Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 69
1 A. I have to say, I did it, you know, on shifts myself.
2 On a Saturday, if I was running the front, I would try and
3 get as many of the breaks out of the way before 12 o'clock,
4 before the busy time came. So if they started at 10.00 and
5 they were going to have a 45 minute break, you needed to
6 get them off quickly so they would be back before the
7 people who started at 11.00 -- before the people who
8 started at 11.00 could go on their breaks. Do you see what
9 I mean? So, the people who start at 10.00, if you send
10 them straightaway, they could be back by 11.00 and,
11 therefore, if they were back by 11.00 you could send the
12 people who came on at 11.00 on their breaks and you could
13 have -- not all of them, but, you know, perhaps half of
14 them out of the way before 12 o'clock, before the rush
15 between 12.00 and 2.30, you know. You would normally get a
16 quiet period of, say, 10 or 15 minutes between 2.30 and
17 3.00, and then it would all start over again. It would all
18 just start building up again.
19
20 Q. Just a final point on breaks, it has been said by witnesses
21 for McDonald's that when people's breaks were not the full
22 45 minutes, it was always through their own choice; do you
23 have any comment on that?
24 A. Some of them used to take shorter breaks. So, you
25 know, it was just, it was good for us. If you were the
26 Manager, you would think, "Great, they want to take a
27 shorter break". Sometimes it would be -- you could ask
28 them -- you could say: "Go upstairs, that is it, fair
29 enough, go on your break, but if I flash the lights you
30 will have to come down". You used to go round -- if it got
31 busy, you would run round the back and flash the upstairs
32 lights in the crew room and they would be expected to come
33 back down. That was the usual -- that is what most people
34 did. You know, if you sent someone on their break and it
35 was too busy, it suddenly got busy, you get them back down
36 again, you know, because if the Supervisor came in and saw
37 you did not have enough crew and you said, you know: "He
38 is upstairs on his break", he would not say: "Ah, that is
39 all right then". He would asked you why you had not got
40 him downstairs working again.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause a moment. Yes.
43
44 MS. STEEL: If you turn to page 195 under "Sean Richards,
45 Second Assistant", it says, "should change his attitude
46 towards crew. Can use hours scheduled to advantage over
47 crew". Would you agree with that complaint or disagree?
48 A. I would agree with it, just because he used to, he was
49 -- some people feared him quite a bit, you know, and he
50 had the threat, because he was doing the schedule, he had
51 the threat of giving you whatever hours he fancied giving
52 you, and people knew that there was no come back on him.
53 So, you know, they normally did what he asked. If he asked
54 them to stay on, they would -- you know, if you did not
55 stay on he probably would not have done anything, I do not
56 know, but the threat was implied there, that if you do not
57 stay on -- he was quite an aggressive chap and I think he
58 just used to bully them into it, really, just staying on
59 some people.
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