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
