Day 145 - 29 Jun 95 - Page 48
1 have to have buildings to store all these papers in?
2 A. I am telling you that if you allow paperwork to bury
3 you -- paperwork will bury you with the volume of it and
4 you just do not want all of that paperwork. You do drafts
5 of things that you are thinking of announcing as a policy,
6 you may circulate those drafts and get opinions, but you do
7 not keep reams of discussions and what you have. That is
8 not the way we operate.
9
10 Q. No, but you would keep the kind of final conversation or
11 whatever that came up to the decision?
12 A. No. No.
13
14 Q. And the reasons for that decision?
15 A. No, absolutely not.
16
17 Q. Is that because you do not want any outside organisation to
18 find out?
19 A. Absolutely not. I will leave it there.
20
21 MR. MORRIS: Can you think of any documents more useful to keep
22 than records of meetings where policies are decided and
23 evaluated and reports are given, as far as providing a
24 record of the McDonald's Corporation ----
25 A. Sir, I am telling you ----
26
27 Q. --- for people to be able to look back and say, "This is
28 what happened at that time"?
29 A. The only thing I would keep are things I think would be
30 useful to me in the future. You do not keep records of
31 discussions. We would spend all of our time dictating
32 these things, having them typed by a secretary. We do not
33 need those kinds of things.
34
35 Q. I did not ask for transcripts. I am talking about ----
36 A. You do not do business in a transcript fashion.
37
38 Q. I am not asking about transcripts. I am talking about
39 records of a meeting, who was present, what was on the
40 agenda and the decisions that were made. That would be an
41 extremely useful thing to keep to look back on to know what
42 the situation was at the time, would it not?
43 A. I have never lacked for information if I needed it to
44 make a current decision. I have never lacked for that. As
45 I mentioned to you, we have a great deal of longevity in
46 the Company. If I need to get my recollection on something
47 that generally does not happen that often there are lots of
48 contemporaries who have been around a long time whom
49 I consult with and do consult with.
50
51 Q. In your department, Human Resources, can you think of any
52 minutes or records of the kind we are talking about of
53 meetings where policies are discussed and decided or
54 reviewed, where those records will have been kept going
55 back a number of years?
56 A. The short answer is, no. There are not that many
57 policies at McDonald's. You seem to think that every day
58 we make a policy decision. It does not work that way.
59 There are very few policies. There are a lot of guidelines
60 but there are few policies at McDonald's. We believe in a
