Day 196 - 06 Dec 95 - Page 21
1
2 Q. Why is that?
3 A. Because he would actually be graded on not just how one
4 particular store did, but on how his group of stores were
5 performing. Although each individual store would have a
6 set of objectives and a set of targets, as a three store
7 group he would have a set of targets as a Supervisor. So
8 if you had two stores that were doing particularly well but
9 one bad apple, you got two Managers that are doing well,
10 but one not doing well but the Supervisor would be getting
11 the stick more for the store that was doing badly than the
12 two that were doing well. So what happened is you would do
13 transfers of items or paper transfers of stuff possibly to
14 help out. I have done it both ways where people have
15 credited me with things to help me and I have credited them
16 with things to help them.
17
18 Q. To achieve the targets for that store?
19 A. To achieve the target.
20
21 Q. How did you know that the Supervisor who was talking about
22 that was under pressure?
23 A. It was obvious from meetings we held, the fact that we
24 were spending a lot of time in each others company, the way
25 that we were expected and instructions were passed down to
26 us. It would actually be said that, "I am under pressure
27 to achieve" whatever, "these figures, as a group we need to
28 do it." So it was an obvious thing that everyone was under
29 pressure all the way down.
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31 Q. Coming on to the closes, when would a normal close expect
32 to finish at the Colchester store? Was it the same under
33 Mark Davis or under you in terms of time roughly the same?
34 A. I would say the timings were more or less the same.
35
36 Q. When were they expected to finish approximately?
37 A. A normal close -- the trouble with the Colchester store
38 was that because of certain restrictions all our
39 deliveries, all our main deliveries, came when the store
40 shut. So we tended to do our closes longer I suppose than
41 some others, but an average close would get out 1.30,
42 possibly 2 o'clock. An average I would say would be about 1
43 to 1.30.
44
45 Q. Did some closes go on longer for any reason?
46 A. Because we shut at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays
47 obviously that then puts another hour on to those closes.
48 About once a week or so you would have a slightly later
49 close to do some particular job, it might be something that
50 was on a rota that needed cleaning that could not been done
51 until the store closed, or you had a big delivery coming.
52 So you might have one a week that would go on possibly an
53 extra hour than that. We tended to have visits from Head
54 Office people I would say once a month, once every six
55 weeks, which would mean an all night close or a very late
56 close to 4 o'clock in the morning or right through to, say,
57 6 the next morning. At one stage we were doing a monthly
58 stock take overnight where we would come in and it would
59 just be Managers, not crew members, we would work right
60 through the night to do the stock take once a month.
