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
