"Do not wash hands with boiling water"
During my time there, two people broke the rule.
"Do not wash hands with boiling water"
During my time there, two people broke the rule.
"New study finds 'Trickle Down Economics' has not trickled down in any way over the last 30 40 50 years"
Written on a window: "Please use door ->".
The window only goes down to waist height, it doesn't even look like a door. I really want to know the story behind that sign.
Troubleshooting tips on the inside lid of a washing machine.
Problem: Washer does not start.
Possible Cause: Lid is open.
Solution: Close the lid.
And so on.
Caution: For External Use Only
The curling iron nice way of saying "don't stick this hot thing in you."
I recently bought a scale for weighting food and had a good laugh reading the manual when I saw "not to be used for illicit substance trade". I imagined some small time drug dealer reacting "damn it".
I have a very nice scale that is accurate to 0.1 g and updates very rapidly, because I'm a coffee nerd, and need the precision to accurately dose my espresso. But one of the jokes in the community is that the only two groups of people that need scales like these are coffee people and drug dealers...
There was a toy batman costume that had the warning. Cape does not enable user to fly. Granted its for kids but common. Its not a superman cape!
It is my favorite line from the Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse.
Sign seen in men’s room of a dive bar.
DON’T EAT THE BIG WHITE MINT!
I had to send an email telling people that part of the installation process of a new application is that they need to restart the computer. Restarting the computer involves clicking the power button and clicking shutdown, closing the lid and then immediately opening it again is not restarting it.
"Don't flush gloves down the toilet." I think I might still have a picture I took of the sign somewhere.
Yep, rubber gloves specifically

To give a quick highlight, because this case is often politicized and misrepresented:
The plaintiff, Stella Liebeck (1912–2004), a 79-year-old woman, purchased hot coffee from a McDonald's restaurant, accidentally spilled it in her lap, and suffered third-degree burns in her pelvic region. She was hospitalized for eight days while undergoing skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment. [...]
Liebeck's attorneys argued that, at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C), McDonald's coffee was defective, and more likely to cause serious injury than coffee served at any other establishment.
So, the lawsuit never demanded McDonald's to put a warning that you're not supposed to spill hot coffee on yourself. It argued that it's an unnecessary safety hazard, because the coffee was served at hazardous temperatures.
No matter how many warnings you put down, it can happen that someone spills coffee on themselves and they shouldn't need to be hospitalized from that.
IMHO you didn’t make it sound less mad.
If coffee is made by pouring boiling water over coffee beans grinds, I would expect the temperature of the final product to be scalding hot. I would even go so far as to call it a feature.
Warning: Knives may cause injury. Well, yes, the whole point of them is to be sharp enough to cut something.
I’m glad I live in a less litigious society.
There are food safety standards for a reason. Coffee isn't supposed to be served at that high of a temperature. McDonald's intentionally broke the standard by serving coffee hotter than they were legally allowed to.
You prefer living in a place that McDonald's can internationally, and repeatedly violate safety standards with no recourse? That's a weird flex.
No of course I wouldn’t prefer living in a place where legal safety standards are ignored or non-existent. But that isn’t what I said either, so I refute your false dilemma argument :)
I don’t know the details of the lawsuit. I was merely commenting that the description of the case from the post I replied to didn’t make it make more sense. Your post did, though, so thank you for that. For what it’s worth in the UK and Denmark, the two countries I know well enough, the temperature of hot drinks don’t have a legal maximum and any liability would fall under “protecting customers from foreseeable harm” broad health and safety regulations.
So the question, at least from a legal perspective is what is foreseeable. Can coffee made with boiling water be foreseen to be scalding?
Certainly in the UK, case law suggest exactly that a hot drink should be foreseen to be scalding and therefore it is not negligent to serve it at scalding temperatures; see Bogle v McDonalds (2002) - https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/2002/05/recent-case-on-the-supply-of-hot-drinks
I'm glad I live in a less litigious society.
So are all the companies that have reason to fear litigation.
Almost every other animal dies pretty quickly after having their last round of children / losing fertility, but humans live almost twice as long. Elders have a literal hardcoded purpose in human evolution.
I once took a photograph of a pack of batteries that stated the warranty didn't cover sudden battery discharges due to acts of God, or something like that.
all 26 comments