Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 19
1 well have fixed that problem so that when they did go, the
2 whole lot went, but I distinctly remember when the RCD was
3 first installed, the real problem of it was I was in the
4 kitchen on the first day it was installed and the grills
5 tripped out twice and we did not have any indication of it,
6 because the heat lights came on at the bottom of the grills
7 and that was the only real indication there was any
8 problem. They were normally on anyway when you were busy
9 because you were laying 12 pieces of meat instead of nine
10 so the grills were finding it very difficult to recover.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause. When you talk about the heat
13 lights, you mean just the same as a domestic oven when it
14 is heating up the light is on, when the oven goes off
15 because the thermostat is -- it has affected the
16 thermostat; then if you open the oven to baste your
17 joint ---
18 A. It will come back on.
19
20 Q. -- if you ever eat a joint or meat of any kind, the
21 temperature drops and the light comes on again and then it
22 goes off later when the oven is up to temperature?
23 A. Yes.
24
25 Q. Is that what you are talking about?
26 A. Yes. There were three probes to it. It was not just
27 one probe. There were three lights for each separate
28 platen, and that was -- I think they were a probe for the
29 front, the middle and the back of the grill, and they would
30 show that these areas were heating up. Like you say, the
31 thermostat would say it is heating, but the thing is it
32 would show it was heating and there was no power coming in,
33 so the temperature was permanently dropping so the
34 thermostat would just say it was heating all the time.
35
36 I remember that problem with it. It was a nuisance anyway
37 when they tripped out afterwards, especially with the HVAC,
38 because you had to reset everything. But the problem with
39 the RCDs initially was that you could not see the fact that
40 the food was coming up more and more uncooked. It was a
41 gradual thing; it took three or four runs to notice it; and
42 it was happening because the pneumatic still worked.
43
44 MR. MORRIS: I will read on: "A more significant problem with
45 the grills in the Bath store was that the clam shells were
46 smaller than normal, I assume due to lack of space.
47 Officially, we were never expected to cook more than nine
48 pieces of regular meat under one clam (grills) (normally 12
49 pieces were cooked), as it directly contravened the
50 Company's policies on beef integrity. During busy periods,
51 especially Saturdays, it was common practice to lay 12
52 pieces of meat under the clams, as nine pieces were simply
53 not adequate for the volume of business. The lack of space
54 on the clam gave little room for error, causing more
55 overlapping of meat under the clam and more displacing of
56 meat outside the clam. These errors occasionally seriously
57 affected the quality of products being served. It was
58 generally accepted by Managers in the store that laying 12
59 pieces of meat was often essential to keep up with volume.
60 I had, myself, witnessed a Supervisor in charge of many
