Day 214 - 01 02 96 - Page 60
DAY 214
DAVID ROBERTS, Cross-examined:
1 A. That is right, yes.
2
3 Q. I suppose some people who are wanting fast food can walk so
4 that they can see and in a second they can see how long the
5 queues are and they can make the decision whether they go
6 through the door or not. I understand all that. So it may
7 be self-regulating to some extent. But is it not a fact of
8 life that if you are working in a fast food store, a
9 McDonald's store, and you see the queues beginning to get a
10 bit longer, you are going to try to work a bit faster, if
11 you can, to cope with what you see as the build up of
12 customers?
13 A. The way we do the scheduling is that the people are
14 obviously going to work at the same level all the time. We
15 do not want them to, you know, work very hard for two hours
16 over lunch time and then in the afternoon they are so
17 tired, you know, they cannot do anything. The whole idea
18 is that you have enough people there for the business and
19 they work at the same level. They will not have to speed
20 up because it will become dangerous.
21
22 Q. Yes, I understand that. I think what is being put to you
23 is that if you are short-staffed, for whatever reason, so
24 that you do not have the actual number of people you need
25 at a Saturday lunch-time in order to cope with the
26 anticipated trade, if you are down for whatever reason,
27 i.e. "under-staffed", there is going to be hidden pressure,
28 at least, on staff to try to work a bit quicker to serve as
29 many customers as possible nevertheless. Do you agree with
30 that or not?
31 A. I agree to a small extent but I -- in my experience,
32 when you are short of staff, there are other things that --
33 you know, there is always ways that you can help the
34 situation. For example, in the normal circumstances, a
35 Manager may not necessarily be helping out directly, or
36 there may be other people not helping out directly and they
37 could assist. But, in my experience, the crew do not tend
38 to suddenly increase their productivity by 100 per cent
39 because they are short. If anything, over a sustained
40 period of time, then they are not going to do that if the
41 store is short of crew. It would have the reverse effect.
42
43 MS. STEEL: People get tired?
44 A. Exactly.
45
46 Q. And they would not be able to concentrate?
47 A. If that was to happen.
48
49 Q. Yes. That is right, is it not?
50 A. People would get tired, yes. If they had to work
51 harder than they normally did -- I am not saying that that
52 happens, but if they did.
53
54 Q. Then they are more likely to get burnt, are they not?
55 A. If they did.
56
57 Q. Yes. So there is a connection between burns and
58 understaffing?
59 A. I would not say necessarily that if people -- if it is
60 understaffed people would get burnt; no, I would not say
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