86 Pa. Commw. 128 | Pa. Commw. Ct. | 1984
Opinion by
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board appeals from an order of the State Civil Service Commission overturning the Board’s suspension of Darryl L. Smith from his work for five days.
Smith’s civil service position was that of Clerk I, regular status and his work was as a sales clerk in a state store. At the close of business on January 28, 1982, the store manager discovered that Smith’s cash supply exceeded the register receipts by $27.00. When the manager checked the paper receipts for the retail discount sales, he found a receipt for a discount sale indicating a purchase of seven bottles at a discounted price of $43.00.
At the Commission’s hearing, the following undisputed facts appeared. State liquor stores allow retail discounts to customers who buy in larger numbers of bottles of one item, such as a case. The established procedure for discount sales is first, that a manager or assistant manager must verify on a discount sale receipt the prices and quantity of items sold; second, that the sales clerk must enter the receipt into, and record the sale on, the cash register. In this case, the assistant manager of the liquor store, by initialling, verified the discount sale receipt made out by Smith. Although Smith collected the $43.00 from the customer
The Liquor Control Board considers the failure to record, or ring up, a sale on the cash register a serious violation of counter procedures and imposes a five-day suspension for this infraction, just as it did in this case.
At the hearing conducted by the Civil Service Commission, the store manager testified that an assistant manager had. verified the facts concerning the discount sale by initialling the receipt. Smith conceded that he had simply failed to record, or ring up, the discount sale, on the cash register. There was no direct evidence presented that the assistant manager who verified the discount saw Smith fail to ring up the discount sale and there was no evidence from which the fact that he saw this failure, might be reasonably inferred. Indeed, Smith testified that during the transaction the customer conversed with the assistant manager about the price of the merchandise and that the assistant manager offered the customer assistance in carrying his purchases from the store.
The Commission, in reversing the Liquor Control Board’s suspension action, wrote: “The Commission finds that appellant’s unintentional error, which was witnessed personally by his manager, did not merit a suspension for five days”; and “we do not believe that an error of this sort, where witnessed and verified by
The Commission also misapprehended the law. It overturned the Liquor Control Board’s order on the additional considerations that Smith’s work was not shown to have been “unsatisfactory in the past or that his mistake was intentional or ‘self-serving.’ ” Putting the best light on these observations, we assume that the Commission means, not that the appointing authority was required to prove that Smith had a poor work record and violated the counter procedure intentionally and for gain,
Order reversed.
Order
And Now, this 21st day of November, 1984, the order of the State Civil Service Commission in the above-captioned matter is reversed.
The Liquor Control Board of course had the burden of showing good cause; hence, on this appeal from a decision adverse to the Board, we must, to reverse, find capricious and arbitrary disregard of the evidence.
The appointing authority in a Civil Service case has no burden to prove that the employee who has been disciplined for failure to follow an important work rule has done so intentionally or with prurient motive unless it has charged the employee with having