General Chat

I do hope its disappearance means that someone thought better of thoughtlessly circulating dumb obnoxious nonsense disguised as "common sense".

For anyone who believes that "popular wisdom" about that coffee scalding case, though, I'd like to post this again.


"COMMON SENSE finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. SHE spilled it in her lap and was promptly awarded a huge settlement."


In fact, "SHE" was an elderly woman who bought the coffee from a huge business empire called McDONALDS. She was sitting in a parked car, holding the coffee between her legs as she pried the plastic lid off it, and it spilled, resulting in third-degree burns on the inside of her thighs. THIRD-DEGREE BURNS, from a cup of coffee. If you spill your coffee at the kitchen table, is that what you expect?

That huge business empire KNEW that it sold its coffee at temperatures that could cause -- AND HAD CAUSED -- third degree burns. IT KNEW that its coffee had injured many people already because it was sold at temperatures such that it caused SERIOUS INJURY to people when it touched their skin. IT DIDN'T CARE. It put its profits ahead of people's safety.

McDonalds -- and all of us -- know that people sometimes spill things. When you sell millions and millions of cups of coffee to the public every day, SOMEONE is going to spill it on their skin, and someone is going to be seriously injured.

The JURY that decided this case -- and awarded way, way more money than the elderly woman who was injured had claimed -- decided that ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH, and McDonalds, like any other company that sells products to the public, should be held RESPONSIBLE for the harm it KNEW its products would cause.

How bout that, eh? RESPONSIBILITY.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

On February 27, 1992, Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, ordered a 49¢ cup of coffee from the drive-through window of a local McDonald's restaurant. Liebeck was in the passenger's seat of her Ford Probe, and her grandson Chris parked the car so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee.

McDonald's required franchises to serve coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C). At that temperature, the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds. Prior to her lawsuit, there had been approximately 700 other burn cases involving McDonald's between 1982 and 1992.

Stella placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants; they absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks, and groin.

] Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (nearly 20% of her body weight), reducing her down to 83 pounds. Two years of medical treatment followed.



Now let's all keep sending emails around that disparage this woman as some sort of example of what is wrong with the world today.

What's actually wrong with the world today is that we have corporations like McDonalds, and too many more to even begin to name, doing things to our world that harm us and everything else in it.

And that so many millions and millions of people are so willing to blame one seriously injured 79-year-old woman for what's wrong with the world.

If we have learned only one thing from this, please let it be:

use some COMMON SENSE next time you find lies in your email inbox.

And then, maybe take the next step. Ask why someone wants you to believe those lies.

Im sorry if you were offended and I didn't mean to disparage anyone with posting.

Cath x

Well said Janey but I don't think Cath would have meant any harm by her post.

S x

I deleted because I didnt want to upset anyone else.

Cath x

Well, Catherine, it would have been better if you had deleted because you realized that what you had posted was largely false. It would be better, you see, if you took responsibility, just like that thing was saying nobody does any more.

I did take responsibility, apologised and removed said thread. I dont know what else I can say

you dont have to say anything catherine nothing at all

Well, IIB, I didn't name anyone when I posted this. The person who had posted the original thread chose to identify herself.

This thread is debunking nonsense.

And forgive me, Catherine2010, but

"Im sorry if you were offended"
and
"I deleted because I didnt want to upset anyone else."

are *not* taking responsibility and apologizing.

Apologizing "if" someone was "offended" is *not* an apology for doing something that one should not have done.

If you were taken in by falsehoods and spin, well, that happens.

All one has to do is apologize for repeating something that was false.

Quite agree, Cath. Please don't get upset about it. Wendy x

Janey, please let it go now. I can see what you are saying, I don't think i have actually had any e mails like that but I agree they are distasteful but Catherine has apologised and removed the thread and doesn't deserve to be pilloried for all the rotten e mails that have upset you in the past. Yes you feel strongly about it but you have put your views very forcefully please be upset with your Mother's elderly lady friends, don't take it out on us.

What. E. Ver, folks.

This thread debunks a particular lie that has been circulating for over 15 years now. I might think people would actually be glad to hear THE TRUTH, because I'm very sure everyone who sees this has heard the lie.

II didn't ask for anyone to apologize or explain.

It also asks why people feel compelled to forward lies they receive by email, without doing one thing to learn whether they're true or not.

If the things in those emails were being said about us, or our friends, or even just people we know, would we do that?

We ourselves would never make up lies, even about people we don't know at all, and send them all over cyberspace ... or tell them at the pub. And yet so many of us just blithely click "forward" when we get them by email.

sparklingAnninGlos, I am not taking anything out on anyone, so please stop making things up.

One cyberfalsehood is the same as the next, and they're all horrible.

I agree with what Janey is saying - it has made me think twice about what I read in emails although I don't often get these or pass them on. I also don't see why Janey should delete - she is stating her opinion as do most of us.

However........Janey I think you are being hard on Catherine. I know you feel strongly about injustice and I agree with you but we all get taken in by spin-doctors at some time or another.

S

We do indeed. It's the spin-doctors' job to do just that. For reasons we should be able to figure out if we think about it.

I didn't ask for anything from Catherine.

Just because some people think that everything is personal, that doesn't mean that anything I say is.

Once again:

This thread is about a lie that has circulated in the real world and the cyberworld for 15 years. It was posted at this board today. It is for the benefit of anyone who ever has or ever might be taken in by that lie.

And it is an attempt to persuade people to think about what they read, be it in their email, on an internet site, or in their daily newspaper.

And it is a call to decent people to stop being taken in by liars and letting themselves be used for their indecent purposes.

Yes I agree with you Janey, I doubt that much on this site is posted using common sense .. it is more likely to be posted for impact .

I know exactly what your thread is about - it is about all the reasons you have stated. You have made some very valid points. How do we know the difference between deliberate lies, misinterpretation and good solid information?

S

Can't totally agree with you on that Amy - but I do see your point. A lot of people use this board to air their thoughts, state their opinions or have a laugh. Within reason there's nothing wrong with that.

S

I think we can all accept that Catherine did not post the original with any 'malice aforethought' towards the poor woman who was scalded.

I hadn't actually heard / read the origin of this particular email before so thanks Janey for that... so on the face of it, along with the 'compensation culture ' cases ( ok ok I know that's a 'sound bite phrase) that i know of, I MIGHT have taken it as a case where common sense was lacking on all sides...seller and buyer.

If we could widen this thread out a bit it is interesting I think, before the internet / emails you might verbally pass on to one or two friends something you had heard or read in the papers..but you would almost certainly have chosen those people who you knew were likely to share your point of view on the topic, whatever it happened to be.

Now i receive lots of forwarded emails, sent I believe with no malicious intent...or even real forethought...they strike the sender as funny or politically pertinent perhaps , but the sender does not stop to think 'is that something Rose will find funny or akin to her own political leanings ?' ...it is the nature of the forwarded email i think that the sender just doesn't consider the recipients as individuals anymore . ( that's a generalisation of course).

The internet can be a great force for good...it is also the quickest way of spreading lies or dissent than could have been imagined even a decade or so ago.

Sounds like its just another of those urban legends/old wifes that used to do the round by word & mouth. But in this day & age its now done by e-mail..........Or as millions of others do, you can buy the Sun, Daily Mirror, Mail or better still the Sunday Sport. lol :o))))

Good points Rose. I think that what Janey is saying is that these emails/comments etc. *are* passed on without "real forethought". Actually I very rarely get emails like that - maybe because I've discouraged them in the past. Same as the "best friends" emails etc. I never forward them on either. I tend to be a little cynical.

S

The "compensation culture" cases?

But the McDonalds coffee case is the grandmammy of that supposed culture. It's the first one trotted out whenever anyone wants to bemoan the loss of common sense and "responsibility" in our modern world.

How many of the other so-called cases are like it? How many are valid claims by people who have been genuinely harmed by someone else's actions, but are being misrepresented as someone trying to get something for nothing, by shifting responsibility for their own actions onto someone else?

A whole lot of them, is what I think.

As for the question of who gets sent these things by whom -- actually, the real problem is when they are sent to people who *do* share the political leanings of the material and its sender.

They go round and round the world, reinforcing all their nasty views about the people they share this planet with -- based on lies.

I very seldom get things like this (except that my mum sends me hers, because she knows instinctively that they're lies, she just doesn't know how to find the truth about the lies). I make it clear to anyone who tries it on that it had better be the last time, because I don't share the nasty views in question, and anyone who does, let alone who circulates the lies, is no friend of mine.

The things I get via my mother actually turn my stomach. As they do hers. They cause her real distress. And the idea that anyone actually finds them amusing or interesting or in any other way worthwhile just squares the distress.

Senator Al Franken, in the US, wrote a book a few years ago called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

That is the real problem with the world today. Not the "compensation culture" or the death of common sense or the absence of personal responsibility. The fact that it is acceptable to tell lies, and that ordinary people just not only don't care that they're being lied to, they repeat the lies to anyone whose email address they have.