Slashdot Mirror
McDonald's Denies Prof's Claim Staff Attacked Him For Wearing Digital Glasses
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "In an update to a story posted on Slashdot earlier this week, McDonald's has responded to the claims of Steve Mann, a University of Toronto professor and augmented reality pioneer who says McDonald's staff in Paris assaulted him tried to pull off a computer eyepiece he's worn for decades, then threw him out of the restaurant. McDonald's confirms that Mann was ejected from the premises, but denies that there was a 'physical altercation' with staff or that they destroyed any of his property. That last claim is especially dubious, since Mann has posted photos taken from his eyepiece that show McDonald's staff ripping up a doctor's note that he showed them to explain his need to wear the device. The company still hasn't explained why Mann was removed from the restaurant, but Mann has speculated that it has a policy against recording."
This is a PR nightmare for McDonald's and they're only making it worse. Yes, it is a franchise operation and yes it is the responsibility of the local franchise owner to have his staff treat their customers with respect (even if they throw him out).
What they should do is promptly apologize and sent that staff on customer service training.
(But then again, what can you expect from McDonalds staff? If they were so smart, they'd have my job.)
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
there are signs on every McDonald's across europe (no pictures/no dogs/no smoking)
Yes, restaurants usually hate dogs on premises, but even in France, a restaurant can be fined from 150 to 450 Euros for refusing service to a disabled person because of their service dog (at least, that was the fine in 2003, that fine may have gone up since then). And in the end, it really doesn't matter what the sign supposedly says. A sign at the door can never supersede what the law of the country you're in dictates.
And it doesn't matter if the person at the food counter doesn't believe in someone's disability. Usually, a Medical Doctor is asked to make that call, not some fast food minimum wage worker. This point is important because many people can be considered legally blind even if they're only half blind, or have a form of blindness that doesn't make them appear blind to the casual observer.
The same goes if you don't believe someone's medical documentation. It's not your call to tear it up, even if you believe it's BS. If you have any doubts, just call the police and ask them to investigate it. Do not take the law into your own hands. A McDonald's T-shirt doesn't imbue you with special authority to just tear up other people's medical documentation.
They asked the "perps" individually, and they all said they treated Mr Mann with the utmost respect. No Kidding! What did you expect them to say? "Oh yeah, we beat that customer up."
No sign legalizes physical assault.
Great Intellect...
What's really bad about this is that a fast-food restaurant like McDonald's should, in theory, be the last place you might get food poisoning. The whole way FF restaurants work is by turning the preparation of food into an industrial process, and eliminating all the art from it (and all the variables), so they can maximize speed and profit. It's like an assembly line back there. Contrast this to a regular kitchen at a sit-down restaurant, where it's really all about human skill, and especially the head chef's skill in managing everyone. At a FF restaurant, everything's supposed to be dumbed-down so much that any moron can just follow the instructions and churn out Big Macs at breakneck speeds, in combination with the specialized equipment they use, so eliminating methods for contaminating foods should be part of the process. Of course, one main vector is by employees not washing their hands, but even so they usually wear gloves, so who knows what the problem is, probably a management failure in making sure employees wash hands and also wear gloves when handling anything.
I commend you on your proper Maine dialect, particularly the spelling of 'fok'.
Funny story: when I was a sixth-grader, I made it all the way to the Maine state spelling bee, which was hosted at UMaine Orono. I was living in Castine at the time, so it was a big deal to go to the "big city" (Bangor... oh the irony). The winner got a college scholarship. Anyway, they made us draw straws to determine the order of the spelling bee lineup. I got #1.
So, we're standing there on stage, before the curtain opens and they decide to throw us a practice round. I get the word 'banana'. Piece of cake. B-A-N-A-N-A. After the practice round, they whisk open the curtains, say some things to the crowd, and then we're off. Again, I get the first word. The judge says "The word... is 'biggert'."
"'Biggert'?" I ask.
"Yes," say the judges.
OK, I've never heard this one before, but... here we go...
B-I-G-G-E-R-T
"Wrong. The correct spelling of 'biggert' is B-I-G-O-T."
I was crushed, and humiliated, because I was out on the first word in the first round. My mistake was twofold:
1. I should have asked for the word in a sentence, and
2. The Law of Conservation of R's means that New Englanders take the R's out of some words, but they always end up putting them back in somewhere. For example, "Law and Order" is pronounced "Lohr and Ohdah".
Well, part of the problem is that people wear gloves -- and handle the same things they did before. So the gloves look clear but they aren't.....
Once again, An innaccurate headline fools most of the slashdot readers. Seriously folks, click on the article and just scroll down to the full McDonald's letter. It is seven sentences long and says essentially that the employees deny Dr. Mann's account but that McDonald's is still investigating. Dr. Mann has not yet responded to their queries. Nowhere is it even implied that they are denying Dr. Mann's claims.
I don't know the specifics about why this guy has a camera attached to his head, but it's a part of his day to day life and has medical documentation confirming that the device is attached to his head. I don't know what else the documentation says, but this is enough. Now, if the store in question didn't like it they should have asked him to leave, not tried to physical remove said item. Personally, I'd call the damage an assault and would press criminal charges.
Now, granted he may have wanted this device implanted for nothing more than his own amusement, no reason for physical assault by employees. Let's change the specs a bit based on a report I saw posted the other day on slashdot. What if the person assaulted was blind and the camera was used to generate a visual image that was sent directly to the optic nerve? What would it look like? Who's to say it wouldn't look just like this? So a blind guy goes into McDonald's using his augmented visual device where the employees destroy his device and throw him out of the resteraunt. No being this guy is from a foreign country and doesn't have a cell phone hooked into the local grid he's blind and on the side of the road asking for someone to locate some help for him. Next, since his glasses are now broken and are expensive 60K I believe to replace he no will spend months without vision while he files insurance paperwork to have the glasses replaced.
So your opinion is/would be, well he shouldn't have gone on private property knowing that someone might attack him? Maybe he shouldn't leave his house? Obviously this guy traveling to a foreign country is just a big loser, he should have stayed at home in order to protect himself. Yep, if that rape victim wasn't at the bar she wouldn't have been raped, it's all her fault.
Thanks for playing.
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