Day 172 - 12 Oct 95 - Page 48


     
     1        building and in fact because of the positioning of the crew
     2        room and the way that the air conditioning system flowed
     3        around the building, it was impossible to believe that air
     4        could be supplied to certain parts of the building to which
     5        it was supplied without it being supplied to the crew
     6        room.  I had to wear a sweatshirt and overcoat just in
     7        order to be able to sit in the crew room during the break.
     8        There was nowhere else to go for the break.
     9
    10        11.  I normally got one break of 45 minutes which I would
    11        take at 10.00 a.m., after three hours of work.  However, if
    12        for some reason I missed the break at 10.00 a.m. I did not
    13        get another chance to take a break until 2.00 p.m. at the
    14        earliest.  It might happen that I missed the 10.00 a.m.
    15        break because the store was short-staffed and busy.  If
    16        conditions were hot, it was quite possible that people
    17        would dehydrate.  People were often told that they could
    18        not stop to have a drink, and it was a fairly regular
    19        occurrence that people would become dehydrated.  I myself
    20        once came very close to fainting, although I am not a
    21        person given to fainting and I had never felt like that
    22        before.  It was entirely due to the fact that I was not
    23        allowed to drink.  Drink breaks were generally cancelled or
    24        not allowed when the store was busy; for example, if a
    25        person wanted to go at 1 o'clock and there was no backing,
    26        there was no way he would be allowed to leave even for two
    27        minutes.  In my experience of the restaurant trade in
    28        Ireland, chefs were always allowed to have drinks if
    29        required, even at peak times.  This is considered to be of
    30        great importance in catering work since people who work
    31        close to the stoves can very easily dehydrate.  The
    32        situation could certainly have been remedied if there had
    33        been more staff at the store, although there is probably an
    34        optimum number of staff who could work in that kitchen at
    35        any one time.  I was amazed by the general lack of space in
    36        the McDonald's kitchen.  It should have been much bigger.
    37        I worked for five years in hotel maintenance, traveling
    38        round various hotels and restaurants in Ireland, repairing
    39        and maintaining kitchen equipment.  I have therefore seen a
    40        large number of kitchens in my time and I believe I am in a
    41        very good position to judge how adequate a kitchen is.  The
    42        size of the McDonald's kitchen was totally inadequate.  For
    43        the quantity of staff and turnover, it was unbelievably
    44        small.
    45
    46        12.  The staff allocation functioned on the basis that each
    47        station in the store - for example, kitchens, lobbies and
    48        backroom - required a set number of employees in order to
    49        be operative.  It was therefore not difficult to see when
    50        the store was understaffed at a given moment.  They should 
    51        have had more staff instead of overworking people - for 
    52        example, although there were several grills in the kitchen 
    53        for the preparation of hamburgers, McDonald's never used
    54        all these grills at any one time, even at the busiest
    55        moments.  They operated on the basis of keeping the bare
    56        minimum going but requiring the employees to work extremely
    57        fast.  I could not say that there was certainly a serious
    58        long term understaffing policy, but there was a slight
    59        understaffing squeeze.
    60

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