By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
CRANBOURNE/Dandenong RSL and Kmart’s head office have joined forces in expressing their disappointment at the lack of respect by the company’s Cranbourne store on Remembrance Day when it failed to observe a minute’s silence for fallen Diggers.
“I am disappointed,” Mr Wells said.
“You shouldn’t need instructions on Remembrance Day.”
Mr Wells hit out after the discount chain blamed an internal communications bungle for the slip up.
Other Cranbourne Park shoppers stopped to pay their respects as the Last Post was played at 11am.
“Sixty thousand Australians didn’t come back from this war and another 300,000 came back injured or hurt and that was in a nation with a very small population,” Mr Wells said.
“It doesn’t matter what we think about the war, that is a considerable amount of people who thought that it was their duty,” he said.
His sentiments were supported in an official Kmart statement about the bungle.
“We were deeply disappointed to hear that, for some reason, this (minute’s silence) was not observed in our Cranbourne Park store,” it said on Friday.
“There is no excuse for this and we would like to sincerely apologise to all of our team members and customers.”
The company said an email from Kmart head office was sent to all stores in the early hours of Wednesday 11 November outlining step-by-step instructions on how they should conduct the minute’s silence over their PA systems.
“Unfortunately Cranbourne’s administration manager was away and the emails regarding Remembrance Day were not read in time for the Kmart protocol to be followed by 11am,” a Kmart spokeswoman said.
But Mr Wells said the store manager should have known what day it was regardless of the instructions.
“It’s not about 1915/16 it’s about 2015 and the messages we draw from it now to recognise and celebrate those virtues and carry them forward,” he said.
Mr Wells has been president of the Dandenong/Cranbourne RSL for four years and said the minute’s silence on the 11/11 is “something we have to be conscious of and preserve”.
“Every time you let something like this pass it just slips away that little bit more.”
Several disgusted Kmart Cranbourne staff took to social media to vent their frustrations at what had happened.
