Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 25


     
     1        is going wrong?  Why aren't you doing it?  Come, on,
     2        faster, faster."  It was just kind of -- and you just had
     3        that battering at you all the time during the peak periods.
     4
     5   Q.   When you said "hustle", what do you mean by "hustle"?
     6        A.  Just exactly that; it is kind of, you know, "keep
     7        hustling, keep going, keep moving".  When I worked on the
     8        dressing the Big Macs, you have to replenish the pickle, so
     9        you get a container of pickles, and you have to make sure
    10        that that container of pickles was kept going.  So you
    11        would get to the point where, when the container of pickles
    12        was empty, you would have to find -- because the pickle
    13        tray, the containers, were on the trolley that served both
    14        the Big Mac area and the quarterpounders, you would have
    15        to, you know, find where the pickle tray was and go and get
    16        the pickles to put it in.  I mean, I found that when I was
    17        -- sometimes, other members of the crew would come and
    18        replenish it for you, but I found that when I was doing it,
    19        there was a real sense of dread almost that I had, that if
    20        you were reaching the bottom of the lettuce or the pickles,
    21        you knew that there was going to be a gap that would happen
    22        in your process of just dressing automatically; and I just
    23        used to feel, "Oh, my God, you know, the lettuce is running
    24        out, the pickles are running out.  I must make sure that
    25        I fill it up properly."
    26
    27        So there was just that relentless pressure to keep going.
    28        That is partly the nature of the production line itself,
    29        because, you know, you have cannot have -- the grill team
    30        is going to be -- the man on the grill is going to be
    31        producing his burger patties, and if you are not there then
    32        he is going to run into problems.  So, partly, you are
    33        trying to work with your team, to make sure that the rest
    34        of your team can keep going.  But it is also because you
    35        are getting that pressure from the managers, who keep
    36        keeping at you.
    37
    38   Q.   Right.  Just one question about hustle.  In terms of the
    39        speed that people were expected to move having that effect
    40        -- like you say about the pickles, you had to find these
    41        in a short space of time?
    42        A.  You kind of had to rush around all the time.  I mean,
    43        there was a sense of rushing round.  I mean in those peak
    44        periods; at other points -- there would the lunchtime
    45        period or the breakfast period sometimes.  In the rest of
    46        that shift, I mean, say, from 11 to 4, you would not be
    47        doing that kind of rushing around all the time, but from
    48        something like 12.30 to 2 o'clock, or something like that,
    49        it would build up until, you know, midway at that point
    50        there would be a real intense pressure to keep going.  So 
    51        you would be rushing around in that period. 
    52 
    53   Q.   Do you have any concerns about the speed that people are
    54        moving?
    55        A.  I think, you know, the potential -- because there is a
    56        lot of hot -- there are the friers that you do the
    57        Fillet-o-fish and the fish in; there are hot vats of fat;
    58        there are the hot grills; there are the things where the
    59        buns are toasted, which are hot.  So there is a potential
    60        lot of quite hot equipment around and the hot cooking

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