Day 204 - 15 Jan 96 - Page 28
1
2 Q. And about food cost, things like that, food control?
3 A. Yes. I mean, I would have mentioned these things. So
4 far as payroll goes, it was fairly mundane figure work
5 task. That would have probably been done by a Second
6 Assistant or a First Assistant.
7
8 Q. Do you mean the training would have been done -- sorry,
9 I am not sure if I know what you mean.
10 A. The training -- the payroll was done on a Sunday
11 morning. So the likely method by which somebody would have
12 been trained to do the payroll would have been, they would
13 have sat with whoever was doing the payroll on that
14 particular Sunday morning (which may or may not have been
15 me) and just learned how to do it as a sort of paperwork
16 exercise. So it may have been me; it may not have been
17 me. I cannot honestly remember actually training Ray to do
18 it. More than likely it would have been a First Assistant.
19
20 Q. But if it was done by a First Assistant, that would have
21 been somebody that you trained, anyway?
22 A. Well, possibly, except that there was a previous
23 Manager there before me who would have also trained people
24 to do the payroll, or possibly might have done. It was a
25 cascade approach, so that they -- you know, it probably
26 took 20 minutes or something like that to learn how to do a
27 payroll; it was a matter of adding up three figures.
28
29 Q. Can I just ask about page 2 of your statement? In
30 paragraph 4 ---
31 A. Yes.
32
33 Q. -- you talk about your performance review that you gave to
34 Mr. Coton where you refer to fiddled inventories, and you
35 say that he had massaged his inventory figures for one
36 month. Can you just explain what you were aware of
37 Mr. Coton doing?
38 A. As I remember it, he changed his closing stops to make
39 his food cost figure look better.
40
41 Q. Right.
42 A. Which I suspected was the case. The following month
43 I did an inventory where it became evident that the
44 previous month's inventory had been false, drew it to the
45 attention of my senior supervisor -- who I believe was
46 Tim Taylor at the time. He instructed me to -- well, he
47 came down in fact on the following month to see if what
48 I suspected was true. He spoke with Ray. He also
49 instructed me that Ray should receive a warning for it.
50 I do not think I actually gave him the warning in the end,
51 because I felt he was fairly new as a Manager and it was
52 through naivety and stupidity, rather than out-and-out
53 fraud, if you like. Therefore, I did not actually give him
54 the warning in the end.
55
56 Q. But the purpose of him doing that, he was worried about
57 getting some stick over his food costs?
58 A. His food cost was out of line with where it probably
59 should have been, so he obviously panicked and stupidly
60 fiddled it, which, with a more experienced Manager, they
