Day 196 - 06 Dec 95 - Page 25
1 leaflet. At the moment the only relevance I see of this is
2 indirect, that it shows an obsession, you may say, with
3 cost cutting, and then you say that can throw some light on
4 attitudes towards employment percentages, which is what
5 this part of the case is all about. If I went into
6 McDonald's and got two thirds of a slice of cheese instead
7 of a whole one, being a new visitor or a comparatively new
8 visitor, I would not think anyone wrong at all. I would
9 just think, well, that is what McDonald's burgers are.
10 I am not saying this is unimportant, but if it has an
11 importance it is in that direct way rather than any
12 business of conning the customer, because that is not what
13 you have alleged and you are trying to justify.
14
15 MR. MORRIS: Over the page on page 5 I want to ask you a general
16 question. You said that you were taught to dock people's
17 money so they got less money, they did not get paid for all
18 the hours they worked by altering their clock cards. You
19 were taught by this as an Assistant Manager by Mark Davis
20 and monitored by him. What was your relationship with Mark
21 Davis throughout your period of employment?
22 A. I like to think we got on as well as we could do under
23 the circumstances. We worked together for a long period of
24 time. As my Supervisor there were times when we did not
25 agree and we fell out but, on the whole, I like to think
26 that we had a fairly good working relationship. I liked
27 him as an individual. I like to think he liked me as an
28 individual. We spent a lot of time together.
29
30 Q. But for most of the time he seemed to be your superior?
31 A. For really all my career with the company he was one
32 position above me.
33
34 Q. Maybe I will ask a different question. Which people in the
35 Company were most responsible for teaching you management
36 skills?
37
38 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is obvious, is it not? Unless there is
39 some challenge, it is obvious that Mr. Coton was trained as
40 a Manager under Mr. Davis. I assume, unless I am
41 contradicted, that if someone comes as a trainee Manager in
42 the store the person who is responsible for his training is
43 Mr. Davis. In fact, in Mr. Davis' file there is a
44 reference to one of the matters in his favour having
45 trained Mr. Coton up to Store Manager. I am not stopping
46 you making the point. I am just telling you the way it
47 appears to me and wait and see if there is any dispute
48 about it.
49
50 MR. MORRIS: The last point on the food watering down issue.
51 You said by 1991 it had been stopped, but you were still
52 expected to achieve impossible food costs targets. That is
53 correct?
54 A. That is correct, yes. One of the main problems I had
55 at that time was a new Supervisor who, as I said, I did not
56 have the same relationship as I had with Mark Davies,
57 expecting us to stop what we had been doing officially but
58 still hitting the same targets. So we were expected to do
59 the same things unofficially but if we got caught we would
60 be disciplined for doing it as opposed to before when it
