Plaintiff as Audio Division Manager was a legitimate race/gender neutral business decision, not pretextural.
2. Defendant has not discriminated against Plaintiff on the basis of race or gender or any other basis.
3. Defendant is not liable to the Plaintiff.
IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that Plaintiff have and recover nothing of the Defendant. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment in favor of Defendant on all claims in this action.
SO ORDERED.
Decision by Court. This action came to trial or hearing before the Court. The issues have been tried or heard and a decision has been rendered.
IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that Plaintiff have and recover nothing of the Defendant and Judgment is entered in favor of the Defendant on all claims in this action.