Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 24


     
     1        grill team leader and to the Floor Manager.  It was at the
     2        height of the lunchtime rush, when the pressure to keep
     3        producing is intense.  Again, both grill team leader and
     4        Floor Manager shrugged.  The Floor Manager suggested that
     5        by the time the Big Mac sauce was on, nobody would ever
     6        taste it."
     7
     8        You said in that paragraph that the pressure to keep
     9        producing is intense.  How does that affect, if things go
    10        wrong, how crew perceive what is happening at the time?
    11        Explain what you mean there?
    12        A.  Yes.  I think at the moment in the peak periods of
    13        custom, you have to keep -- the grill teams have to keep
    14        producing the Big Macs and the quarterpounders and
    15        everything, just keep getting it through to the front, so
    16        that it can be served; and it is a very tight schedule that
    17        the Big Macs are produced on, or the burgers are produced;
    18        that, you know, they are put on to the grill, whizzed off
    19        the grill, put on to the person who has to put the buns and
    20        the burgers together and dress them, and pass them through
    21        to the person who is going to wrap them; and those buns
    22        just keep coming and those burgers just keep coming, and
    23        are shoved up and are put up to the wrapper.  Now, if you
    24        were to discard four buns because they were mouldy or
    25        something, that would wreck the whole way that the --
    26        production line keeps going; it is like a production line,
    27        that everything just has to keep going; and, if you
    28        actually stop it in some way, then what would happen is
    29        that the person who was wrapping, the person who is
    30        responsible for selling the buns on to the customers would
    31        yell at the grill: "Come on, keep those buns moving, keep
    32        them moving", and there is kind of, you know, constant
    33        pressure to keep that production line going.  So that it
    34        was easier for the crew to actually ignore something like
    35        the blue mould or the rotten lettuce and keep the
    36        production line going.  If they stopped it and said, "I am
    37        sorry, I am going to have to go and get another bag of
    38        lettuce", or something, then the reaction from everyone
    39        else down the line was: "Just keep it coming, keep it
    40        coming.  What is wrong, what is wrong?  What has gone
    41        wrong?"  It would just be that intense pressure all the
    42        time, to keep the production line going; so that all the
    43        those people were just, you know, bobbing away and could
    44        not find the time to stop.
    45
    46   Q.   What are the managers doing while this is happening?
    47        A.  That is where the pressure comes from.  The managers
    48        are standing there kind of, you know, cajoling people,
    49        clapping hands: "Come on, move it, move it."  I mean,
    50        particularly in Croydon, there was a lot of "Come on, move 
    51        it, move it, come on, come on, hustle, hustle hustle"; and 
    52        it is just that intense pressure all the time to keep 
    53        everything going.
    54
    55        If something does stop and it breaks down, then I saw
    56        managers just yelling quite abusively at the staff, you
    57        know, just telling them really to keep -- just, you know,
    58        just -- not swearing; it is kind of, you know, it was not
    59        using four letter words or anything; it was just
    60        this: "Come on, keep going.  What the hell is wrong?  What

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