Now I don’t like criminals of any persuasion; personally, I’d utilise the Californian legal method of ‘three strikes and you’re out’ – meaning just three misdemeanours, no matter how small, and you’re locked up and the key thrown away. This would clean up most town centres overnight, whilst ensuring smaller class sizes in our schools and colleges.
However, you have to draw the line somewhere, and I think I’ve found that very place. It’s in the Netherlands, where a worker in a branch of McDonald’s in the northern town of Lemmer was sacked for putting a piece of cheese on a hamburger. The worker in question had added this extremely expensive dairy component to a colleague’s burger, even though that colleague had only paid for a regular burger, not a cheeseburger.
Happily, the Dutch courts are not quite as intolerant as the worker’s employer, saying that McDonald’s was wrong to fire her. “The dismissal was too severe a measure,” the district court in Leeuwarden said in a written judgment. It is just a slice of cheese.” A written warning would have been a more appropriate punishment, said the court, which ordered McDonald’s to pay the worker the salary for the remaining five months of her contract – a total of 4,265.47 Euros. McDonald’s was also ordered to pay costs.
Amazingly, McDonald’s maintained she had broken the rules, which prohibit any free gifts to family, friends or colleagues.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised: McDonald’s is an American corporation, and Uncle Sam does have some silly laws still floating about. Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa; it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset in Devon, Connecticut; and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a pop bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer. The defence rests its case.
ROD MILLINGTON
chief editor
