Day 161 - 24 Jul 95 - Page 51


     
     1        and they do burn.
     2
     3   Q.   You have said that no abuse would be tolerated; no abuse
     4        from Managers against crew persons would be tolerated?
     5        A.  Correct.
     6
     7   Q.   What kind of things would not be tolerated, then?  I am
     8        saying that if a Manager is, you know, ordering a staff
     9        member about, a crew person, what sort of things are not
    10        tolerated in the way they do that?
    11        A.  The most important one is fairly treated, equally
    12        treated.
    13
    14   Q.   But if someone was pressurising a crew member, you know, so
    15        that they felt on the verge of tears, or something like
    16        that, that would not be tolerated by a Manager; is that
    17        OK?
    18
    19   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  We are in a difficult area, are we not,
    20        because can you expect a witness to say more than: "The
    21        important thing is to be fair"?  You may very well have to
    22        put pressure on people from time to time to do the job
    23        properly and efficiently.  The important thing is to do so
    24        fairly.  People have put pressure on them, and if they are
    25        feeling a bit vulnerable for other reasons at the time,
    26        they may get upset, whereas, normally, if it was a happy
    27        day for them, they would not do.  It is very difficult, is
    28        it not, to be more precise?  I see nothing wrong with
    29        putting a certain amount of pressure on people to do the
    30        job they are doing well.  If you put pressure on them all
    31        the time, then that may well become unfair.
    32
    33   MR. MORRIS:  Miss Tobin talked about that she never saw anyone
    34        allowed to leave at the official end of their shift. "The
    35        pattern was to report to the Floor Manager at the end of
    36        the shift and ask for permission to leave.  Without
    37        exception, the crew member was always told to do something,
    38        no matter how trivial, that would delay their departure
    39        beyond their shift, whether it was to wipe down the tables,
    40        sweep up the area, et cetera.  Sometimes the delay was only
    41        a couple of minutes, sometimes it could obviously involve
    42        considerably longer, perhaps half an hour."
    43
    44        Mr. Rampton asked you, if someone was kept on for an
    45        unnecessary reason, he asked you about that, and you said
    46        it would affect morale, it would affect job productivity.
    47
    48        So is it the case that there were necessary tasks that
    49        people at the end of the shift could do, and were always
    50        asked to do something which the Manager thought was 
    51        necessary, that may have been missed out by other people, 
    52        or just a task that had to be done? 
    53        A.  If somebody is on the counter and he is finishing at a
    54        certain time and somebody has to take over from him, that
    55        person would be starting at the same time when the other
    56        one is finishing, so one has to come to the floors which he
    57        is going to work at and come to the counter; and we could
    58        not just ask the customer to wait at that moment until
    59        somebody else comes -- we are going to close this one,
    60        because that employee is due to go home.  So we explain to

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