I know, I know. I’m riffing on the same rant again, but as long as there are little old ladies, drive-through coffee shops, the United States, and lawyers, these blog pieces will unfortunately keep coming.
Sigh …
Hard on the heels of the latest McDonald’s coffee tragedy, comes another, similar story of unnecessary pain and suffering. (Or another, unnecessary story of similar pain and suffering. Pick one.) The basic data remain unchanged—little old lady, drive-through coffee, third-degree burns, huge lawsuit—only the usual suspect unusually changes to Dunkin’ Donuts. Long story short: a three-million dollar settlement for an improperly attached lid.
And then this bonehead comment from the head of the law firm prosecuting the case:
“Restaurants still have failed to learn their lesson to prioritize customers’ safety. We hope this settlement sends a message to all restaurants and franchisees: this isn’t complicated; train your employees properly and prioritize customer safety.”
John Morgan, founder of “America’s Largest Injury Law Firm” Morgan & Morgan
Now we all know that lawyers are paid primarily to advocate their version of reality rather than any approximately accurate version of it, but, still, let’s examine that statement a little more closely.
This isn’t complicated
John actually (and very unexpectedly) hits it right on the nose here: how complicated can it be? But instead “complicated” as in having the customer to also check that the lid to their fresh, hot, don’t-have-the-time-as-a-retired-person-to-get-out-of-the-car coffee is, like the person about to drink it, seated properly? And, even if it isn’t, is this really deliberate negligence on the part of Dunkin’ Donuts or just the ubiquitous shit (that) happens?
Restaurants failing to learn their lesson
Again, another incisive, spot-on observation here given the extremely high number of coffee incidents (three) over such an incredibly short timespan (about three decades). Granted, not all these heinous crimes probably made it to court (or to the headlines), but even conservatively assuming that one in a thousand did, then that’s only 3000 such thigh-master disasters over those 30 years.
Oh. Wait a minute. Three thousand is actually a pretty big number. But, do you know what an even bigger number is?
It’s number of cups of coffee sold in drive throughs in the US. Exact numbers are naturally hard to come by (especially for the little-old-lady demographic as well as for those unwilling to do any real research for their blog), but even the quickly googled estimates conflated by some very dubious back-of-the-envelope calculations provide a scary amount of perspective.
According to E-Imports, there are about 150 million coffee drinkers in the States, who consume, on average, about three cups of coffee per day. About 50% of those coffee drinkers report getting at least some of their caffeine via a drive through each day, giving us a lower estimate of 75 million cups of drive-through coffee sold per day in America or something a little north of 820 billion cups over the span of three decades. (And, again, remember that this is a conservative estimate.)
Overall, that works out to not only a lot of exploited plantation workers but also puts the annual risk of an American having a crippling car-coffee catastrophe in the neighbourhood of 1 in 27 million. And, to also provide that last number with some perspective, here are the risks associated with some other all-American activities:
- getting killed by an icicle or a flying champagne cork: both around one in 18 million per year;
- getting killed by a cow: about one in 16 million per year;
- getting hit by lightning: less than one in a million per year, but with a 90% survival rate;
- getting killed in any gun-related activity: about 1 in 7000 per year, with suicides making up slightly more than half the total; and
- voting for Donald Trump as president: less than one in two, both times.
Let’s see if ol’ John himself learns a lesson from this take on reality or merely more potential targets for a lawsuit and more bonehead comments of the day for my blog.
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