Day 203 - 12 Jan 96 - Page 27
1 derived, I would have expected him to be there.
2
3 Q. You deliberately went down when he was not there because
4 you wanted to find things on him which you could use
5 against him to get him out as a Manager?
6 A. Absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense. That is all
7 I can say.
8
9 Q. Did you look through the paperwork when you went down
10 there?
11 A. I did look through the paperwork. That is right. I
12 mean, if I turned up on a Monday morning and someone was
13 doing the weekly work, I would, you know, join them. I
14 would have a look and see how they were getting on and what
15 they were doing, but I would also at the same time be
16 concerned not to disrupt what they were doing, so that it
17 became, you know, a more protracted exercise, and let them
18 get on with what they were doing. That is what I wanted
19 the Store Managers to do; I wanted them to get on with what
20 they were doing and not worry about me as a new
21 Supervisor. They should just, you know, get on with their
22 daily activities and I would simply assist with the shift
23 and would see how it went. I did not want -- I wanted to
24 see what it ran like every day of the week, you know, and
25 I wanted the Manager to be there at critical times so that
26 -- or I wanted to be there with the manager so that we
27 could just talk about it but not, you know, not in -----
28
29 Q. If they were unannounced visits, you said at the last
30 sentence: "At times it occurred to me he could have been
31 avoiding me". How could he avoid you if it is an
32 unannounced visit?
33 A. Is that on the same page, is it?
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, it is the very bottom of the page, the
36 same paragraph.
37 A. Yes, at times it occurred to me that he could have been
38 avoiding me.
39
40 MR. MORRIS: During your unannounced visits?
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What is being put to you, you see, it follows
43 immediately on the sentence before, and it is suggested it
44 does not make sense if you are concluding that he could
45 have been avoiding you because ---
46 A. All right, OK.
47
48 Q. -- he was not there when your unannounced visits took
49 place?
50 A. I think what I should add really is that I did
51 obviously, you know, if you have got a Manager who is not
52 in the store at critical times, you talk about it with that
53 Manager, and I spoke about it with Ray and, you know, we
54 scheduled specific occasions when we would both be in the
55 restaurant, but I think on those occasions actually pinning
56 the issues down and actually coming up with a conclusive
57 course of action was extremely difficult to do because, you
58 know, I would announce that I was coming, I would expect
59 them to have -----
60
