Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 63
1 that kind of matter that might affect the whole Company?
2 A. I have not asked the specific question, but part of the
3 information that is collated in the investigation is what
4 people were doing, what time of the day it was, was it busy
5 in the restaurant. You know, busy is a relative thing. A
6 £200 per hour could be busy with five crew on, whereas
7 £1,000 per hour would be quiet if you have 30 crew on, so
8 it is very relative.
9
10 Q. Have you investigated the practice of having people on
11 tills compete with each other to serve the most customers
12 in the shortest possible time to increase their till costs
13 in order to get some kind of badge or to be Till Person of
14 the Week, or whatever, have you investigated that and its
15 potential impact on safety?
16 A. Well, I certainly know back to my own Store Manager
17 days that we used to have competitions between people on
18 the till.
19
20 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause a moment. I think it is apparent
21 from what you have said so far that you have not done any
22 kind of survey to see whether more accidents occur at busy
23 times like lunch times?
24 A. We have looked in terms of time of day, but we have not
25 related it to volume of business.
26
27 Q. Nor, as I would therefore have anticipated, have you done
28 any enquiry to see whether there may be more accidents
29 during a competition period?
30 A. No, we have not gone and specifically looked. As far
31 as I know, as I said before, it has not come out of any
32 particular accident investigation. Maybe it is something
33 we should go away and look at.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: I would have thought ----
36 A. Even if it is just to prove, you know, there is not a
37 higher risk.
38
39 Q. Have you issued any memos or written any reports saying
40 that, in the intersts of safety, McDonald's employees
41 should work more slowly?
42 A. Is that the end of your question?
43
44 Q. Yes.
45 A. No.
46
47 Q. Why is that funny?
48 A. Why is it funny? Working more slowly can actually be
49 more dangerous than working what is considered to be a
50 normal rate of doing things. In fact, we have monitored
51 the time of day when accidents happen and the amount of
52 information we get varies from time to time, but
53 occasionally it looks like more accidents happen when the
54 stores are really quiet.
55
56 Q. It does not relate to staffing levels because there may
57 only be a quarter of the staff at those times; you would
58 have to actually analyse what the staffing was first and
59 whether your stores on a national basis were generally
60 under-staffing the stores for the work they are expected to
