Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 20
1 stores come into the kitchen when there was a problem with
2 the amount of product coming from the grills and
3 immediately start laying 12 pieces of meat under the clam,
4 as it was the only solution."
5 A. Can I stop there a second? The reason it was -- you
6 did get a lot problems with it, because on a Saturday when
7 it was very busy, it is not like normal meat where you cook
8 it for few minutes. The meat used to cook for 40 seconds,
9 and if you were very busy you would be producing a run of
10 12 regulars (which is hamburgers) every -- it took 40
11 seconds for the buns to toast, 40 seconds to dress them,
12 but, in between that time, the meat had gone down. So
13 I think it took about a minute to do each run. So you had
14 a minute to lay 12 pieces of meat, clean your area round,
15 salt 12 pieces of meat, take them off the grill and put
16 them up, before you had to get the next one down, the way I
17 remember it.
18
19 So it was a very hectic process, and you were doing this --
20 you could perhaps be doing this between 12.00 and 2.30; you
21 could perhaps be doing that solidly for that time, two and
22 a half hours of just doing that every minute, you know, 60
23 runs an hour. If you had a piece of raw meat coming out of
24 the side, and it would be either that you did not see it
25 because you were too busy or, if you did see it, a common
26 practice would be to just turn it over and let it go brown
27 for a second. But you were never sure whether it was raw
28 inside or not. It was just flipped over and then put on
29 the burger.
30
31 I did occasionally throw them away. If I ever saw it,
32 I threw them away, you know, because like people mentioned
33 it, you know, it is not worth the problem of people coming
34 back. But a lot of them did use to go over, the edges
35 missed with raw meat on. It happened a lot, because it was
36 -- there was no margin for error under the clam; the
37 slightest error, and a piece of meat would stick out, or
38 they would overlap and the whole run would be affected.
39 You would not say, "Let's throw that way"; if the whole run
40 was affected, you would have 12 buns you have just dressed
41 ready to go, to go over, and if you missed out on those 12
42 regulars going over, they might run out of food in the bin.
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: When you say "going over", what do you mean?
45 A. Sorry, going over -- you would be in the back, cooking,
46 and then you had the responsibility to take the tray of
47 food which someone had put the bottoms of the buns on and
48 you would put them on top, to give to the person on wrap
49 and call; and the person on wrap and call would wrap them.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: Is that going over?
52 A. Yes, sorry, going over the counter. Is that
53 understandable? Is that clear?
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes. Just pause a moment. But did the
56 problem of undercooking, if there was one, arise from the
57 fact that when you had 12 on rather than nine, you were
58 forced nearer to the edge of the platen and the ones or one
59 near the edge might not be sufficiently cooked in the 40
60 seconds it had been there?
