McDonald's customers unable to order after systems outage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68573106

by MrDrDr • 2 years ago

32 75 2 years ago

bbc.co.uk

FirmwareBurner4• 2 years ago

And global waistline growth stagnates for a day. Sometimes blessings come in disguise.

Karupan2• 2 years ago

I just read on a local Reddit thread that the lines at Burger King and KFC were insane. So, not really I’m afraid!

FirmwareBurner4• 2 years ago

I gave up on these garbage fast-food chains after the 2022 inflation skyrocket. A decent burger at McDs or BK in Europe today is now about 9 Euros, closer to gourmet burger prices at fancy local burger joints with red brick walls where the waiters have lumberjack shirts, beards and man-buns.

But 9 Euros for McDs/BK is taking the mickey considering it's just some sorry-ass excuse for a burger, thrown together in a pinch from the cheapest possible ingredients, into a paper bag, in a loud, crowded, dirty joint, employing lowly paid migrants from the job center. It was convenient in the days when it was still cheap, but now it's just overpriced slop.

If I want cheap fast food I get a Döner Kebab for 4 Euros, and this way I'm also supporting a local business not the fat margins of off-shore shareholders.

Karupan2• 2 years ago

Given that most McDonald’s are franchisee run, I wonder if they get compensated for system downtimes which they are not responsible for.

helsinkiandrew2• 2 years ago

I think everyone knows the answer to that already :-)

devoutsalsa• 2 years ago

I'd love to read the terms & conditions in a McDonald's ice cream machine downtime insurance policy.

seoulbigchris• 2 years ago

Here in South Korea, too. Just checked.

wolfi1• 2 years ago

Austria, Europe, too

ngcc_hk2• 2 years ago

Hong Kong, Taiwan

nuc1e0n• 2 years ago

The wonders of mass centralisation of systems. yay ;P

Karellen• 2 years ago

Not having a working backup system of staff taking payments manually is the real issue here.

mytailorisrich6• 2 years ago

That's what they do: "Ted Anderson said he went into a restaurant in Japan to find it "cash only and staff calculating the totals on paper".

The issue is that many people don't carry cash at all these days (at least here in the UK)

lnxg33k1• 2 years ago

Unexpected world's health day

Paul-Craft• 2 years ago

Nah. Wendy's has been advertising $1 singles and $2 doubles if you order through their app for about a week now. Most likely anybody who wants to order a cheap, low-quality cheeseburger online will still be able to do so fairly easily.

GaryNumanVevo• 2 years ago

And don't try to order during a "surge pricing period" a.k.a "lunch". You'll end up paying $12 for a burger at Wendy's

LeoPanthera• 2 years ago

"Downdetector" is kind of a genius scam. It "detects" outages by counting hits for the service on its own page. If lots of people are checking, it just assumes that it's down.

It doesn't really "detect" anything.

tomashubelbauer• 2 years ago

I agree with "genius" but don't see why "scam"? In all but the most theoretical scenarios users checking Down Detector to see if a service is down and the service being down are one and the same.

helsinkiandrew2• 2 years ago

It "detects" outages by counting hits for the service on its own page. If lots of people are checking, it just assumes that it's down

Does it? I assume it uses hits to the "I have a problem with xxx" button after you get to the service from the front page.

taberiand• 2 years ago

Seems to be a more reliable heuristic than whatever most companies use for their status pages

iforgotpassword• 2 years ago

Yeah, this is always the first one I end up on and the sigh, keeping googling until I find one that actually tries to load the target site from multiple locations. It's infrequent enough that I never remember which one it was, and I'm too lazy to bookmark anything. :)

Jensson• 2 years ago

It reliably tells me that others has issues, if downdetector doesn't spike then I know it is just me.

aaron695• 2 years ago

If people need to know why you might call it a 'scam' it failed during the AT&T outage and caused most news sites to misreport what was going on i.e. -

"Tens of thousands lose cellular coverage from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and more" - https://fortune.com/2024/02/22/cellular-service-outage-att-v... (CNN and most news sites have corrected their stories)

You could image some sort of botnet (with AI for the Blackhat VC capital) causing a complex news story for some benefit.

gmerc• 2 years ago

Sounds like a legit side channel to me

nrb• 2 years ago

It literally says “User reports indicate possible problems at McDonalds app” when you click on the service in question… I fail to see the dishonesty or scam.

IAmGraydon• 2 years ago

It "detects" outages by counting hits for the service on its own page. If lots of people are checking, it just assumes that it's down.

That’s not how DownDetector works.

kredd• 2 years ago

Odds on being a DNS issue, given that it’s semi-global?

idop2• 2 years ago

Welcome to the future. Here in Israel, I have seen multiple instances over the years of either the McDonald's ordering panels being down, the McDonald's website being down, or both. When the panels are down, only the website/app can be used to order food. When both are down, no food can be ordered, and you'll see the employees standing idly in the kitchen, twiddling their thumbs, unable to do anything.

mytailorisrich6• 2 years ago

This is just bad management because nothing prevents staff from reverting to the 'ancient ways' of just taking orders verbally with cash payments.

As long as they can prepare food they can sell it if they really want to.

AndrewDucker• 2 years ago

Of course, that depends on their customers carrying cash. Which is less and less common.

LintBaron• 2 years ago

Not true for the EU. Every invoice needs to be digitally signed.

If the computer is down, no sale can happen.

idop2• 2 years ago

They can't, literally. There is no register.

vouaobrasil2• 2 years ago

While this is a rather trivial event considering that few people need MacDonalds, this is a perfect example of how fragile modern society is. Everywhere, we are building a world that is fragile due to its incredible high-tech dependencies: we've got opaque technologies, global supply chains, and most disturbing of all on many fronts, the dependence on unsustainable and unenvironmental mining and fossil fuels (see [1] for an example of our increasing dependence).

No one really knows how it works any more and it's the apotheosis of ugliness. We should embark on an effort to simplify dependencies and remove unnecessary technology from our life, rather than complicate it with more for the sake of useless economic growth. Because when it comes crashing down, and it will, it's going to be ugly. (Before you reply or downvote, just ask yourself, how robust can a system really be if virtually all its innovations succeed or fail based on short-term profits in a brutal capitalistic world.)

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-productio...

rightbyte2• 2 years ago

Ye we are leaping into over automation by now. Fragile centralized systems etc. No backup processes.

There is this new movie about it. It is quite good, but I don't remember the name. Where the ship drives up on the beach.

I honestly think there need to be a "no internet" friday and weekend every year. With the whole internet connectivity closed down to test redundancies.

vouaobrasil2• 2 years ago

That is interesting. If you can remember the name I'd like to watch it! BTW, I have a "no interet" Sunday (often weekends) where I completely disconnect, every week. It would be great to make it a societal ritual like earth day. Voluntary, but fun.

fdsafdsafdol• 2 years ago

Take heed, for this is a sign of the coming Anti-Singularity. Yea, it is coming for us all.

yitchelle• 2 years ago

I am going to use this as an example for not doing a software release on a Friday.

McDonald's customers unable to order after systems outage

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