this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
1346 points (98.3% liked)

Today I Learned

17286 readers
194 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
 

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 -4 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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 (8 children)

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 -3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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?

[–] decadentrebel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] 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.

[–] 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!

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)