Coffee, Tea or Sue the Bastards
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <4/12>

      When it comes to coffee that is to hot, MacDonald's should have known. What they should have known is that there were 700 complaints about coffee that is too hot. Therefore they should have not had coffee that was that hot.
      Fine, let us review the bidding. Some fifteen years ago MacDonald's shops stopped the practice of having a sign saying how many billions of burgers has been sold. It got up to around 30 billion burgers when they dropped the idea and just added the Sagan-esque slogan, Billions and Billions sold.
      Although in regard to the national debt this is a small number it is beyond the comprehension of most people. Most people, being innumerate, can not convert a number as large a a billion to a meaningful term. But 700? That they can understand.
      So MacDonald's should have known their coffee was to hot because there were 700 complaints. I will have to admit that all of the rest is speculation as there are no numbers available for what I am going to say. As such, if you do not like science fiction, please move on to the next article. If you are willing to make reasonable speculation please stay with me.
      It is reasonable to assume that MacDonald's has sold one billion cups of coffee? If you will agree with that let us assume there were one million complaints that it was too hot. That means 1/10 of one percent of the buyers thought it was to hot. You work for a living. If one time out of a thousand your boss had a problem with your work would you not be happy?
      But the matter is different from that. If there were one thousand complaints then there would be only one complaint for every one million sales. One in a million. Do you not wish your boss were that forgiving? Do you not wish your odds were that good on your state lotto? Is not one in a million a common phrasing a long shot that only a movie hero can achieve?
      But 700 out of a billion is less than than that. It is not much less than that but the presumption that MacDonald's has only sold one billion cups of coffee is also absurdly low.
      Any rational company tracks the complaints, ranks them by seriousness, and deals with them. Certainly if there had been 700 severe scalding complaints MacDonald's would be clearly at fault. If there had been 700 sever pain complaints requiring medical attention, MacDonald's would have been certainly on notice. That there were 700 complaints of "to hot" is meaningless to such an operation. Rather this one of a kind injury comes out of no where is what is of interest.
      The speculation comes in when we have to guess as to the other complaints. Certainly the ones regarding every other item on the menu are going to be at least as numerous including the one claiming to find a bone in what they claim to be fish by those claiming to be Catholics. I have gotten food there. My complaint? To much ice in the coke even though it is what the vendor recommends and in fact requires.
      We do not know the other complaints. We do not know the number of complaints that the coffee was too cold. Why would there be complaints of it being too cold? Given the stupidity of the person claiming it was too hot most anything is possible including expecting it to be hot an hour later after it has been half diluted with a cream substitute that has been stored cold.
      Add to those complaints about everything that comes from operator error, the hot plate was set to hot or to cold or shut off or served right from the brew at boiling before it could cool to 180 and you have complaints that mask if not dwarf these mere 700 out of billions and billions sales. These are truly lotto odds. (For you compulsive gamblers out there, this is hyperbole, your lotto odds are even worse. Do not take heart.)
      The entire "should have known" because of a trivial number of complaints is not based upon the number of complaints but upon the inability of most to deal with the number of sales of the company. It is a large number. It is a number that invite imaginative comparisons such as, the number sold would stretch from here to the moon and back again and the complaints are the size of a step in your house.
      And yet a jury verdict was delivered upon such grounds. God help the jury system.

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Addendum. Noting the date of this article, a jury freed OJ.