486
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
486 points (96.0% liked)
News
23287 readers
3777 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'm honestly surprised this doesn't happen more often than it does, considering how much coffee McD's sells.
They're supposed to serve it at a safe temperature, and they usually do.
tbh I'm not sure how they managed to overclock their coffee maker. Did they just heat it up on the stove?
Yep, wife used to work for Starbucks. You're supposed to check/calibrate the thermostat on the machine on a regular basis so you get the coffee hot but not boiling, third degree burns hot. For whatever reason, it has to be done because the thermostats will gradually deviate from their initial settings. If you fail to check your thermostats, eventually someone's going to burn the fuck out of themselves with a hot drink. Water, which is the main ingredient in any coffee product, has an enormous heat capacity, and will absolutely fuck your shit up before you have a chance to do anything about it.
IIRC, McDonald's was either deliberately tampering with their thermostats or just failing to check them when that famous case went down, which was how they were found to be negligent.
They determined that the average customer stayed in a given McDonald's after ordering for x minutes, so they made the coffee so hot it couldn't be consumed within x minutes in an attempt to get people not to utilize their free refills on coffee. The coffee was so hot it was dangerous. All to save a customer from getting 2 more cents worth of coffee.
Shareholders don't ruin someone's life in exchange for an extra 0.0001% return this quarter challenge (impossible)
I thought it was so the coffee would still be hot by the time you got to wherever you were driving to. Your explanation makes a lot more sense though.
It makes a lot more sense if you presume malice. I put incompetence up top, followed by another explanation on this thread that the idea was to keep your coffee hot until you get to your destination.
I don't think I understand how it can be hotter than 100 celcius.
I'm not defending McDonald's here, they can rot.
Like, coffee is mostly water, and water boils at atmospheric pressure at 100c. Milk boils slightly more than 100. I guess the lid would pressurise the steam a little? Maybe the coffee grinds hold the heat far more than the water? I wouldn't have thought it would be diluted too much to make a difference.
I guess this is a stupid question, because it happened. But how can boiling water cause third degree burns in the quantity of 500ml? I thought it'd have to be much more than that and very prolonged?
Half a liter of boiling water will absolutely do damage, especially if you're restrained to a seat and can't get away from it. The water that comes out of your tap at home is probably only in the 140s, max, and that'll do some damage.
I'm also not certain anyone said the water was greater than 100c. I think the seminal case involved water that was 180-190 degrees F or something, and that it's standard to be closer to 150 or so, which is essentially as hot as your tap gets at home.
OK cool.
It was me that said it can't go above boiling, 100. I was just under the impression that it would burn of course, but third degree burns was surprising to me. Burning away the epidermis and nerves of the skin entirely seemed to me to require a much higher temperature. I guess I'm wrong, probably because of clothing holding the heat around the skin.
Thanks.
I know your question about the burns is already answered by others but its important to consider that the generally accepted optimal temp for extracting the flavour from coffee beans is approx. 90-95°C, and hotter gives the coffee a more 'burnt' or less favourable flavour, so your coffee shouldnt be that hot. Further to this if you drink your coffee with milk, the milk is frothed at about 65°C which would bring the overall temp down a little more.
This is all in an ideal world where Maccas actually gives a fuck if their coffee is 'good'
It's prolonged because the spill happened on clothing, so the boiling water is held on to the skin instead of just running off.
That makes sense. Thanks.
This person likely doesn't have a case. The reason McD lost the first coffee case was because at the time they were offering free coffee refills, so they cranked up the temperature so people wouldn't have time to sit and drink multiple cups.
Dozens of people had already been injured by this practice by the point the famous injury happened, and the courts had already warned McD to stop.
Your ignorance of the nuanced details of the case is showing