Day 175 - 18 Oct 95 - Page 31


     
     1        and work extremely hard; and it would mean that if someone
     2        was very experienced and had worked a particular area of
     3        the store, they could just about do that, they could just
     4        about keep up.  But if there was someone new or
     5        inexperienced or who just had not got the ability on that
     6        particular task, then they would not be able to fulfil
     7        their job properly.  So they might start -- if they were on
     8        the grill, for example, they might start cooking the meat
     9        inadequately or overcooking it, or, if they were doing the
    10        buns, they might start -----
    11
    12   Q.   Just pause there for a moment.
    13        A.  Sorry.
    14
    15   Q.   Give me an example with a beef patty, or some kind of
    16        product you have in mind, of what happened.  I understand
    17        what you say, that experienced crew could just manage to
    18        keep up.  But the inexperienced crew, what sort of things
    19        would happen?
    20        A.  They were the most likely to drop something, to -----
    21
    22   Q.   You spoke about undercooking or overcooking.  It may be so
    23        obvious to you, but not necessarily to me.  Do you see?
    24        A.  They might not use the grill correctly.  They might
    25        have been trained in a rush.  They might have been shown
    26        how to use the grill when it was very quiet and it is easy
    27        to cook the food, but once you have to start using
    28        McDonald's systems which are geared for continual working;
    29        in other words, if someone just said to you, "Can you go
    30        and cook four hamburgers", that is a fairly straightforward
    31        task, but if someone says, "I want you to cook an eight
    32        turn lay", which means every time you turn one group of
    33        meat over you put down another eight sets of meat, and keep
    34        going through that process -----
    35
    36   Q.   What did you call it?
    37        A.  An eight turn lay.  Every time you turn one set of
    38        meat, you have to lay another set on the grill.
    39
    40   Q.   How many does the grill hold?
    41        A.  The grill actually holds 12, but I think that
    42        McDonald's eventually stopped you doing 12 and started to
    43        cook 10, because they accepted that 12 was too many.
    44
    45   Q.   I have heard about that.  But how many have you got on when
    46        you are doing this eight turn lay?
    47        A.  Well, you can have 16 on, if you were doing an eight
    48        turn lay.  Sometimes, if it was really busy, they do what
    49        they called a "sear lay", which meant the meat went on
    50        every 20 seconds and they would have two people on the 
    51        grill cooking at once.  But I do not think you were 
    52        supposed to do that, as far as the rule book was concerned. 
    53
    54   Q.   I may be being extremely stupid.  The grill is big enough
    55        to get 16 on, physically, is it?
    56        A.  It is big enough to put more on than that, because it
    57        is supposed to take into account the fact that you use a
    58        certain amount of heat when you cook a row of burgers and
    59        the grill needs to recover by the time -- you move across
    60        the grill as you cook, and that is to give certain parts of

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