McDonalds staff 'rough up' prof with home-made techno-spectacles A man wearing computer-assisted spectacles was assaulted by staff in a Parisian McDonalds, who tried to pull the glasses off his head then threw him out of the restaurant, according to a blog post written by the victim. The staff seemed angered by the high-tech vision-ware worn by Dr Steve Mann who is an academic at the …
""You've never been to France, have you?
Usually you are better of finding an italian or a german, or at least an alsacian, restaurant"
What the fuck are you talking about?"
I suspect he was saying that French restaurants are pretty bad in Paris... I agree totally with him, avoid the French restaurants, the food is usually barely edible, the only good restaurant food in Paris are not French..
Really I have no idea where the myth of French food being great and British food being bad comes from.. IMHO the British food is 1000 times better than French, why? because our food is not just British, our cuisine is truly international and we take the best food from around the world and integrate it into our own, and have been doing so for centuries.
"I suspect he was saying that French restaurants are pretty bad in Paris... I agree totally with him, avoid the French restaurants, the food is usually barely edible, the only good restaurant food in Paris are not French.."
Most Definitely!
Even the cafes in places like Calais are far better.
Anyone who's never tried a french restaurant in Paris should consider this. Just how bad does it have to be to make the crap McDonalds serve up look good?
Exactly, and god forbid you feed your offspring anything like steak or snails, much better to feed them deep fried crap and burgers made of foreskins, lips and arseholes, hell some fast food burgers aspire to be made of stuff like that. When kebabs are made of better meat, worry.
If all people ever see of Paris is the short walk from their hotel to a tour bus pickup then I am sure their impressions of French cuisine would be poor. Those restaurants located right by the hotels are crap, they pay a fortune in rent, they pay their staff feck all and dress them up like Rene from allo allo because thats what real french people must look like. No wonder the foods crap, you are nothing but a fat, ignorant, cash pinata to be beaten stupid and there will be an endless stream of folks behind you waiting for the same abuse.
If it wasn't self inflicted I would feel sorry for folks who didn't get to taste real French cuisine.
I'm not an expert on German cuisine, but I know that at least bratwurst & sauerkraut is usually pretty good (and has sometimes been incredibly good - easily some of the best meals I have ever had, compares favorably to anything).
Perhaps you could say German cooking is a safer choice for a tourist - usually edible even when it is not so good?
While you may not need to avoid the French food in Paris, you can certainly find a better place to eat on the Champs-Elyse than Icky Micky. The Lowenbrau Beer Hall being an obvious place. Dunno if it's a chain. Dunno if it's still even there. Clearly there are better options than Icky Micky.
H*ll. A NYC hot dog pushcart is a better option than Icky Micky. Find yourself a crepe stand or something.
Whilst I don't blame people for not finding the best food in Paris, you are way off the mark. Paris has some amazing food, much of it well priced if you can find it.
You have to remember Paris is a capital city full of tourists, therefore many restaurants (especially before internet review sites) traded on their location and an endless supply of American tourists. The same can be said of Rome and London (to a lesser extent), lots of crap trading on location or a brand name who don't care if you never come back.
So to find good food in Paris you need to get lost. Good, cheap places usually cannot afford prime locations and rely on locals. They probably aren't all that welcoming to tourists. Learn some French, even a dumb ross bif like me can get a table and order food and wine in French with only a few sentences. Once they see you try they help, it's about respect. When you find somewhere off the beaten path, check the window and bar for signs of Budweiser, if you see any move on. When you walk in you want to hear French and nothing else, a single "gee honey, whats a crock monster" and you need to find somewhere else. Oh and order lots of wine!
At least in Paris they don't wave waiters in the street trying to force you into their restaurant like they do in Rome! In short find somewhere that trades on its food. Otherwise its like judging new orleans creole food based on a microwave meal.
In the Latin quarter, they have people trying to wave you in.
There are really nice restaurants here, but you don't go into the tourist traps, and NEVER EVER go to McDonalds on the champs. It's disgusting even by McDonalds standards.
If you're coming to Paris for a weekend look on the site La Fourchette for deals on good food, check out the ratings and prices.
I've been living here for 12 years now, I made the same mistakes as all the tourists and suffered the food poisoning on more than one occasion.
> Paris has some amazing food, much of it well priced if you can find it.
I've yet to find any "well priced" food in Paris, but I've had some amazing nosh there.
I suspect the trick is to talk to the staff in French[1]...
Vic.
[1] No, there's no chance of my being mistaken for a native. But they do seem to prefer it...
Black dog bbq? That isn't Korean, thats the Filipino. Nigeria also has a fondness for mutt stew.
I know we like to make fun of the French over eating black beauty (rather sounds like the title of an adult movie) but horse meat is pretty good, far better than any muck burger effort. I wouldn't have any huge issues eating dog, assuming it wasn't someones pet. When in Rome as they say. I draw the line at Whale \ Dolphin meat.
Yeah, Shark n bake :-) I don't mind shark, I love ahi (tuna). The Whale \ Dolphin thing probably isn't based on the most rational basis, but I live surrounded by them (whales for maybe 3 months of the year, dolphins year round), they just feel like very special creatures. Not rational I know :-) Also like cod and some tuna stocks, they need time for their numbers to recover.
Re whats wrong with whale meat, as I mentioned above it's probably not the most rational thinking, but when you get to swim around whales and dolphins all year (for dolphins, 3-4 months a year for whales) and see them eye to eye, they're special creatures. I really don't expect others to agree, I was just being honest.
I also think the stocks of some whale populations are too low to be fished sustainably right now. Some tuna and cod stocks are in a similar position. Fwiw I don't eat much if any cod and I am careful about where my ahi (tuna) comes from. It just makes sense not to overfish.
'You've never been to France, have you?
Usually you are better of finding an italian or a german, or at least an alsacian, restaurant'
You don't know what you are talking about. I live in France. The food is very good here, and that includes traditional French food.
I don't live in Paris, but I do visit there from time to time. The last time I had a meal in a proper restaurant in Paris (as opposed to picking up a quick sandwich at the Japan Expo), it was at a place a short distance away from la tour Eiffel. In the UK, the food in such a place would have been ghastly and one would have eaten there only out of desperation. But this is France and the steak was well-marbled and cooked just the way I like it. The rest of the meal was delicious as well. The service was prompt and friendly, as is always the case in France.
If you had been talking about the food in UK restaurants, however, I would have agreed with you.
Just like in Paris, if you go into a cheeky tourist trap in London, you're going to get the tourist food imaginable.
But I've worked in several cities and they all have the same rule: know what you want and find the smallest place with the largest number of locals (locals here means people who live there, not people who sound like they're from there. So Chinese people in a London restaurant probably means your near Leicester Sq)
As for British food... it's gotten a LOT better in the past 30 years, I remember when SPAM was the hight of cooking. But now? I think that if you don't like British food it's because your tastes aren't developed enough in those areas, and not just because the food is actually bad.
"Actually yes, but thats besides the point. No reason kids can't eat French cuisine. I'm fairly sure French kids do. I'd take steak tartare over a mc horse scrotum burger. I'm no fan of frogs legs, but escargot is awesome."
Agreed, my kids (8 and 10) love to try exotic stuff like snails, or eyes and brains of fish (they learnt that from a Croatian friend (I passed on those myself)). It gets them huge bragging rights at school.
That is where you have the problem, thinking Paris has good food
In my experience about food in French restaurant is either badly under-cooked, burned, tasteless or rubbery...
And that is when i'm taken out by locals who say they are 'good' restaurants.
McDonalds started to look tempting after a couple of days being 'treated' to 'good' food...
And personally I avoid McDonalds as much as possible.....
"In my experience about food in French restaurant is either badly under-cooked, burned, tasteless or rubbery..."
That's the stuff they dish out to tourists.
They save it for when the a tourists turn up asking for a "Steak 'n' Chips, And cooked properly, none of your bleu rubbish neither!"
I have to disagree - I have had some of the best tasting meals of my life in Paris (and I have travelled all over the world). They do seem to have an annoying habit of poisoning me though! (three times now - once with onion soup FFS!) :(
In my opinion this shows two things:
1) There is some truth in the old stereotype: French food good / French hygiene bad.
2) The food really does taste bloody good as I am still defending it after spending days of my life almost turning inside-out through my arsehole.
I'm sure I read somewhere that France has one of the highest per-capita consumptions of McDonalds in the world. I think it's to do with the fact that a large number of French office workers have their lunches paid for, but they can't afford real food.
My experience is that as time goes by it gets harder and harder to find a decent meal in France anyway. I don't know if my standards have gone up or theirs down.
... I never had any problem with French waiters. Just be a nice person and they'll be nice too.
The thing you gotta remember is, service charges are always included in the bill there. Waiters don't rely on tips for survival, so they don't have to put up with assholes and can afford to cut them down to size.
It had nothing to do with the glasses at all, that's just what happens when you order McDonalds in france. It enragees them so much that you're eating cheap shit they just can't help themselves.
Also if I were there I would have tried to help the guy out, not because I feel sorry for him (although I do) just an excuse to swing at a frenchman.
And then they'd make a vague gesture in the direction of a "will they won't they" relationship subplot, except there's no point because the various writers never acknowledge one another's existence save at gunpoint, so it just wastes scarce episode minutes and pisses everybody off.
"WTF was he doing in a McDonalds in Paris anyway? Paris allegedly home to cuisine cooking after all..."
I wondered also why my collaques go to "local mcdonalds" in Paris. After visiting couple of restaurants, I do not wonder. Such a crap is seldomly thrownt to a plate that in Paris. And prices are 3x to Germany, for example. Old visdom: If someone starts phrase with word "allegdy", the rest of the story does not usually base on truth.
Note - this is not applicable outside of Paris; at least to my experience.
Tell me about it. I didn't realise technology had reached that sort of point. I recall a documentary a few years back about a system that was designed to try and give some limited vision to people who were completely blind by crudely stimulating the visual cortex with implanted electrodes fed from a camera, but that was enormously clunky and only showed a few tens of dots. What this guy is wearing seems almost Star Trek in comparison.
As an expert in wearable computing, he should be aware that wearing headgear like that may result in unpredictable reactions from the general public. The headgear looks deliberately designed to be in your face, not exactly subtle like the Google glasses are attempting to be. He looks like he's dressed up as something from an obscure sci fi film.
I am in no way condoning what happened, but I know how I feel if I encounter Police with head mounted cameras and I've (usually) not done anything wrong.
Like I said, I don't condone what happened, but:
These are not a normal prosthetic, they're an experiment in wearable computing, they stand out in a provocative way in which a normal prosthetic (Oscar Pistorius not included) just does not. Normal prosthetics are designed to replicate function of what's missing, and be as unobtrusive as possible.
Add to that the McDonalds in question having had problems with TV companies, and apparently having no cameras signes on the door, you can see how the situation may come about.
You don't condone what happens, you just excuse twats acting like twats?
The glasses in question are not that provocative. Provocative would be a massive cyclopean middle-of-the-forehead HAL-9000 LED, or a tattoo on his face saying "I'M RECORDING YOUR EVERY WORD" or something. He's wearing some custom, unusual, glasses. If you're going to freak out over them, you should be freaking out about everyone with a phone manufactured in the last 5-8 years because HOLY SHIT CAMERAS ZOMG!
Even if the gear were in breach of some bollocks "no recording equipment" policy, the correct response is to ask him politely to leave, not to physically assault him. I'm really not sure where that part is somehow a predictable and avoidable risk in your world. Are we really having to specifically tell people that violent assault isn't a valid reaction when you work in customer service? o_O
Violence towards the customer? Sure. Then they get fired, get on government dripfeed and are back at the next "manifestation" throwing stones randomly into shops to "show the rich actionnaires what's what". Then they complain that shops are closing and demand government intervention to put a stop to this unpatriotic exploitation of the proletarian masses.
That the other side to this story would be very interesting. I've rarely seen fast food staff suddenly decide to assault customers and rip their sunglasses off, although I'm prepared to believe that working at McMornons and dealing with the French public is enough to send anyone temporarly insane.
The logical explanation for all this was that staff told him to put down the camera and stop recording, he said he couldn't and they - not believing it - decided to give it a try themselves, hence the assault.
I've had my share of angry reactions when taking photos of people too, even when it wasn't on purpose. This will no doubt be a problem if wearable cameras start becoming common.
There's more details on /. - apparently the McD's in question has had trouble with media harassing them recently and the staff may have been under the impression Dr. Mann may have been working for them. Add on top the language barrier, and, well, shit happens. There's supposed to be a 'no cameras' sign on the entrance door too, so he can't claim complete ignorance.
Still does not excuse the rough treatment, but apparently it wasn't a case of ignoramuses hitting on a "cyborg".
Whilst I'm shocked by the behaviour of the staff, it's the handling of the incident by the authorities which really worries me.
He was physically assaulted! The police cannot just do a Sarkozy shrug and ignore a reported assault.
The Englishman side of me mutters "Well what do you expect from the French?", but then the US embassy completely ignores the complaint too.
Write letters, kick up a stink and lets have heads roll for this.
Why can't they just shrug and ignore it? "It's nearly the end of my shift and this looks like it might take a while" is a standard part of police procedure the world over.
If you think no-one ever gets roughed up in London without the Met conducting a full and exhaustive investigation then you are deluded.
There seems to be a part of the conversation missing from the blog post.
Did they ask him to turn it off after he explained what it was? Did he refuse to turn it off? What did HE say to them?
It all seems a bit one-sided for my liking. Come on, people just don't assault others in a MacDonald's for nothing.
I'm going to bet that the owner and staff had concluded that he was engaged in creating a clandestine video of goings on at their restaurant. This suggests that that they actually had something to hide, and that they were worried. So rather than just address the attack, either McDonalds, or as likely, the French tax office, might like to give the place's operations a thorough audit.
Definitely only getting one side of the story here. I also reckon Mann is running some kind of sociological experiment with all this cyborg crap on his face; if you go to his website you'll see he's been wearing various iterations of camera for decades now, but in the past he's used sunglasses to cover it up, obviously not the case with his little Paris showdown.
Am I the only one who thinks the whole "the only reason I have these images is because the assault resulted in the device not clearing the buffer" story completely unbelievable?
Seems to me the device records all the time, but Dr Mann doesn't want to say that. The images posted were clearly taken several minutes apart. Just how big is this buffer?
No doubt this guy thought the no cameras rule did not apply to him, because according to him, he is special. Just your typical sociopath expecting the world to adjust to him.
The facts so far is that no one this guy has come in contact with has reacted positively to him, including the authorities, which leads me to believe his version of events is only so much sociopathic QQing.
I hope he brings his stupid attitude to someplace in the US where fast food employee's will not be so gentle.
You know those areas of town where fast food companies are forced to put people with gang tattoos on the register cause no one else will take the job.
The title of this article is completely misleading - if you actually read the blog post its clear that only 1 of the 3 individuals that approcahed him had any clear affiliation to McDonalds, and that guy was in fact bought over by the person who assaulted (which implies to me that the guy was just looking for the first McDonalds employee they could find to complain to). There is no indication that the guys who attacked him and kicked him out actually worked for McDonalds, and if you look at the pictures on the blog they definitely don't look to me like McDonalds employees.
A clearer title would have been "Prof with home-made techno-spectacles roughed up, happens to happen in McDonalds".
The only relevance to McDonalds is that the employee that was called over didn't do more to help, although frankly if I was that guy I'd call the police and try to stay out of it.
Like I said, look at the photos - the badge (although obscured) doesn't have anything remotely recognisable as a McDonalds logo or branding on it. It looks like an access card to me, not a name badge that a manager would wear. People go to lunch and leave their work access cards on all of the time.
Although its feasible that guy was the manager, at best thats just wild speculation.
Quoted from his blog post
"I was stopped by a person who subsequently stated that he was a McDonalds employee"
"I noticed that Perpetrator 1 was wearing a name tag clipped to his belt. When I looked down at it, he quickly covered it up with his hand, and pulled it off and turned it around so that it was facing inwards, so that only the blank white backside of it was then facing outwards."
"The third person (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 3) was holding a broom and dustpan, and wearing a shirt with a McDonald's logo on it."
So that's the main assailant and at least one of the 2 people with him who are almost certainly restaurant employees.
Micky D's needs to issue a formal apology, and maybe a small token grant for improvement of the visual appeal of this guys prosthesis. I don't care who you are or what you did, it is no cause for assault. either refuse service and ask him to leave, or call the authorities.
The staff involved should be sent to the corporate re-education camp.
Pimple on thce of 'La Belle France'.
I know from my time of working in Annecy that there is Paris and then there is the rest of France. My friends over there would rejoice if Paris disappeared into a hole in the ground.
It is a pity that most Americans who wome to Europe only go to a few Cities and never really see the best bits of a country.
Still, as it is past Bastille Day which meant that at least 50% of Paris has decamped to the south of france until september so even it is half bearable for a few weeks. Sadly, many of the better places to eat have also closed for their holidays.
Beer for when the Vin Rouge has run out.
Legit researcher he may be, but legit researcher does not always equal "easy going, polite and generally bang up chap." Now we are only getting one side of the story, but as everyone who he dealt with seemed to have it in for him, Police, Maccy D's staff and even his own Embassy, I would suggest that the other side of the story may be worth hearing...
This is McDonalds?
On the Champs-Elysées?
And it doesn't allow customers with cameras? I should have thought nobody but tourists ever goes in there. And 90% of tourists have cameras. Come to that, 99% of mobile-phone users have cameras.
This guy must have been their first customer in months.
My experiences of Paris (but not the rest of France) bears this out.
They are worse than Londoners w.r.t. how they interact with the world.
They spend their whole life ignoring what is happening right in front of them.
Then when it is forced into their world view they just attack whatever it is.
Classic flight/fight reaction of many city dwellers and the reason why Parisians are usually quite rude.
I reckon it comes from being surrounded 24/7/365 by noise and people.
I imagine the attack sounded something like this; (translated from French obviously)
"Ugh, freak with camera on face!"
"Kill freak"
"Steal shiny-shiny"
"Shiny-shiny not come off"
"Kill freak!!"
As for camera-face,.... FREAK! <LOL>
I definitely think that even the most hard line union could condone this action. And I'm even more shocked the police did not intervene.
Computer assisted eyewear= Disability discrimination.
Physically attempting to remove eyewear= abh/ gbh?
Preventing him and his family enjoying meal. =assault !
Also, what authority did the individual use to eject this man from the restaraunt? If he identified as a macdonalds employee, this could be a case for action against the whole franchise europe-wide.
Personally, I haven't eaten at macdonalds in decades.. a big mac falls below what I or trading standards might insist are basic advertising requirements.
As for the employee, next time he might not be so lucky. CS gas is readily available on the continent. (or is capiscum spray more appropriate?)
I'm betting it was all a horrible misunderstanding.
From his picture, I'm presuming he was trying to eat in the restaurant shirtless.
Coupled with the "wearable computing" nonsense, it's reasonable to assume he isn't really well-connected to social norms.
Finally, being from Toronto, he probably didn't understand much real French (tee hee), so as the employee tried to more and more physically pantomime why there was a problem, the employee accidentally knocked the preposterous contraption off his face.
While all of you are debating the quality of restaurant food in Paris, this man was attacked by RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES at McDonalds WHY?? For wearing some sort of high tech glasses? WTF??? At a table with his family, and the Police wouldn't even take a report or arrest someone for assault?? Why??
And the ho hum response from McDonalds as if we're discussing customer dissatisfaction instead of STORE EMPLOYEES ATTACKING A MAN IN FRONT OF HIS FAMILY? WTF??
The French police failed to spring into action to aggressively investigate an assault complaint by a Canadian?
I hope the Canadian government pursues this issue through diplomatic channels. After all, this kind of behavior may lead Canada to reconsider participation the next time France is occupied by German forces.
The police can't do anything unless he actually bothers to report the crime. He returned home to Canada, and then sent emails. Even then he's not actually reporting a crime, he's asked for assistance in what is effectively a civil claim for compensation. How do you expect the French police to do anything if he doesn't report the crime, and the main witness is in Canada? You expect them to fly a couple of gendarmes over to Toronto?
All of this discussion has yet to yield an answer to the basic question of why did they attack the person in the first place? Was this ever explained to the wearer in the first place?
From the looks of it this attack was just because he looked weird, and not much else. It also appears that (again from the reports given here) that there was no explanation given to wearer before the attack. Back in the late 30's in another country, attacks for having hooked noses seems similar, but I'll leave that discussion to another time.
All in all, a bad sign.
Advise to all: Get out of Paris and enjoy the countryside. Generally there are better people there (or at least it was that way when I visited last in 1991).
Wonder if they'd be brave enough to try pulling the arms off a man who looks like he could smash their heads together with it.
More seriously, the man was attacked for having a set of high-tech sunglasses... That's moronic. There is rude, and then there is thuggery; rude is telling him "No cameras in here, get lost!" Thuggery is... Well, this nonsense. The shrug of indifference by the police and his homeland's embassy is equally appalling.
The reaction by the staff also makes me wonder just what they may be hiding. And "you have nothing to fear, so you have nothing to hide" certainly does apply in a public place - that's why they're called public, after all.
It would serve these thugs right if this story went global and they got a stream of TV news crews storming the place to get the answers.
Apparently, not only does McDonalds serve the best food in the world, also its employees can be trusted to always tell the truth.
The correct course of action of course, would be:
* review security camera footage
* have a chat with the employees in question
* check consistency
* have another chat with employees
"Erm, there seems to have been a minor technical problem with the recording of security camera footage... How inconvenient..."
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