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.

Perhaps one of the few segments of the workforce that has as little grounding in reality as admin is marketing. Unfortunately, however, reality too often plays into their weirdly warped worldview. (Or is shaped by it.)

Case in point is the latest invention of some too clever marketing-type that I saw the other day: limited-edition toilet paper. Welcome to bonehead commercialization of the day.

Now if there was ever a poster child for first-world problems, this is it. If not what toilet paper has become in general. Remember, we’re talking about something disposable that You Wipe Your Butt With. Do we really need all the colours? Or all the different flower motifs? Or every thickness from two-ply to princess-and-the-pea?

But, if all that useless choice isn’t enough for you, you can now really wow the friends and family with limited edition TP that’s … um … just white? No seriously. Look at the picture. The actual sheets themselves are white with a hint of dark blue outlining the pillows. (But maybe that’s the point. Can you even buy white toilet paper anymore?) Everyone else will be soooo jealous that they never got their hands on it in time. And they’ll never guess that you shelled out a whole 4.95 EUR for a 10-pack.

C’mon …

I understand that it’s marketing’s job to find creative ways to sell us things that we don’t really need or want, but are necessary for their company’s, ahem, bottom line. But, very recent history has shown that there are much more efficient ways to drastically increase toilet-paper sales to effectively make any brand limited edition.

Hmm …

Ok, on second thought, maybe we should just let marketing do its job …

Here we go again …

Once more the American legal system is punishing businesses for underestimating the creative stupidity of their customers. Remember the famous 1994 McDonald’s coffee case where McDonald’s was sued successfully for selling “defectively manufactured” (i.e. hot) coffee that was “unreasonably dangerous” because an older lady managed to spill an entire cup of it on her lap in a car?

Well, as reported by CNN, Round 2 of the bonehead court of the day took place in Florida yesterday …

The culprit? Another McDonald’s. The scene of the crime? Another McDrive. (Drivebys were never so dangerous …) The weapon? An “unreasonably hot” 2019 Chicken McNugget that burned the thigh of a four-year old girl when it fell out of her hands and got wedged in the seat beside her. The verdict? Liability on the part of both McDonald’s and the franchise owner Upchurch Foods in addition to negligence on the part of the latter. (The jurors, however, agreed that there was “no inherent defect in putting McNuggets on the market and no breach of implied warranty.” Phew …)

Really? C’mon …

I’m not necessarily trying to assign any blame here. Lawyers are well known as mouthpieces paid to win cases, regardless of what relationship the latter have to either common sense or reality, neither of which are really legal concepts. And we’ve all been there as parents, where a split-second, industrial-strength brain fart can result in serious harm.

Just suck up some personal responsibility and don’t try to blame Ronald McDonald for not looking after your child when you didn’t. We’ve all done it, but that still doesn’t mean that feeding your toddler in the backseat of the car is necessarily safe nor that the backseat is a licensed restaurant. And even though the reality is that fast food is often unreasonably tepid, there’s still the reasonable expectation that it could be hot, especially when it comes out of a deep fryer somewhere north of 160 ºC and we are unreasonably demanding that it be served to us now because we’re at the drive through.

Ok, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that those Chicken McNuggets were indeed unreasonably hot and that the parents were not unreasonably inept. At least two questions come immediately to my mind.

First, what is the definition of “reasonably hot”? (Or, in the case of the 1994 coffee, “reasonably dangerous”?) It seems like a lot of literal pain could be avoided here if this one simple quantity could somehow be spelled out explicitly. However, part of the problem might be that “reasonably hot” is not a simple quantity and seems to be context-dependent. For instance, when talking about the weather, it being reasonably hot outside is usually a warning that it’s too hot. By contrast, someone who is pointed out to you at the singles’ bar as being reasonably hot usually isn’t and definitely isn’t the morning after.

Second, even if we do manage to figure out what a “reasonably hot” Chicken McNugget is, how do McDonald’s & Co. even begin to implement this? Has anyone ever investigated the thermodynamics of a Chicken McNugget so that McDonald’s knows how long they have to wait after it comes out of the deep fryer before they can sell it? Or would each and every McDonald’s have to hire someone to fire one of those forehead thermometers at each and every McNugget every 30 seconds or so?

Hmm. Actually not a bad idea. There’s probably more than a few million thermometers going spare now that the corona pandemic is over …