Day 124 - 10 May 95 - Page 24
1 you have been guilty of any disreputable behaviour which
2 might ---
3 A. Absolutely.
4
5 Q. -- come out and, since you were an employee of McDonald's,
6 reflect poorly on the Company in some people's eyes?
7 A. Correct.
8
9 Q. "Is there anything the Company ought to know about
10 you" ---
11 A. Absolutely.
12
13 Q. -- "which you really ought to tell us", that sort of thing?
14 A. Absolutely.
15
16 Q. Just about everyone who has been interviewed is familiar
17 with that kind of question.
18 A. Right. In moving in to a position of responsibility,
19 the Company wanted to know that they were not promoting
20 someone that had engaged in scandalous activity that was
21 going to not only embarrass the -- later embarrass the
22 individual but embarrass the Company.
23
24 Q. Could I ask you: To what extent, if at all, at the time we
25 are talking about, 20 years or so ago now, polygraph tests
26 were used by employers generally?
27 A. It is pretty common.
28
29 Q. Forget employment where security is important, government
30 agencies or things of that kind, which might have been a
31 rather different category, but in the context of the normal
32 employer/employee relationship?
33 A. My recollection, my Lord, was that it was pretty
34 common, not only in our industry, but in general. It was
35 fairly inexpensive to do. Usually, firms or companies
36 would contract with an outside vendor to conduct the test,
37 and for a nominal fee per person, you know, you would
38 receive a little, you know, assurance, additional
39 assurance, that you were employing people that were of good
40 character.
41
42 MS. STEEL: You would expect or hope for negative answers to
43 those questions? You would hope that someone was not going
44 to reel off a whole load of offences that they had
45 committed?
46 A. We were hoping that our judgment on the individuals
47 that were taking the test were good. I would say, by and
48 large, most of the people that we were moving into
49 management, most of them passed the test with flying
50 colours. Some passed with some grey areas, but it was not
51 significant enough for us to change our mind.
52
53 In the case of employees that we suspected of wrong-doing,
54 going into those tests, we suspected to find something. If
55 we had, for instance, experienced the loss of products in
56 our restaurant or had money missing from the till, we would
57 try to, as best we could, isolate those occurrences, try to
58 narrow down the field to individuals that we thought might
59 have committed those acts and then asked them to take a
60 polygraph test.
