Readers share beefs with McDonald's

[modrepub]

John Grogan | Readers share beefs with McDonald's

By John Grogan

Inquirer Columnist

McDonald's has a McProblem.

Make that a super-sized McProblem.

The swelling headache that has trickled its way up the corporate ladder to McDonald's headquarters in Illinois comes compliments of our famously pugnacious region.

Metro Philly, a lover of underdogs if there ever was one, is giving the world's largest burger-chain one Big Mac attack of a migraine. All because of an unpaid piddling $40,000 death benefit. Can we all spell McStupid?

This town loves its greasy fast food, but not nearly as much as it loves the little guy. And Cynthia Molino was the classic little guy. The wife of a volunteer fireman and mother of four worked two jobs to keep food on the table. Her odyssey as a member of the working poor led her to a South Jersey McDonald's restaurant where she earned about $7 an hour. After two years, the restaurant promoted her to manager of the graveyard shift.

It was in that capacity that she was working at 4:30 a.m. on May 15, 2002, when a Cadillac crashed through the restaurant at speeds exceeding 100 m.p.h., killing Molino and two coworkers.

And now McDonald's has a public-relations debacle on its hands, not because of the deaths, but because of its actions after the deaths.

A probation loophole

As all of metro Philly now knows, Molino's widower, Louis Molino, filed a lawsuit earlier this month, seeking to force McDonald's to honor his wife's company life insurance benefit, equal to two years' pay. The suit claims that McDonald's refused to pay because Cynthia Molino, although a two-year veteran, was still on 90-day probation as a manager and thus ineligible for the death benefit.

The suit adds that McDonald's also refused to pay out the smaller benefit Cynthia Molino would have been entitled to as a non-managerial line worker had she not been promoted.



link: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/chester_county/8996908.htm

What a joke. Take some time and email McStupid.