iFixit to the rescue: McDonald's workers can rescue their own ice cream machines The US Copyright Office has published a new list of exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), including one for retail food machines that was requested to deal with the perennial problem of broken ice cream makers at McDonald's. Under the terms of the DMCA, manufacturers can block attempts to investigate and …
An inept coworker of mine injured themselves attempting to bypass the lock* on a telecom room's door, by using a Phillips screwdriver to manipulate the doorlatch's tongue. The screwdriver slipped, jabbed them in the forehead, and left a cross-shaped scar.
We started referring to this person as, "Squeaky", the nickname being a reference to Alice Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a mentally unstable person who was a member of the Manson Family cult, and who had attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. Ms. Fromme had carved an "X" into her forehead, as had other members of the Manson cult.
Nearly ANYTHING "could cause serious human injury" if it's in the hands of a determined person (or in the hands of an idiot).
*They had a legitimate, job-related reason for entering that room, but the person with the keys was not reasonably-conveniently-available.
The screwdriver slipped, jabbed them in the forehead
Really cannot quite picture how you unsuccessfully apply (excessive?) force with a screwdriver and have the blade stuck in your forehead. Obviously a chap that was prepared to go that extra mile.
"Squeaky" Fromme, a mentally unstable person who was a member of the Manson Family cult
And the mentally stable Manson Family members were?
I imagine the human injury part includes a gormless but grubby golden arches employee attempting to service the soft serve machine accidentally including some E.coli from their current quarter pounder promotion.
I felt stupid afterward, but when I was maybe 13 years old, I stabbed myself in the forehead with a large pocketknife. My bicycle chain had come loose and had gotten stuck between the wheel and the frame. This had happened a few times before, and I had successfully pried it loose with the same knife, but this time I slipped. There was a lot of blood, and I missed my eye socket by less than an inch. My parents were so very proud of me. Luckily it did not require stiches or leave much of a scar.
Gotta tell this one on myself:
When I was about 11, and probably old enough to know better, while playing darts one day with my brother, I decided that I was tired of walking all the way to the dart board (an entire six feet!!) to retrieve my darts and tied a string to them so that I could "remotely" retrieve them.
The first pull landed the dart firmly into my shin where it stuck. I have a little round scar there to this day.
Luckily, the gods of stupidity were smiling on me that day and just taught me a nice little object lesson without serious injury, like losing an eye.
You have no idea what bribes I had to pay to my brother to keep him from telling my parents.
> Really cannot quite picture how you unsuccessfully apply (excessive?) force with a screwdriver and have the blade stuck in your forehead. Obviously a chap that was prepared to go that extra mile.
Readers of a nervous disposition look away now...
Years ago I overheard a conversation where a bloke was telling his mate that he had had to call an ambulance for his dad the previously day. He said he heard his dad shouting for him from the garage and when he got there he found him with a screwdriver sticking out of his eyeball. His dad had been trying to pry something free and was pulling up on the screwdriver with both hands pretty much as hard as he could when the tip slipped and it had jerked up, stabbing him.
Harris works at McDonalds for some period of time, and becomes a prosecutor of some repute, an A.G., and then Vice President of These Here United States.
Trump "works" at McDonalds for a half-hour, and a chain-wide outbreak of E. coli poisoning occurs.
Coincidence, or a harbinger of things to come? You decide....
Therefore either Taylor, or Kytch would now constitute (or could constitute) the market of diagnosers and fixers of faults. The statement implies this and that anyone else will need to start from scratch which implies Kytch cannot pass on the equipment, thus the statement is therefore correct.
Yes, have been for a while.
It's insane that simple machines can be vendor locked like this but that only really applies in the land of the free, here in the civilised world we are legally allowed to reverse engineer stuff for repair purposes and can sell the tools to do so.
Yes.
The McDonalds parent company has specified for Taylor to be the sole provider of the ice cream machines.
The individual McDonalds franchises then get stuck with all the issues and are hard locked into Taylor's service contract, making Taylor easy money with all of the speedbumps they put in the way of non-certified repair.
Taylor is realistically an ice cream machine repair service that also has full control over the quality of the ice cream machines that they need to repair and the customers (the Franchise) are locked in so can't vote with their wallet and move elsewhere.
I disagree - at least in part.
Yes, there is scope for the brand owner to use it as you describe. On the other hand, it allows "independent"* businesses to get into a market with relative ease and hit the ground running with a well known brand. Consider the alternative :
You want to open a fast-food joint. Do it independently and you have to build up the brand and market - while competing with the big players already there. You may well be good and build up a bit of a local market by word of mouth, but if (for example) you are relying on the tourist trade, you'll probably lose a significant part of your market as people stick with the brands they know.
Become a franchisee to a known brand, you get a manual on setting up the premises (in the dim and dark past I recall that Apple dictated things for it's Apple Centres right down to the specific wallpaper to be used !), and an instantly recognisable brand. Yes, you'll pay a fair bit to the franchisee, but you get a lot of positives in return - where that line goes will depend on the market and brand owner, and their attitude to the franchisees (e.g. does the brand owner see them as a partner, or as a cash cow).
Now consider if there weren't franchises. If McD open a joint in your town themselves, do you think for one second that they'd suck any less money out to be shipped back to HQ ?
And simple observation suggests that the franchise system isn't as bad as you suggest given that so many people are prepared to run McD joints as a franchise.
"The McDonalds parent company has specified for Taylor to be the sole provider of the ice cream machines."
And yet, the problems of them breaking down and taking ages to get repaired is such a widespread problem (14% failed, nationwide at any one moment) that's making national news and has become a meme in it;s own right. You'd think even Maccy D's would be starting to wonder if this might be affecting their "reputation" by now.
Maybe they look at it another way to the rest of us. It's only "a small number" of people and machines "affected", and hey, a YOOOOGE 86% are working just fine (for now!)
So we're hoping the iFixIt document server gets hacked, and they refuse to pay the ransom. The tools and documentation will then be released to the public by an unknown nasty person and everyone will be happy.
Since when did "you can't get it on the internet" become a real thing?
Whilst the DMCA exemption doesn't go as far as everyone wanted, Taylor's appear to have brought it on themselves: Making devices that fail regularly that only they can fix and failing to repair promptly.
I'm surprised that a company the size of McDonald's didn't have some kind of availability criteria in their contract with Taylors.
"I'm surprised that a company the size of McDonald's didn't have some kind of availability criteria in their contract with Taylors."
You'd have bloody thought this! The service contract with Taylors is very profitable and I'm sure I saw somewhere that there was a corporate link between the two companies but I can't find any details so maybe I'm wrong.
The really odd thing is that BK, DQ, Wendys etc also use Taylor machines and those ones don't break down anywhere near as much.
McD's has a special version of the machine that doesn't require someone smarter then ambient temperature to perform the normal daily sanitization.
I've been working on Taylors for 40+ years and this equipment is the biggest piece of shit I have ever seen.
!
I'm surprised that a company the size of McDonald's didn't have some kind of availability criteria in their contract with Taylors.
They've patted themselves on the back by providing another option if franchisees don't like the Taylors gear. There is apparently an Italian-made machine which is much better engineered and more reliable.
However, parts availability in the US is appalling, so when you do get a problem, you'll be waiting even longer than it takes for a Taylors rep to show up and clear the error.
It is indeed strange that McDonalds haven't tightened the screws on Taylors given the long-running issues and reputational damage (not that it stops people going there though). And they have the relative power (McD could easily afford to set up their own dealer/service network for the Italian machine if Taylors tried to pull the "who else are you going to go with?" card. It'd be effort, but they could).
"However, parts availability in the US is appalling, so when you do get a problem, you'll be waiting even longer than it takes for a Taylors rep to show up and clear the error."
And I have to ask why?! I can get a laptop to the UK in 2 days, sure it's expensive, but it is not hard.
Seems rather ludicrous that you cannot get parts express shipped from Italy. I can get parts for almost anything expressed shipped from Ali Express from China for just about anything! (I know, they are probably bootleg, but most of them work fine!)
Things are seriously weird when it comes to commercial machinery from Italy. Our barista machine takes up to six weeks to get a part and booking the technicians can take over two months. Immediate, it's not working requests are next day. But they are very baroque and lovely to look at, and the machines ain't bad either.
"Seems rather ludicrous that you cannot get parts express shipped from Italy"
There's a Jaguar gearbox stuck somewhere in Mexican Customs that's been there since 1964.
It was shipped overnight to replace one that broke in a competitor car in the world rally mexico leg that year - and got mired in paperwork
AIUI the original owners (rally team) gave up on it after 6 weeks and sold the unit on to the official Mexico Jaguar importers, who gave up on recovering it after several years
Legend goes that daily impound and storage charges were something like 10 times the original cost of the gearbox by that point
Having dealt with USA and Mexico customs for exporting parts from Europe, that story doesn't surprise me. In some cases it's been cheaper to send the items as cabin baggage with a human courier. There ARE worse customs agencies to deal with, but only a couple and not much worse
> I'm surprised that a company the size of McDonald's didn't have some kind of availability criteria in their contract with Taylors.
It's because Taylors offer McDonald's incentives to be the only supplier of ice cream machines which are easily available in the US. Have a look at this documentary to find out more. Well worth a watch if you have 30 minutes.
And that's why so many remain broken. The franchise have to use Taylors but at those sort of costs for maintenance it's not worth selling ice cream in some locations or maybe at certain times of the year. So what's the next best thing to reduce your costs? Don't sell ice cream because we don't want to pay those sort of costs.
It's a wonder anything worked before the 1990's!
Why, other than taking advantage of the DCMA to bilk millions of out of your customers does an ice cream machine need software. I remember a truck that drove through our neighborhood in the 1960's that served soft server ice cream. I can tell you that truck has no software! I am quite sure the owners repaired those machines themselves.
This is why we need to elect people to public office THAT ARE NOT LAWYERS! You cannot convince me this isn't intentional! Pass a law meant to protect legitimate copyright owners (copyright law is one of the most abused) that they are well aware will make their "donors" millions! Millions they will funnel into their campaigns (or their pockets)!
Thie software in question is in the cleaning cycles and intended to prevent sub-room-temperature-IQ employees from screwing things up
McDs is _extremely_ sensitive to food poisoning cases and dairy products are a particular area where bacteria and their secretions can go from "OK" to "deadly" in a matter of hours
The problem usually isn't the machines themselves or the cleaning cycles, but that once started they can't be interrupted (see comment about employees - it's actually managers who are the problem) and if the cleaning cycles don't start properly at the end-of-trade or are interrupted for any reason during the cycle, the morning shift ends up with devices which are requiring a cleaning cycle before they'll allow continuance
The error codes thrown are arcane and deliberately uninterpretable, so local franchisees don't know if a failure was down to something not being attached properly (common issue) or more serious
Taylor saw an opprotunity to sell something to McDs which locked the franchisees into using their support system, by trading on McD corporate's fear of lawsuits and used the DMCA to ensure they stayed the ONLY people allowed to do it (even posessing a printed service manual is criminal according to various interpretations of DMCA)
What really surprises me is that in some of these cases, targetted assassinations of company executives, lawyers (or their families) isn't considered as a negotiating tactic to bring DMCA schills to heel
I always wondered why it was called soft serve in McDs, in others just ice cream. So a bit like what is chocolate in the EU and what passed for chocolate in pre brexit UK.
If its %milk fat in the US I wonder if gelato passes for ice cream there? Sorbets clearly not.
Years ago a McD sold a soft serve for AUD 0.45 - the cheapest item on the menu so probably a loss leader but inevitably lead to snarky remarks about the versatility of pig fat but the reality was there is a lot of air whipped in with lashings of sugar (corn syrup?) and the middle of the serve was invariably hollow to some extent.
"what passed for chocolate in pre brexit UK."
Nce tasting chocolate? Or are you one of those who think chocolate has to taste bitter to count?
Compare Cadburys to Hersheys and I know which side I'd bet on all day. Even post Mondelez takeover.
Just don't mention the shrinkflation. The price of Freddos these days *mutters*
My family -- like many here in the US "Midwest" -- prefer frozen custard anyway. And since you can't call it that without rules, it's better than wannabe-ice-cream.
Plenty of local shops around us plus at least one decent franchise operator with consistent quality/availability (Culver's). I don't care which machine they use -- for all I know, Culver's makes their own machine -- but it's worth the price premium over the Broken Arches (McD's).
This has been incredibly frustrating for customers who want their McFlurries, but also for franchisees who want to sell them one
I was always under the impression that the machines were "broken" because they were a bastard to clean properly and nobody had the time in the carefully monitored McRota.
Most of the time the routine fails because the machines are cleaned when they are over full. The purpose of the cleaning cycle is to heat the working parts of the machine to pasteurisation temperature for a set period, which the machines can't achieve if there is too much ice cream in the machine. However, most employees just kick the cycle off regardless of how much soft serve mixture is in the machine, meaning it doesn't get up to the required temperature in the set "heating up" period, so it fails the cleaning cycle. Fail enough cycles and it locks out.
The usual fix by Taylors technicians is to reset the error, empty the machine, refill to required amount and run the cleaning cycle. Nothing harder than that. McDonald's employees could do that themselves, if they could get into the admin menu to perform the reset, which they can't.
"McDonald's employees could do that themselves, if they could get into the admin menu to perform the reset, which they can't."
LOL, you think that they could, after just describing the actions of the McD's employees causing it in the first place? It seems more like a lack of training on the McD managers part, something we see in IT all the time too. Once someone has been shown how to clean the machine properly (or in our case, clear a paper jam), it's assumed that knowledge will be passed on, even if the person with the knowledge leaves. It almost never is. Once the "techy person who knows how to fix it" has left, we are left with blundering amateurs who think they know what they are doing, mostly making things worse because they either can't read the manual, don't have a manual to read or assume it's "dead easy, I'll do it", frequently leading to damage and a service call out (or in the case of paper jams, ripping the paper out, leaving one or more bits inside blocking a sensor) :-)
Yes, but would you risk your McDonald's job to use a fixing tool which you had to import yourself using grey market methods? Or would you risk your status as a franchisee if you're the store owner?
What's the incentive here? The customers complaining about the lack of soft serve may be a factor but it's not as big as risking your job as a minimum-wage worker or your relationship with McDonald's.
Yeah, customers may complain if an item if "off the menu", but will invariably just choose something else rather than go somewhere else. No real loss to either the franchisee or McD's. maybe a very few will choose somewhere else for a next visit, but most would probably still go back in the vain hope of getting their fix next time.
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