486
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

McDonald’s is being sued over a hot coffee spill, again.

This time, a San Francisco location is being accused of serving a “scalding” cup of coffee with an improperly attached lid, which allegedly resulted in the coffee pouring out on plaintiff Mable Childress’ body and causing “severe burns” after she tried drinking it.

The lawsuit, filed last week, alleged that the elderly woman is suffering from “physical pains, emotional distress and other damages.” The restaurant’s negligence was a “substantial factor” for her injuries, it alleged.

Childress also said in the lawsuit that the restaurant employees “refused” to help her, a point that the McDonald’s denied.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] JDubbleu@programming.dev 46 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Shareholders don't ruin someone's life in exchange for an extra 0.0001% return this quarter challenge (impossible)

[-] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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.

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