McDonald’s worker fired for giving extra slice of cheese

Nobody ever said working for McDonald’s would be easy: According to a report in the Telegraph a Dutch court just ruled in favor of a woman who claimed wrongful termination after being from McDonald’s. The reason given? She gave a coworker buying a sandwich an extra slice of cheese.

The worker was fired at a McDonald’s branch in the northern town of Lemmer in March last year for giving a colleague on a break a more expensive cheese burger instead of the hamburger she had paid for.

McDonald’s claimed she had broken the rules, which prohibit any free gifts to family, friends or colleagues.

“The dismissal was too severe a measure,” the district court in Leeuwarden, in the north of the Netherlands, 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 the fast-food chain to pay the worker the salary for the remaining five months of her contract – a total of 4,265.47 euros (£3,660) [ED NOTE: About $5908 in the US aka one f-load of burgers WITH cheese].

I don’t know what’s more surprising about this story: That McDonald’s would be simultaneously so stern and so callous or that McDonald’s employees have contracts. I’m pretty stunned by the latter. You mean you have to sign employees to a contract to flip burgers and contain themselves from not molesting the ceramic statue of Ronald McDonald? Is this a belabored process like when an athlete signs with a new team in free agency? “Tammy was a great employee, but when she asked for a three-year deal, we knew we had to let her walk, even if it meant giving Burger King a stacked roster of fry grease-changers.”

[Telegraph]

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