Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 29


     
     1        report to the Floor Manager at the end of the shift and ask
     2        for permission to leave.  Without exception, the crew
     3        member was always told to do something, no matter how
     4        trivial, that would delay their departure beyond their
     5        shift, whether it was wipe down the tables, sweep up the
     6        area, etcetera."
     7
     8        You do say "without exception".  Are you saying that is
     9        what happened at the store all the time, or is that just
    10        what you saw?
    11        A.  What I mean is that -- I would not say that without
    12        exception no crew members are ever allowed to leave the
    13        store at the end of a shift.  What I am saying is that
    14        whenever I saw a crew member asking permission to leave at
    15        the end of the shift, he or she was always given some extra
    16        task to do.
    17
    18   Q.   What about clocking off; how did this fit into the picture?
    19        A.  Sometimes, the shift manager might be upstairs, and the
    20        person who was going to take over the during the grill or
    21        something would have arrived, so the ex grill team member
    22        would clock off and then go upstairs to see the Floor
    23        Manager and say he had clocked off and ask for permission
    24        to leave, and be told he could not.  So, sometimes they
    25        would clock off and go, and other times it would be when
    26        they were on the floor and they were seeking permission to
    27        finish at the end of a shift.  It would depend where the
    28        floor manager -- sometimes it would depend where the shift
    29        manager was, as to whether they clocked off first or
    30        afterwards.
    31
    32   Q.   Was this situation something you just happened to notice or
    33        thought about later, or was it something you studied?
    34        A.  It was something that I watched, because when I was at
    35        the store watching the process for the first couple of
    36        days, I saw it happen a couple of times, and
    37        I thought: "Oh, that is interesting", because somebody was
    38        wanting to go off on time and was told to go and do
    39        something.  So it was something that I then, therefore, set
    40        out to see whether it happened as a regular pattern, so I
    41        spent some time watching it and making sure that I observed
    42        that process.
    43
    44   Q.   Did you discuss this with the management at all?
    45        A.  Yes.  I mean, it was kind of the standard process
    46        really.  I mean, managers did not see it as a particularly
    47        big deal.
    48
    49   Q.   What did they say to you?
    50        A.  Just, "That is the way it is"; I mean, "That is the way 
    51        it is, that is just what we do, just make sure that the 
    52        crew know what is what", really.   I mean, you know, it was 
    53        kind of -- I did not have a specific question and answer
    54        where I would say to the managers: "Why are you doing
    55        this?"  We would talk about it in the general conversation
    56        of what we were talking about, when I would say: "That is
    57        interesting I saw that", "Oh, yeah. Well, you know, that is
    58        what you do really."  So I did not have a specific hard
    59        question and answer about it.
    60

Prev Next Index