Day 216 - 06 02 96 - Page 18
DAY 216
1 well they are doing. If you don't think they are doing
2 very well, then you can put them back on probation, the
3 green badge period, and say, 'OK you are not up to
4 scratch. Pull your finger out or else, you know, you will
5 be out.' But in this store it operates OK. I think
6 everyone does get their pay rises here.
7
8 "A franchisee would make absolute millions. One out of
9 4 franchisees in America is a millionaire. One in 4. And
10 the stores in Britain are the big money stores. May not
11 have come to Britain in a big way because we are making too
12 much money for the company. The stores that they are
13 selling out to other people are in quieter areas like Hayes
14 and Kingsbury which are really quiet areas. I should think
15 eventually they will start selling off the quieter stores
16 like this one.
17
18 "Average 80 crew a store, and then 5 to 6 Managers on top
19 of that.
20
21 "I might be leaving because of the constant pressure. It
22 is the hierarchy system. For some things they want us to
23 run labour under 15 per cent. This is such a quiet store
24 and we just need foundation crew and we have always needed
25 to keep that foundation crew in no matter how quiet it is,
26 which is why labour slips up occasionally, slips up to 16,
27 16 and a half per cent. Labour is the big one, labour is
28 the only one which we hear about. A lot of customer
29 complaints here as well. It is so unfair. We get put
30 under pressure to keep labour down, so what they want us to
31 do is to have less bodies in the store, but if there are
32 less bodies in the store, customers are not going to get
33 served as fast as they should do. Managers are going to
34 have to tie themselves down to stations and work like crew
35 members just to ...."
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I assume, where there are dots, he either
38 breaks off or they cannot transcribe whatever was on the
39 tape? But I do not think it matters.
40
41 MR. MORRIS: Yes. "All day, I have been here for a few hours
42 and I have been running around like a crew member all
43 night, all day. Other stores that can take a lot of money,
44 the managers just stand there and do nothing. They can
45 afford to have crew doing all the different duties for
46 them, but if we had that then they would be right out the
47 ceiling to 18 to 19 per cent. Everyone has got to get
48 trained. So after about two months, a person will get
49 trained on the till. Some people are more competent to
50 learn things than other people, some will screw up, and us
51 managers cannot afford to stand there and look after one
52 person when the rest of the store is going to blows or
53 whatever. So a few times the till has been £86 down."
54 I think it is 86; it might be 80; it is more likely to be
55 80. "But what can you do? You have got to make sure you
56 get a chance to look after this person and not worry about
57 your customers, just to see what they are doing wrong, and
58 just hope you can put your foot down and try and get the
59 money up again. Why this constant pressure to make as much
60 profit as possible when they are losing more managers than
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