Day 155 - 14 Jul 95 - Page 58


     
     1        there was too little.  It was a mixture of poor scheduling,
     2        poor availability and not really -- not enough people to
     3        take on very important hours, i.e. maybe a Saturday night,
     4        10.00 to 11.00, just before the pubs shut.
     5
     6   Q.   At the end of the day, it almost certainly means there were
     7        not enough people on the payroll because, if you have too
     8        few people on the payroll, as likely as not you will not
     9        have enough people to schedule, allowing for some slippage
    10        for ill-health or not being available that day, for your
    11        busy periods?
    12        A.  Yes.
    13
    14   Q.   You may also have bad planning in that you have a lot of
    15        people who can work Monday only, or something like that,
    16        which is not very helpful to your scheduling; is that what
    17        you are saying really?
    18        A.  I would say that is the main reasons, but like I
    19        said -----
    20
    21   Q.   But can you really say what the position was?  For some
    22        period anyway, query how long, the Seven Sisters store had
    23        run badly, and it needed knocking into shape.  Can you be
    24        more precise about it than that?
    25        A.  No, because I can only, obviously, speak about my
    26        experience in the first three weeks where I really just
    27        sort of stood back, observed, realised what the problems
    28        were and made some sort of plan as to how to get it into
    29        shape.
    30
    31   MS. STEEL:  You could not cure the problems by redistributing
    32        the crew that you did have in a way more suitable to the
    33        store, suited to the business, the throughput?
    34        A.  Yes, if I could, then that is what actually happened.
    35
    36   Q.   But you had to take on more staff ---
    37        A.  Yes.
    38
    39   Q.   -- because there were not enough?
    40        A.  Yes.
    41
    42   Q.   By and large, the staff you took on were part-time because
    43        there were particular times of the week where you had
    44        particular problems?
    45        A.  The majority of -- yes.
    46
    47   Q.   If you had not done that, you would have had to have got
    48        crew to work longer hours than they wanted to work, to stay
    49        on later than they were scheduled to work and so on?
    50        A.  As I stated before, first of all, I would have tried to 
    51        rearrange the availability to cover that.  Failing that, 
    52        I would have maybe got a permanent team of about seven or 
    53        eight people from one of my Supervisor's restaurants, just
    54        to help me out for a few weeks, months.
    55
    56   Q.   I am just saying if you had not taken any steps to take on
    57        extra crew, the crew that were existing would have had to
    58        work longer hours than they were scheduled to work and
    59        longer hours than they may have wanted to work?
    60        A.  If my first course of action and my second course of

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