must have told the decision makers that Houk had permission to leave, the evidence does not show that Peoploungers’s given reason is a pretext for age discrimination or that age was in any way a factor in Houk’s termination. Houk points out that he was replaced with a worker who was nine years younger than him. Houk’s successor, however, was not hired or promoted into the job, but was merely another worker already in Houk’s department who was assigned to take over Houk’s workload after the firing. Further, Houk was fired at age 48, only a year and a half after he was hired at age 46 by one of the same managers ultimately involved in the decision to fire him, making his claim of age discrimination even more tenuous. Cf. Brown v. CSC Logic, Inc., 82 F.3d 651, 658 (5th Cir.1996) (<HOLDING>). Finally, despite the importance that Houk
holding in age discrimination case that plaintiffs dismissal did not give rise to an inference of discrimination when job was subsequently offered to an older individual holding that adea plaintiff had failed to make a prima facie case of age discrimination when he was replaced by someone only two years younger and within the protected age group and there was no other evidence of age discriminatory motive holding that the hiring and firing of an employee by the same actor within a period of a few years gives rise to an inference that age discrimination was not the motive behind the termination holding that evidence of a cursory investigation can give rise to an inference of an unlawful motive holding that a statement of fact relating to the plaintiffs age was not direct evidence of age discrimination because the relevance of the comment is provided by inference