Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 25
1 is going wrong? Why aren't you doing it? Come, on,
2 faster, faster." It was just kind of -- and you just had
3 that battering at you all the time during the peak periods.
4
5 Q. When you said "hustle", what do you mean by "hustle"?
6 A. Just exactly that; it is kind of, you know, "keep
7 hustling, keep going, keep moving". When I worked on the
8 dressing the Big Macs, you have to replenish the pickle, so
9 you get a container of pickles, and you have to make sure
10 that that container of pickles was kept going. So you
11 would get to the point where, when the container of pickles
12 was empty, you would have to find -- because the pickle
13 tray, the containers, were on the trolley that served both
14 the Big Mac area and the quarterpounders, you would have
15 to, you know, find where the pickle tray was and go and get
16 the pickles to put it in. I mean, I found that when I was
17 -- sometimes, other members of the crew would come and
18 replenish it for you, but I found that when I was doing it,
19 there was a real sense of dread almost that I had, that if
20 you were reaching the bottom of the lettuce or the pickles,
21 you knew that there was going to be a gap that would happen
22 in your process of just dressing automatically; and I just
23 used to feel, "Oh, my God, you know, the lettuce is running
24 out, the pickles are running out. I must make sure that
25 I fill it up properly."
26
27 So there was just that relentless pressure to keep going.
28 That is partly the nature of the production line itself,
29 because, you know, you have cannot have -- the grill team
30 is going to be -- the man on the grill is going to be
31 producing his burger patties, and if you are not there then
32 he is going to run into problems. So, partly, you are
33 trying to work with your team, to make sure that the rest
34 of your team can keep going. But it is also because you
35 are getting that pressure from the managers, who keep
36 keeping at you.
37
38 Q. Right. Just one question about hustle. In terms of the
39 speed that people were expected to move having that effect
40 -- like you say about the pickles, you had to find these
41 in a short space of time?
42 A. You kind of had to rush around all the time. I mean,
43 there was a sense of rushing round. I mean in those peak
44 periods; at other points -- there would the lunchtime
45 period or the breakfast period sometimes. In the rest of
46 that shift, I mean, say, from 11 to 4, you would not be
47 doing that kind of rushing around all the time, but from
48 something like 12.30 to 2 o'clock, or something like that,
49 it would build up until, you know, midway at that point
50 there would be a real intense pressure to keep going. So
51 you would be rushing around in that period.
52
53 Q. Do you have any concerns about the speed that people are
54 moving?
55 A. I think, you know, the potential -- because there is a
56 lot of hot -- there are the friers that you do the
57 Fillet-o-fish and the fish in; there are hot vats of fat;
58 there are the hot grills; there are the things where the
59 buns are toasted, which are hot. So there is a potential
60 lot of quite hot equipment around and the hot cooking
