Day 188 - 15 Nov 95 - Page 49
1 people want to enjoy their lives. If you actually spend
2 your entire working life -- I mean, I think, you know, I do
3 it when I go and work for Yorkshire Television, I tell
4 myself that Emmerdale is the best soap opera on
5 television. When I stopped working for it, I might make a
6 more objective judgment about the nature Emmerdale. So it
7 is doing the same thing with working at McDonald's. But if
8 you are working for that kind of hours for that low pay,
9 you need to get considerably into the swing of it to keep
10 going to do that, whereas at Emmerdale I was actually
11 working for considerably more money and enjoying it, and
12 for less hours.
13
14 Q. Why do you say that the people who work long hours -- and
15 you know that it is disputed that Michael Metcalfe worked
16 anything like 92 hours in a week, so I do not want to enter
17 into that -- why do you say that somebody who works long
18 hours in McDonald's need not enjoy it, or cannot enjoy it?
19 I do not understand.
20 A. Well, because I think it is the pressure that they were
21 under; the amount of hours consistently, whether it was
22 that many hours or less than that; the pressure that they
23 were under; the intensity of it. It is kind of, you know,
24 it is not necessarily something that you could say you
25 would physically really enjoy doing day after day, the
26 grind of that. I think it is like any kind of production
27 line; it is not necessarily the best thing in life to do.
28
29 Q. So far as you could see, who that worked 90 hours or more
30 in a week was under that kind of pressure, apart from
31 Michael Metcalfe?
32 A. I think a lot -- I think that the lad Pervase, for
33 example, who stayed on after his shift to go through the
34 night close; I think a number of people stayed on and did
35 extra shifts. They were under that sort of pressure.
36
37 Q. But you saw that happen once?
38 A. Well, there is one record of that happening, and I saw
39 a number of people stay. I mean, people worked very hard
40 in McDonald's.
41
42 Q. Yes.
43 A. It is a very simple statement. People work extremely
44 hard under, during the peak hours, intense pressure. In
45 order to make them to do that, I think the Company needs to
46 produce this ethos of a way of life, rather than just
47 selling hamburgers.
48
49 Q. If you look over the page, please, page 14? Do you have an
50 objection to this what you call American way of life, the
51 American Dream?
52 A. I think I probably do think that saying that working in
53 a hamburger chain store and doing that, and dedicating
54 yourself to that as a way of life, is something that I do
55 not find particularly appealing.
56
57 Q. No?
58 A. Just quite straightforwardly.
59
60 Q. Do you see the next paragraph: "Thus quality service and
