Day 072 - 12 Jan 95 - Page 59
1 MR. MORRIS: Have you in the time you have been at that store
2 ever not achieved the profit and loss guideline or whatever
3 it is, the budget, whatever, that the company wanted?
4 A. Well, the company has a budget and the company is
5 making an estimation on the restaurant's profit for the
6 year and their sales, and also on the company's profit and
7 their sales, so I am not directly compared to the budget.
8 I am assessed on the operations of my store and the
9 profitability of my store. I am not told not to go over
10 the budget or not to go below the budget. It is there
11 simply as a guideline.
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are we on environment/index.html">litter or are have we moved over to
14 employment now?
15
16 MR. MORRIS: Basically I have finished. That does relate to
17 environment/index.html">litter and employment generally, yes.
18
19 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If you have got a point to put in relation to
20 this, why not just put it in one sentence if it relates to
21 environment/index.html">litter. If you are saying they were scrimping in some way,
22 why not just put that and see what Mr. Stump says about
23 that.
24
25 MR. MORRIS: If you felt you were not achieving your budgetary
26 targets, yes, and if the supervisors above you and the
27 supervisors above them felt that budgetary targets were not
28 being achieved, what are the easiest ways of improving your
29 profit and loss performance in the store?
30 A. By becoming more efficient and looking at wastage in
31 areas we have not been efficient in.
32
33 Q. What areas would be a prime target for a simple, quick
34 boost to achieve the targets?
35 A. Well, there is no simple quick boost because then the
36 business would suffer. If we did not spend the money that
37 we needed to maintain operations then the restaurant would
38 not be as profitable; we would not get as many sales.
39
40 Q. Could we say -- I will put it to you.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let me put it and then you see if you can
43 improve on it. You may or may not be able to increase your
44 turnover. One obvious way you can either cut or contain
45 your costs is keeping your workforce to a minimum.
46
47 MR. MORRIS: Would that be a reasonable presumption?
48 A. No, because if you cut back on your labour account then
49 you are not able to run your restaurant efficiently, then
50 if the customer is unhappy with the service you are
51 offering they would not come back and we would lose sales.
52 So we do not cut back on any accounts. We look at ways of
53 making those accounts more efficient by cutting wastage.
54 If we are using two people to do the job that one person
55 could reasonably be expected to complete, then the obvious
56 move would be to use one person to complete that job
57 instead of two if two people were not needed.
58
59 Q. But if you cancelled all environment/index.html">litter patrols, for example, then
60 you would make a saving in purely monetary terms on the
