Day 118 - 01 May 95 - Page 39
1 What is being put to you is that it is generally accepted
2 in McDonald's that your meal, the one you get without
3 paying, is soft drink, sandwich and fries. Retired
4 superintendents or chief superintendents in the
5 Metropolitan Police may get an apple pie as well, but the
6 ordinary hourly worker just gets drink, fries and a
7 sandwich.
8 A. I do not think that is right. I think, generally
9 speaking, they can take what they want but we would like to
10 think that they will take no more than will satisfy their
11 needs.
12
13 MR. MORRIS: So, if any worker was sacked or disciplined for
14 taking whatever food they wanted that they could eat, then
15 they would have been wrongfully dismissed, in your opinion?
16 A. I do not know of anybody who has been; I have no
17 knowledge of it.
18
19 Q. If later it is shown -----
20 A. But I cannot answer that. I have no knowledge of
21 anyone who has been dismissed or disciplined over the food
22 policy.
23
24 Q. But if someone was, if it is later shown to the court and
25 proven, whatever, that somebody was dismissed for taking
26 more food than the management allowed, that would
27 contravene McDonald's policy, that they were sacked or
28 disciplined?
29 A. I cannot answer that question. You are saying "if"
30 and, to my knowledge, it has not happened.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Mr. Morris is entitled to ask a hypothetical
33 question, but again it seems there are two things. If a
34 manager says: "You shall only have a soft drink, fries and
35 a sandwich"; whether that is right or not, I can see that
36 he might think that it was indiscipline anyway if someone
37 helped themselves to some more. But without a rule of that
38 kind, would you think it ---
39 A. It would be very difficult.
40
41 Q. -- wrong to sack someone -- this is what you are being
42 asked -- if they took more than a soft drink, fries and a
43 sandwich?
44 A. The trouble, my Lord, I have with a hypothetical
45 question of that kind is I do not know all the
46 circumstances. If this is someone who has regularly done
47 something like that, then I think the manager would be
48 right to invoke discipline. But if it were a one-off
49 occasion and there was some reason why he did it, then,
50 clearly -- I cannot answer the question because it is too
51 hypothetical.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I suggest you leave it there. You do not
54 have to have a concession from Mr. Nicholson to argue that
55 if someone was sacked for taking a cup of coffee or
56 something, that is wrong.
57
58 MR. MORRIS: Maybe it would be a good time to break now?
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: We will resume at five to two.
