1423
submitted 1 year ago by maniajack@lemmy.world to c/til@lemmy.world

During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald's hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca -5 points 1 year ago

You want to appeal to shock and emotion because logic isn't on your side.

[-] Cabrio@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

No, I'm appealing to the reality of the situation because your willful ignorance has no bearing on it.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca -4 points 1 year ago

I think you're ignorant to some facts:

  • Boiling water is dangerous.
  • Boiling water is something we regularly encounter.
  • People understand the need to be careful to avoid horrific injuries.
  • Accidents happen.
  • Lack of healthcare puts people in a desperate situation where they have to sue someone to pay their medical bills when they have an accident.
  • The link above this discussion is to a personal injury law firm which is incentived to promote the idea that suing people to pay medical bills is good and proper. A little sus isn't it?

You're only at the level where you're having an emotional reaction to the horrific nature of the injury due to an accident. You feel like it's heartless to not have sympathy for someone who was injured in such a way.

I'm at the level where I'm sympathetic for people that have similar accidents without a big corporation nearby that they can sue to pay their medical bills. Just google random images of third degree burns (if that's your thing) and understand that unlike the images you linked to, a lot of the people in the other images went bankrupt because of those injuries. So who deserves the most sympathy?

Why are you so heartless that you don't care about people that suffered these injuries and didn't have McDonald's pay their medical bills? Emotion emotion emotion!

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

Why are you so heartless that you don't care about people that suffered these injuries

If self awareness was a disease you'd be the healthiest person alive.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca -4 points 1 year ago

Just developed the ability to do critical thinking. Many people suffer third degree burns in a variety of accidents. They are horrific. Why should only the people that these injuries in the vicinity of a corporation have their medical bills paid? Because it benefits law firms like the one that wrote the article above?

Consider the source of the information you get on the internet (personal injury law firm). Consider the motives (make suing others over accidents more socially acceptable). Consider the information they're leaving out in constructing a narrative (people commonly handle boiling water and people do suffer from third degree burns because of it). Be wary of emotional appeals (the photos of the injury).

Set aside emotions and think. Where is the real problem? Lack of health care resulting in a society that's overly litigious. Not something you're going to hear from a personal injury law firm so there's no money behind that kind of message is there?

[-] Cabrio@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

That's a lot of words to miss the point.

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

I must say, these are the types of replies I'd like to see. It allows me to re-examine everything on the incident from another side and possibly form a better take.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

The best take you can arrive at by simply sticking a thermometer into a cup of coffee. I did that this morning... 88C! Then laugh at how ridiculous this meme about McDonald's being evil supervillains for serving coffee at "insane" temperatures of 80C.

The reality is, that's just the temperature of coffee. The lesson here is don't trust what personal injury lawyers say and be careful with coffee... it's hot!

[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I'll give you another angle. I'm familiar with safety hazard analysis in industrial settings -- HAZOPs and LOPAs, if you've heard of them. By our guidelines, this event would be a significant violation. This would be considered giving a disability to a member of the public, which ranks as either the highest severity or second highest severity incident possible (varies depending on the risk matrix in question).

Considering the liquid can cause severe burns in 2 seconds, was served without a lid, and was given to someone in a moving vehicle, the likelihood of this incident would be incredibly high. Taken together, an industrial analysis would call for at least 3 independent layers of protection to prevent the incident from occuring, where each layer reduces the likelihood of the event by a factor of 10. There are no protections or safeguards in this situation.

Mitigating this risk would be incredibly high priority. It's at the point where you might shut down, i.e. stop serving coffee, until you have robust protections in place. I can't stress enough that what McDonald's was doing is riskier than you'll see in industrial plants.

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

A semi quantitative risk analysis (LOPA) for industrial safety would find this event to be absolutely unacceptable.

So there's the logic you're looking for. Industry safety standards would flag this and demand several additional protections.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

My kitchen has a stove I can burn myself on, knives I can cut myself with. Oh and a kettle that sometimes contains boiling water.

Does my kitchen not meet your "semi quantitative risk analysis (LOPA) for industrial safety"?

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

It's likely that you can injure yourself with those, yes, but the injuries that are most likely to occur are not high severity. The more significant injuries are less likely to happen, and there are things we do to make that the case. Kettles have a closed top, as do saucepans. There are procedures to use knives so that you don't hurt yourself, and if you're chopping something tricky, you typically pay heightened attention to it.

The risk assessment is all about likelihood and severity for scenarios, and the purpose of safeguards is to reduce that likelihood to meet an acceptable risk tolerance. With McDonald's here, they not only had a very high severity incident, but they also didn't really take steps to reduce the likelihood. They could have served it with a lid. They could have used a larger cup than necessary so the water level was low. They could have added the cream and sugar before giving it to the customer, so there was no need to do anything except hold it and drink it.

In other words, they were completely reckless. And if you behaved recklessly in your kitchen, it would also be a red flag in these safety analyses. Do you typically transfer boiling water when it's in a container full to the brim? Do you watch TV while chopping tricky food with blunt knives? Do you leave your floor wet if there's a spill? What about cranking your stove up to max your everything you do, or using your oven without oven mitts?

You're being very purposely obtuse by suggesting third degree burns are comparable to burns from briefly touching the stove. Feel free to continue doing so however, it only highlights the difference between serious safety analysis and being a contrarian jackass.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

I'm saying that when I carry my Mac & Cheese over to my sink to strain the water out of it I could spill the water on my groin and suffer similar injuries this woman suffered. You're pretending that danger doesn't exist because you want to pretend the 80C liquid at McDonald's is somehow magically more dangerous than the 100C liquid in my pot of Mac & Cheese.

And BTW, I actually measured the temperature of a cup of instant coffee I made... it was 88C. Millions of people make instant coffee every day.

You want it to be true that people that say "coffee is supposed to be hot" are somehow dummies that don't understand the real facts that you found by "doing your own research on the internet." You want this so much you're willing to ignore actual facts that you could easily verify by simply sticking a thermometer into a cup of coffee.

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

are somehow dummies that don’t understand the real facts that you found by “doing your own research on the internet.”

Oh the irony of a random person on the Internet saying this to a chemical engineer

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

LOL, a chemical engineer that's not capable of sticking a thermometer into a cup of coffee to verify what the temperature of coffee is.

this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
1423 points (98.5% liked)

Today I Learned

17871 readers
12 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS