Is McDonald’s ice cream machine working near you? There’s a bot for that
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OT question -- does color blind people have trouble dealing with traffic lights too? (Because I think traffic light is why non-color-blind-aware-people subconsciously choose "green is good, red is stop" in other things without thinking much about accessibility ...)
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I felt like I was getting the sense at some specific McDonald's that "why are you even asking about soft serve"...guess this explains why...
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People keep thinking McDonald's food is unhealthy because it's weird chemicals and mystery meat. Nope.
It's unhealthy because it's tons of perfectly natural fat, sugar, and salt. Dairy Queen describes their soft-serve as "Artificially flavored vanilla low-fat ice cream". McDonald's is also "reduced fat vanilla ice cream".
The main ingredients in both are milk and cream. They do use corn syrup as a sweetener rather than cane sugar, and add some thickeners and emulsifiers. The vanilla flavor is artificial, but it's pretty rare to find anything vanilla flavored that doesn't use artificial vanilla.
Edit: McDonald's does describe theirs as "natural flavors" and doesn't have the "artificial" disclaimer, so I think they do actually spring for natural vanilla.
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We are never going to frequent McDonalds because of the poor food quality. However, in the summer we often stop for snacks after long bike rides and that usually means ice cream. Sometimes we go ahead and get food too. We did not even try McDonalds this year because their machines are always down.
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The broken ice cream machines are so infamous, it was even a point in the Burger King's favor in Epic Rap Battles of History, Burger King versus McDonald's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AjRR6c ... &index=174
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AjRR6c ... &index=174
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Not so much, because traffic lights are universally hung so that red is always either on top (if oriented vertically) or on the left (if horizontal)1, for exactly this reason. It's becoming very common for what used to be green lights to be checkmarks, and red with X in graphics, but it's not as uniform as in traffic lights, so it can definitely be a problem.
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1 Wikipedia says that horizontal lights are hung the opposite way in countries with left hand traffic, but I don't recall seeing that in the UK, possibly because horizontal traffic lights are fairly rare in the first place and I only drove there for about a week. It's weird though, I thought "red to port" was always the rule.
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It depends on the exact type of color-blindness. But in general, the green light is brighter than the red light. Green would show up as pretty similar to a white light, while red would look decidedly darker. Also, they mix some blue wavelengths into the green light, to further differentiate it from red light.
I once saw a suggestion that the lights be shaped, but that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. Basically, you could make red an octagon (like a stop sign), yellow a triangle (like a yield sign) and green a plus. I think basically color-blind people do fine enough with the status quo for such a suggestion to die on the vine.
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All you need to be a "natural flavor" is for the chemical to be the same as in the natural source. It doesn't have to be from the natural source.
Vanilla extract is a mix of flavors, with the dominant flavor being vanillin. Cheaper products use artificially-synthesized vanillin, while more expensive products use vanilla extract. Since the vanillin in either case is chemically identical, the big difference is not really whether it's artificial or natural. It's whether it has all the minor taste notes that come along with vanilla extract or whether it is just the less-complex flavor of vanillin by itself.
EDIT: To be clear that definition of "natural flavor" is according to regulations in the U.S. In other countries, it might be different. It can also often be the case that the vernacular use of such terms does not perfectly follow the regulations. I think a lot of people would consider artificially-synthesized vanillin to be an "artificial flavor", even if the regulations allow one to call it a natural flavor.
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Not really, since you can do the symbol just fine with an opaque bezel overlay, and there are advantages to doing so, such as not needing multiple kinds of lighting and a harder edge to the symbol. I have seen directional lights on ebay that use arrow-shaped arrays, but I don't know if that's the way they're always deploying those kinds of lights in traffic now, or if that's for a specific situation.
I like the idea of shaping the traffic lights, though the + may not be bright enough compared to the other shapes.
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The "plus" doesn't seem like it would block any more light than turn arrows do, and those are plenty bright. Also, doesn't have to be very thin lines on the "plus". Just needs to show up as a different-enough shape than the other two. A four-pointed star might be fat enough in the middle to let through enough light, but still be visually distinct from an octagon and triangle, for instance (if it were necessary to let through more light).
EDIT: What might make it easier to do with LEDs could be just that we're in the process of switching out the traffic signals, anyway. So it would be a good time to make some other kind of change in how they look. But I agree that an overlay worked just fine for turn arrows, so should work for other shapes, also.
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Yet you have the interest to expend the effort to clutter up the comments with tripe...
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Thank you for your valuable contribution, I can see that you care a great deal about keeping the comment section clean.
It's a discussion board. I felt a response was warranted to acknowledge I erred. I appreciate the correction, even if I don't think the article was organized very well. The headline disagreed with the introduction, only to later explain the discrepancy in the details of "how" the tool works under the section subtitled "why". I thought it was pretty clear "why" someone would create this, given the reputation for broken machines at McD's, so I wasn't particularly interested in that section. Reading it now, that section doesn't discuss "why" at all, it just goes into further detail about "how" the tool works. That would have been interesting to know.
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"But in a year like 2020, we have to take the little joys where we can."
Words to live by, even if they do only refer to a McD's ice cream treat. ;-)
Words to live by, even if they do only refer to a McD's ice cream treat. ;-)
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This sounds like the 2020 equivalent of the famous Trojan Room Coffee Pot Webcam (1991-2001 R.I.P.) that was installed purely to see if there was any coffee there before making the long trek from the cubicle.
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Yes, basically this. Green looks more white to me than normal vision people probably see it. The difference between red and green lights is still incredibly obvious to me.
I actually have a hard time telling if the light is yellow or red at first glance though, like at night from far away where I can't tell which position the light is. It's easy to tell if I'm looking at it when it changes, but if I first see it when it's yellow, then I sometimes can't tell if it's yellow or red. If it was yellow and I thought it was red, then a few seconds later it turns red, it just reminds me that I don't see the difference between some colors very well.
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At CMU we had the freefoodcam, pointed not at the coffee pot but at the counter near it where free food (typically cold pizza) would be deposited after seminars.
Priorities.
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Why hasn't someone designed a self cleaning soft serve machine?
Surely MaDonalds could afford to commission one
Surely MaDonalds could afford to commission one
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I find it even funnier that on the McDonald's side they must obviously have a switch that they flip to indicate that the ice cream machine is not available when people are placing online orders. Right? I mean there has to be some kind of switch or indication or if the machine itself has a switch on it or something that's connected to the data that says it's not available. So clearly McDonald's invested some algorithm or something into either having it do it automatically or implementing a manual system because they know this is an issue all the time. Who knows how much money it cost that goes into setting all that up but wouldn't it make more sense to just invest that into fixing the machines themselves or buying better ones if there are any? They're just so complicit with it. Lol
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I eat at McDonalds regularly! Once every two years when, on a road trip there is exactly no other options. If I ever did not get any item on the menu I would drastically reduce my purchase frequency.
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Luckily, for me Big Mac is the go to McD product and that seems to always be available (except during breakfast time ) . What I really appreciate about McD is their professionalism, at least in Germany and Norway where I live and work and have most experience with. They have generally very nice restaurants, very clean, friendly staff und change quite a lot on the menu (local specialties like Currywurst in the German Ruhr area, cold brew coffee - otherwise still very hard to get in more rural Germany) and in the restaurants (McCafe is great and the self ordering machines are also nice).
Sure, most of the food items are not healthy and contain a lot of fat/sugar etc, but that is known and an individual decision. It is not that they sell outright poison either and if you look closely into the menu, you will find something with acceptable nutrition values on the menu IF for one or the other reason you are forced to eat there.
This article also reminds me on the group de.alt.fan.fastfood which was really good and contained a lot of insider knowledge and tips and tricks - seems to be pretty much dead now though.
Sure, most of the food items are not healthy and contain a lot of fat/sugar etc, but that is known and an individual decision. It is not that they sell outright poison either and if you look closely into the menu, you will find something with acceptable nutrition values on the menu IF for one or the other reason you are forced to eat there.
This article also reminds me on the group de.alt.fan.fastfood which was really good and contained a lot of insider knowledge and tips and tricks - seems to be pretty much dead now though.
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I guess that's what you get when your PR department is actually interested in long-term public opinion on your company. I mean, sure their core business is unhealthy food, but have you seen them make a bad PR move in the past couple decades?
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This is what happened when I used to work at McDonalds - back in 1987 (my first job). I only worked there 3 months, but a lot of crazy stuff happened - Garfield mugs came out (lines out the door), we had the McDLT, the first Monopoly game , $1 Big Mac day (lines out the door), etc... It really motivated me to do well in school/college to get a better job.
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So there's actually many flaws in regards to this article;
1. The ice cream machines are NEVER actually broken, just late at night is the best time for the machines to go through a mandatory great cycle that takes 4-5 hours to complete. So if you're trying to get your ice cream fix and they say it's broken, it's just easier than explaining what's really going on.
2. At each store, they control what products are available, Soo if you see that ice cream products are unavailable, this could be due to the heat cycle but it could also be that the location has run out of a topping, such as fudge, caramel, oreo etc.
3. There's a bi-weekly clean for the machine, and that cleaning can take 3-4 hours or even more than that, depending on the experience of the person doing the cleaning, which usually does get done during the night.
I could list many other flaws but this comment would get much longer than what I want it to.
Anyways, the tdlr: ice cream machines are NEVER broken
1. The ice cream machines are NEVER actually broken, just late at night is the best time for the machines to go through a mandatory great cycle that takes 4-5 hours to complete. So if you're trying to get your ice cream fix and they say it's broken, it's just easier than explaining what's really going on.
2. At each store, they control what products are available, Soo if you see that ice cream products are unavailable, this could be due to the heat cycle but it could also be that the location has run out of a topping, such as fudge, caramel, oreo etc.
3. There's a bi-weekly clean for the machine, and that cleaning can take 3-4 hours or even more than that, depending on the experience of the person doing the cleaning, which usually does get done during the night.
I could list many other flaws but this comment would get much longer than what I want it to.
Anyways, the tdlr: ice cream machines are NEVER broken
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Is that $18,752 total, across all McDonald's, or is it $18,752 at each McDonald's? The (possibly badly worded) quote implies the latter, but if so, why $18,752? Where did that number come from?
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Pure speculation, but logically consistent:
McD's primary business is hambugers, chips and other cooked/fried foods. Ice-cream is a side-business and a minor item on their menu's. Therefore they most likely only have 1 ice-cream machine on the premise (unlike multiple deep-friers and multiple hot-plates). So when it breaks down or is offline for cleaning, they have no backup.
Dairy Queen on the other hand, their primary business is ice-cream based treats, with the other foods being their side businesses. So they probably have several machines on the premises to be able to keep up with normal volume let alone giving it the ability to still serve ice-cream - their primary business - when one of the machines are down.
A commercial ice-cream machine being a bigger, more complex and more ornery machine than deep-friers and hot-plates, you are less likely to have 'spare' ice-cream machines onsite if that is not your primary business.
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When I was working there ice cream was low volume and moderately high labor. You can't prep it ahead of time and it's annoying and time consuming. There was usually an audible sigh from whoever was on ice cream duty when an order came over the speaker. If it was a family ordering a bunch... bleh.
We loved making our own custom sundaes on breaks though. Totally worth it
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As mentioned by tons of commenters already, the machines worked fine, but they just were not being cleaned regularly. There was an /r/askreddit post a while back about secrets in your industry and someone from McDonalds laid out how much of a pain it was to clean the things and how nobody did it.
I am personally grateful they have erred on the side of "We can't serve you ice cream" rather than the "Serve it anyway" side. I sincerely hope that whatever MCD corporate does to fix the outage issue doesn't just make them serve unclean ice cream.
I am personally grateful they have erred on the side of "We can't serve you ice cream" rather than the "Serve it anyway" side. I sincerely hope that whatever MCD corporate does to fix the outage issue doesn't just make them serve unclean ice cream.
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It would be trivial to have the machine "know" when it is turned off, and report that to the network. Also, setting up that kind of on-line ordering system would certainly include markers in the database records that allow for individual items to be unavailable, as sometimes you run out of ingredients or equipment breaks. It's not at all clear where you think they would be incurring extra costs that could otherwise be avoided.
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