McDonald's tells Atos to burger off: Da da da da da, we're lobbing IT ... Burger-flipping grease-monger McDonald's is ditching Atos and will instead buy IT support services from rival French integrator Capgemini, The Register can reveal. The agreement with Atos – understood to have included support for point-of-sales systems, digital signage and payment systems across McD's 1,249 UK outlets – is …
I usually find the French annoying, but on this occasion I have to agree, although probably not for entirely the same reason that motivated our French cousins.
Hamburg literally means the fortified settlement (burg) of Ham (proper name, nothing to do with cured pork). Hamburger therefore means anything from Hamburg. Hamburger (the dish) means a cooked pate of ground beef, invented in Hamburg. Wedging this cooked pate of ground beef between two slices of bread produces a "Hamburger sandwich".
The term "beef burger" or "beefburger" is marketing gibberish, initially devised by mass producers to differentiate between a "cooked pate of ground beef" and those made using various substitutes for beef, for reasons that included beef shortages, veganism and culinary artistic license.
As I recall, during one rather extended beef shortage, the market was flooded with hamburger substitutes made from pork. Presumably some bod at Findus or Birdseye concluded that consumers would, after such a long exposure to pork-based hamburgers, end up thinking that all hamburgers were "burgers made from ham", and so the "beef burger" was born.
However, there is in fact no such things as a "beefburger", because that's already a hamburger. The term "chicken burger" is nonsense that would theoretically mean something originating from the fortified settlement of Chickenburg, which doesn't exist. Likewise for the fortified settlements of Veggieburg, Turkeyburg and Steakburg.
If you're going to sell fried, breadcrumbed chicken wedged between two slices of bread then call it what it is, a chicken fritter sandwich. Your "veggieburgers" are actually vegetable fritters, etc.
Sorry, but I just find the illiterate burger-ism of culinary language absolutely infuriating.
..is "Our product is made from 100% beef".
Yes. 5% of the total product is 100% beef.
Although this is not, in fairness, what McDonalds claim, although being pedantic, the presence of small amounts of seasoning with the beef is enough for the claim of "100% beef" to be wrong.
How about, "our patties are 100% beef, to the nearest integer percent".
Not quite got the same impact, has it.
@Prst. V.Jeltz
+1
Dont the truth get in the way of a good story though.
Yes, during the horse-meat scandal a couple of years back, I think McDonalds were one of the few who came up, er, smelling of beef, as they had put their house in order years ago and had full traceability to farm/animal
"https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/about-our-food/beef.html"
I read that link.
I challange anyone, anywhere at any McDonalds in the world to purchase a burger, open it and find that it looks anything like those shown in the pictures in that link.
Pictures, or it didn't happen.
Not that any other fast-food joint is any different, but I get sick of the crap that companies are allowed to get away with.
I call MS - (Marketing Speak) which means the same as BS in a more common speak.
Be careful here - how do we know that DHL have not provided exactly what was in the contract? Not in the discussions, not in the handshake meetings with suits, not in the realms of what humans consider logic and common sense, but in the actual contract on paper and signed by all parties.
If it ain't in the contract then there will be no compensation exchanging hands - everyone is so quick to attack the provider.
I have no idea of the facts in this case between KFC and DHL but I do know that very often the mud slinging in these cases (usually the customer attacking the provider) is very indicative of something wrong at the customer's end - i.e. they realise they screwed up and want to make the provider look as bad as possible so no-one will get fired.
In general, you are absolutely correct. However, in my defence, when this problem first started, people in the logistics industry pointed out that DHL had never done food (At anywhere like this scale) before and they'd bid seriously low in order to win the business.
no, not a team
"The new team are going to be cross-trained by people who have shadowed the Atos team for two weeks."
Basically a few people watched and they will "take that intelligence home and farm it out to their teams" or some other trite phrase.
Companies STILL think help-desks are worthless because company's have no respect for their staff other than how much money they can make them. This goes all the way to the top, with each level of management having the same contempt for those below them as their managers have for them.
Outsourcing is just the visible signs of a company thinking the people who work for them have no value, worse in fact, its a sign that that company deems their job risky enough that they would pay more than required just to shift any future blame to someone else rather than spending that cash on the workers and making their jobs better.
Oh dear.
Sorry, but spending a couple of weeks merely observing someone doing something of which you have no knowledge or understanding, is not "training". At best you could call it an "informal introduction".
Sadly, this is however the primary mechanism by which most people seem to be "trained" nowadays.
Education? We've heard of it.
That is 1,249 too many IMHO.
One opened a few months ago about 1km from me. Hardly a weekend goes by without at least one lump of McD's packaging finding its way into my hedge. Yes, I've complained to the local council about the litter problem but there is SFA that they can do about it late on Friday/Saturday nights.
Why is it McD's fault if people chuck the rubbish out the window?
Why not blame Dreams for fly tipped matresses?
How about Sainsburys for trolleys lobbed into the local canal.
Here are bizzare idea, how about blaming the twats that through the rubbish out?
And unlike your local 2kg of kebab "meat" on 3 month old piece of pita, they don't use bloody polystyrene boxes.
At least then bother to tidy up what they can. Don't ever recall other fast food place going around picking up litter?
"The new team are going to be cross-trained by people who have shadowed the Atos team for two weeks."
ROTFLMAO
........ Oh, oh, oh ..... Hang on while I catch my breath.
So, the first monthly backup or seasonal menu overhaul ...... *giggles*
Two weeks. Um, mister upper management, I have some rather unpleasant news for you about this training thing you're on about....
Ask a company like this why they outsource and they'll say, "we make burgers" then ask what they use IT for. Finance, HR, supplier management, contracts and legal, forecasting, advertising, coordinating deliveries, even the entry system to the office, the list goes on and on.
And who looks after that stuff that forms almost everything you do every day.... the lowest bidder.
That'll be two weeks of shadowing people that only answer what they have been requested?
So how often do you patch this server.
Monthly.
Great we will do the same
OK <oops I seem to have forgot to mention you need to log in manually afterwards on critical server, as it's set to manual start. I'm sure they will soon learn that, then fix it by setting to auto start. Then they can wonder why it blue screens on every reboot>
As an employee (and no I wasn't involved in this deal in any way) I'm most worried that our beloved management will decide to support[1] the deal by insisting that staff working away from home eat in McDonalds rather than the hotel restaurant. :-(
[1] Much the same way a large win with France Telecom a few years back completely coincidentally coincided with a change of mobile provider from Voda to Orange.
If they are using legacy software from that great power house in the UK market, it is no surprise that the support has gone to india... Thats where 90% of R&D has gone.. The Focus is no longer Micro but firmly turned towards the $... Margins are not low in SW support or at least not in legacy
Having end user experience with both Atos and CapGemini, I'd much rather deal with CapGemini.
HP is somewhere down with Atos, and the poor bastards who lost their jobs when CompUSA went under are somewhere in the middle.
On site IT would be lovely, but in most large companies that's kind of a fantasy.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
