McDonald's Settlement

How much do you think the multi-national conglomorate and multi-multi-multi-billion dollar corporation McDonald's would pay out if one of its store managers were killed by a person who rammed his car into the storefront? Well, if you guessed $0, you'd be right.

The store manager in question, Cynthia Molino, a mother of four, was promoted to the role of manager at the Mount Ephraim branch, from crew member, and had not yet completed her 90-day probationary period mandatory for managers. So what! They refused to pay out the benefits a manager was entitled to, alleging that they had no legal obligation since she was uder probation.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that McDonald's has finally agreed to settle after a lawsuit was filed two years ago. The amount that the family was seeking? Two year's pay - $40,000. That's $40,000 total; $20,000 a year she was to be paid. How is McDonald's paying a store manager a non-livable wage? How much was actually paid out? According to two of Molino's children, all of $25,000.

On the bright side, McDonald's did pay for the funeral costs and set up a bank fund for the public to make donations to the families involved [two other workers were killed in the crash]. That bank fund raised $25,000 in the two years it has been open. Great, right? Wrong. The money never made it into the hands of the family. It took another Inquirer story in June to get the word out that they money had never been handed over. But then, McDonald's, looking like a clown, tripled the amount in the bank account and $25,000 checks were handed out to each of the three victims' families.

"I'm still mad at McDonald's," said Patti Mickel of Maple Shade, who works for Subaru of America in Cherry Hill. "We haven't gone to McDonald's at all since I first read about it. I've been encouraging my 16-year-old daughter and her peer group that [it] is not the kind of place where you want to work."

Their food sucks anyways.

So who was this madman who drove into the McDonald's and what happened to him? Well, Frank R. Nastasi, pleaded guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide in September. The popo says that he rammed into the storefront at approximately 100 MPH. He is to be sentenced on January 7th, and under his plea agreement, he faces a maximum of 10 years in jail. That's 3 1/3 years per life. Isn't the system grand?

Outrageous.