Stella

Here's a personal favorite originally posted on the now defunct netslaves bulletin board on January 9th, 2002.

It's a commentary on the "Stella" awards for "frivolous" law suits, named for Stella Liebeck, who successfully sued McDonald's in 1994 after suffering burns on her legs, thighs and buttocks in a coffee spilling incident that occasioned much public scrutiny into McDonald's' practice of serving coffee at temperatures significantly higher than the industry standard.

Note on the punchline: "uncle_meat" is the handle of a guy notorious for championing free market capitalism on the netslaves message boards.

Here's my theory on McDonald's and their treacherous buttock-blistering brew. Long before Stella ever scorched her celebrated bootie in that parking lot in New Mexico, the bean counters at McDonald's HQ made a key decision that would forever keep the coffee at a butt-searing 175 degrees as opposed to a more fanny-friendly 135 to 140.

Why, you ask? Why risk lawsuit after lawsuit from one disgruntled patron after another, whose pained trek to the witness stand and slow, cautious descent onto a donut pillow all but guarantee a 7 figure settlement?

The answer, my friends, quite simply, is old people. Who holds up the line in your favorite fast food joint, not budging from the counter until their assembly line slop has been reconfigured exactly to their specifications? Old people. and who expects their coffee to steam like it came out of a pipeline attached directly to Hell's percolator? Old people!

Remember how your grandma always complained about your automatic drip machine?

"This thing doesn't get the coffee nearly hot enough, Dearie. Why, in my day, a good cup of coffee could burn through a wool skirt and still take four or five layers of skin off your backside."

Well, let's say you're doing a cost benefit analysis for McDonald's. You add up all those grandmas out there, holding up traffic, demanding coffee that you could boil a lobster in. You gotta figure that can do some serious damage to your bottom line.

You go to the top brass, and you say, "Ray, Ronald, listen to me, long term we're better off getting grandma through the line with the 175-degree joe and taking the fall once in a while when some yahoo with butter fingers and a sensitive tushie drags our ass into court."

I'm sure uncle_meat will back me up on this one!

Kurt "big daddy" True
27 november 2004