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."

Comments

hey ronald...

[tommeke100]

release the security cams!

And looks like someone failed hamburger college!

Re:hey ronald...

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:hey ronald...

[magarity]

That's food poisoning, and I kid you not I have gotten food poisoning twice from McDonalds (both times in the USA).

Maybe you did and maybe you didn't; a lot of "food poisoning" type bacteria have fairly lengthy incubation times. People always assume it was the last meal they ate but often it was really the meal before or even something from the day before.

Re:hey ronald...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.....

Re:hey ronald...

[ArsenneLupin]

Well, part of the problem is that people wear gloves -- and handle the same things they did before.

That reminds me of an old joke:
The Waiter and the Spoon

I took some friends out to dinner last week, and I noticed a spoon in the shirt pocket of our waiter as he handed us the menus. It seemed a little odd, but I dismissed it as a random thing. Until our busboy came with water & tableware; he, too, sported a spoon in his breast-pocket. I looked around the room and all the waiters, waitresses, busboys, etc. had spoons in their pockets.

When our waiter returned to take our order, I just had to ask, "Why the spoons?"

"Well," he explained, "our parent company recently hired some Andersen Consulting efficiency experts to review all our procedures and after months of statistical analyses, they concluded that our patrons drop spoons on the floor 73% more often than any other utensil at a frequency of 3 spoons per hour per workstation. By preparing all our workers for this contingency in advance, we can cut our trips to the kitchen down and save time...nearly 1.5 extra man hours per shift."

Just as he concluded, a "ch-ching" came from the table behind him, and he quickly replaced a fallen spoon with the one from his pocket. "I'll grab another spoon the next time I'm in the kitchen instead of making a special trip," he proudly explained.

I was impressed. "Thanks. I had to ask." "No problem," he answered, then he continued to take our orders. As the members of my dinner party took their turns, my eyes darted back & forth from each person ordering and my menu. That's when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a thin, black thread protruding from our waiter's fly. Again, I dismissed it; yet I had to scan the room and, sure enough, there were other waiters & busboys with strings hanging out of their trousers.

My curiosity overrode discretion at this point, so before he could leave I had to ask. "Excuse me, but...uh...why, or what...about that string?" "Oh, yeah," he began in a quieter tone. "Not many people are that observant. That same efficiency group found we could save time in the Men's room, too." "How's that?" .. "You see, by tying a string to the end of our, eh, selves, we can pull it out at the urinals literally hands-free and thereby eliminate the need to wash our hands, cutting time spent in the restroom by over 93%!"

"Oh, that makes sense," I said, but then thinking thru the process, I asked, "Hey, wait-a-minute. If the string helps you pull it out, how do you get it back in?"

"Well," he whispered, "I don't know about the other guys; but I use my spoon.

Yeah...

[SomePgmr]

Ok, McD's... let's see the security footage.

You're in the court of public opinion and it ain't lookin' good.

Re:Yeah...

[sabri]

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.)

Re:Yeah...

[EdIII]

Wait, Rodney King was armed during his beating?

Yes.. he had two of them.

Maybe they thought he was the

[slackware 3.6]

Terminator or some other evil cyborg from the future.

Steps in a McDonalds experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought of the McDonalds experience as follow:
1. You know their food is shit before you start.
2. It tastes like shit while you eat.
3. You feel like shit afterwards.
4. (They) Profit

Now they've apparently added steps:
1.5 They treat you like shit while in store

Nice to see they're still working to grow the general shity-ness of the experience.

An Ridiculous Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

MacDonald's hostility to photography, like that of Starbucks, is ridiculous.

Modern digital cameras easy to conceal. Besides, anyone with genuine interior design talent could visit one of their business, eating a burger while seeming to be doing no more than casually glance around. They could then go away and recreate what they saw almost as precisely as a photograph.

These blunders are probably the result of lawyers getting involved. A lawyer will attempt to deny anything that he thinks the other side can't prove. MacDonald's lawyers apparently aren't aware of just how much got recorded.

One suggestion to Slashdot readers. If you're in a situation like this, do your best to use your phone to record what's happening without being noticed. That'll help the good guy in the dispute. You might even practice what you should do, from starting up a camera app to perhaps slipping it in a shirt pocket with the lens able to see everything that's happening.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien

Re:McD in Paris?

[outsider007]

I would eat there. But only so I could order a 'royale with cheese'

Re:there are signs

[stephanruby]

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.

No Kidding!

[chrismcb]

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."

Re:there are signs

[EdIII]

A McDonald's T-shirt doesn't imbue you with special authority to just tear up other people's medical documentation.

But.. But.. what about Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac?

Re:there are signs

[bky1701]

No sign legalizes physical assault.

Steve's credibility problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I am skeptical of Steve's side to all of this.
Note the following:

*I see many commentors claiming that Steve's apparatus is screwed to his skull and is necessary. Many of Steve's students have routinely seen him walking around without a computer. I have never seen any evidence that he has any sort of implants, and am pretty certain he doesnt have stuff screwed to the skull. Notice how he doesnt clairify these things.

* As far as I can tell, his single entry blog is the first place I've seen him refer to his HMD as Eyetap Digital glass. This is undoubtadley for him to associate with the Google Glass project.

*Take a look at his wikipedia entries under "gloggee". He has a penchant for making up neologisms an claiming to ha e invented things that he wasnt really involved with.

Br

[Anonymous Coward]

av

--
o

Re:Live in Reality

[FatLittleMonkey]

I read a number of newspapers and Internet news sites, and this is the first I've heard of it,

MSNBC: http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/cyborg-steve-mann-details-alleged-mcdonalds-assault-889595

Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/07/17/cyborg-discrimination-scientist-says-mcdonalds-staff-tried-to-pull-off-his-google-glass-like-eyepiece-then-threw-him-out/

The Huff: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/steve-mann-attacked-paris-mcdonalds-digital-eye-glass-photos_n_1680263.html

NYT Daily: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/cyborg-professor-claims-assault-paris-mcdonald-digital-glasses-article-1.1116246

Canadian news: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/07/17/tech-mann-digital-eye-glass-assault.html and a few others.

Plus El Reg, CNET, Network World, and the usual tech news sites. And the story is the second top google-news results for "McDonald's".

It's also the second article on Slashdot itself about the incident. http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/17/0335227/man-physically-assaulted-at-mcdonalds-for-wearing-digital-eye-glasses

Re:there are signs

[Genda]

There's an old conversation about the word "Yankee". If you're in Mexico, anybody north of the border is a Yankee. If you're over the border, its someone from above the Mason-Dixon line. If you're above the Mason-Dixon line a Yankee is someone from New England. If you live in New England, you know a Yankee is some one from Maine. You go to Maine looking for a Yankee and they'll tell you its an old hard tack farmer out in the country. Finally, if you go up to Maine, find yourself an old hard-tack farmer, and ask him where you can find a Yankee? He'll tell you "Well, yuh take thet ruhd theh, noth 'bout 12 miles, till yuh come tuh the fok, n'beh right, go 'nother 8 miles till yuh get t'the end. When the ol gent with the shotgun comes out t'meetchuh, why thet's a Yankee. Eyuh."

2nd Report of Getting Physical at Same Location

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the 2nd report of physical assault by McDonald's staff at that same location to hit the news:

http://onyoursi.de/2011/08/whats-your-problem-assaulted-for-taking-a-photo-of-le-menu/

McDonald's insists Sheldon wasn't touched during the confrontation. But Sheldon remembers it differently.

"She grabbed me by my arm and jacket and threw my back against the open door, all the while grabbing at different parts of my coat with one hand and pinning me there with another," Sheldon told me.

And McDonald's explanation of what occurred does not match the photo. If lying about the situation seems to work, then of course the employees at that location are never going to feel like assaulting customers has any consequences.

This isn't the first time

[abarrow]

Dr. Mann has had this sort of thing happen to him his entire professional career. Here's one from 2002
http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/airport-security-vs-cyborg-steve-mann

Re:there are signs

[raddan]

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".

Re:I stand behind McDonalds

[Miamicanes]

If you REALLY want to have some fun, try calling any major corporation (Comcast, Sprint, Microsoft, Marriott, whomever) and announcing to the CSR that you're recording the call for training and quality purposes. Assuming they don't hang up on you INSTANTLY, the conversation isn't going to progress beyond "I'm sorry, we can't continue until you stop recording."

Pointing out to them that THEY'RE doing the exact same thing to YOU will get you nowhere. Telling them that you'll discontinue recording when THEY do will get you hung up on. Telling them you'll quit recording when they tell you how to obtain your own copy of their recording later will get you hung up on. Simply put, no corporation will EVER voluntarily or knowingly allow you, a peon, to record your conversation with them, even though they feel perfectly entitled to record their conversation with YOU, and use it against you if it suits them.

There should seriously be a law granting consumers the automatic reciprocal right to silently record any conversation where the other party announces that the call is being recorded & makes it clear that you do NOT have the option of continuing the call unless you agree to let them do it.

Re:Live in Reality

[iamwahoo2]

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.

Re:there are signs

[Lando]

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.