Day 121 - 04 May 95 - Page 54
1 Q. Not just Form H ---
2 A. Yes ---
3
4 Q. -- I am talking about the (indecipherable) on that as
5 well ---
6 A. -- and the records.
7
8 Q. -- the records?
9 A. Yes.
10
11 Q. Why should they dispose of them? You would still want that
12 information for Company purposes whether or not -----
13 A. Yes, well, there was another way of getting it. There
14 are more ways of getting that information than the records
15 that the regulations say that you should keep.
16
17 Q. I just wanted to come back to the meal allowance: A number
18 of our witnesses have said that the meal allowance was a
19 certain amount per every hour that they worked. That is
20 standard practice in the Company, is it not?
21 A. No. The practice -- the only regulation I can think of
22 said that they would, whatever they ate, would be free.
23 There were variations up and down the country (and I do not
24 know them all) of what managers did. But I all I can say
25 is Bob Rae had a very simple rule of thumb of ------
26
27 MR. JUSTICE BELL: We have heard that.
28 A. Yes, and that was what I always accepted as being a
29 reasonable allowance.
30
31 MS. STEEL: A couple of our witnesses have given amounts of
32 32 pence an hour and 35 pence an hour, that is during
33 I think the mid-80s.
34 A. Well, I do not know who your witnesses are, nor do
35 I know which restaurants they came from, but I can only go
36 back to when I did my month's in-store training. I worked
37 in three different restaurants, and there we were allowed
38 to take what we wanted as long as it was recorded and the
39 slip was handed to the Manager so that he could account for
40 it. It is called employees' meals.
41
42 Q. When you were doing in-store training, that was so that you
43 had a bit of background for your high up position; you were
44 not training to be a crew member, were you?
45 A. No, but then I was conscious of what all the crew were
46 getting. I worked with them as a crew person.
47
48 Q. Mr. Banoola Patel, do you know of him? He was a manager
49 in -----
50 A. No, I cannot say, no. There are a lot of Patels.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The Patels' tradition is that of shop
53 keepers, is it not?
54 A. Yes.
55
56 MR. MORRIS: In his statement he says he worked at seven stores
57 in the Midlands and in the North. Then worked at three
58 stores as Relief Manager, Blackpool, Maryhill Centre and
59 Dudley Street, Wolverhampton?
60 A. I visited all three stores. I do not know when he
