Day 204 - 15 Jan 96 - Page 28


     
     1
     2   Q.   And about food cost, things like that, food control?
     3        A.  Yes.  I mean, I would have mentioned these things.  So
     4        far as payroll goes, it was fairly mundane figure work
     5        task.  That would have probably been done by a Second
     6        Assistant or a First Assistant.
     7
     8   Q.   Do you mean the training would have been done -- sorry,
     9        I am not sure if I know what you mean.
    10        A.  The training -- the payroll was done on a Sunday
    11        morning.  So the likely method by which somebody would have
    12        been trained to do the payroll would have been, they would
    13        have sat with whoever was doing the payroll on that
    14        particular Sunday morning (which may or may not have been
    15        me) and just learned how to do it as a sort of paperwork
    16        exercise.  So it may have been me; it may not have been
    17        me.  I cannot honestly remember actually training Ray to do
    18        it.  More than likely it would have been a First Assistant.
    19
    20   Q.   But if it was done by a First Assistant, that would have
    21        been somebody that you trained, anyway?
    22        A.  Well, possibly, except that there was a previous
    23        Manager there before me who would have also trained people
    24        to do the payroll, or possibly might have done.  It was a
    25        cascade approach, so that they -- you know, it probably
    26        took 20 minutes or something like that to learn how to do a
    27        payroll; it was a matter of adding up three figures.
    28
    29   Q.   Can I just ask about page 2 of your statement?  In
    30        paragraph 4 ---
    31        A.  Yes.
    32
    33   Q.   -- you talk about your performance review that you gave to
    34        Mr. Coton where you refer to fiddled inventories, and you
    35        say that he had massaged his inventory figures for one
    36        month.  Can you just explain what you were aware of
    37        Mr. Coton doing?
    38        A.  As I remember it, he changed his closing stops to make
    39        his food cost figure look better.
    40
    41   Q.   Right.
    42        A.  Which I suspected was the case.  The following month
    43        I did an inventory where it became evident that the
    44        previous month's inventory had been false, drew it to the
    45        attention of my senior supervisor -- who I believe was
    46        Tim Taylor at the time.  He instructed me to -- well, he
    47        came down in fact on the following month to see if what
    48        I suspected was true.  He spoke with Ray.  He also
    49        instructed me that Ray should receive a warning for it.
    50        I do not think I actually gave him the warning in the end, 
    51        because I felt he was fairly new as a Manager and it was 
    52        through naivety and stupidity, rather than out-and-out 
    53        fraud, if you like.  Therefore, I did not actually give him
    54        the warning in the end.
    55
    56   Q.   But the purpose of him doing that, he was worried about
    57        getting some stick over his food costs?
    58        A.  His food cost was out of line with where it probably
    59        should have been, so he obviously panicked and stupidly
    60        fiddled it, which, with a more experienced Manager, they

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