McDonald's customers unable to order after systems outage | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's customers unable to order after systems outage

bbc.co.uk

32 pointsMrDrDr75 comments

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

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

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

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

"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.

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.

> 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.

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

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. :)

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

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.

Sounds like a legit side channel to me

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.

> 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.

The wonders of mass centralisation of systems. yay ;P

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

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)

Cash is still pretty common in Japan and Germany, so some markets wouldn't even notice a difference.

But people would if outages with cash backups were frequent enough. On a side note, I am baffled by the number of otherwise activist people to whom I expound about the big problems of a cashless society who just shrug to say "hey, what can you do?"

Yeah, always wise to keep a couple of bank notes in your wallet, just in case.

The worst I see these days is people who carry neither cards nor cash, just their phones because "anyway I have Apple Pay/Google Wallet for contactless"... and then they use that to buy an electronic ticket on their phone for their commute to work. The day they lose their phone far from home they are instantly stranded and homeless, and they can't call anyone for help because they don't actually know anyone's phone number.

That's why I purposefully try to pay most things with cash.

Yes, I get it, paying with card is easy and kinda nice, but if cash goes away entirely, we have an even bigger problem. So I will be the one who uses it in the hopes to have a miniscule impact on it not going away as fast.

Same thing goes with firefox and not letting the webkit mafia take over.

There aren't that all that many US store clerks I'd trust to do calculations on paper, either. I'm guessing things are different in Japan.

In my (thankfully) long-ago days as a young person working retail, I had a coworker who could not figure out 10% of a given quantity even with a calculator.

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

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

Unexpected world's health day

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.

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

Here in South Korea, too. Just checked.

Austria, Europe, too

Hong Kong, Taiwan

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.

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.

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

Obviously, but that's a different issue.

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

If the computer is down, no sale can happen.

That’s hilarious. I’m pretty sure every grocery store and most restaurants keep the old carbon copy credit card machine thingys to take payments when the power/computer/internet is down. Years ago I had to use one to take a payment during an internet outage.

http://www.cashandcredit.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=31...

I can't imagine those working too well these days. None of my cards have raised numbers, they'd make a completely blank impression. They have probably been completely phased out in the UK.

You write the number down with a pen on the carbon paper. The swipe isn’t required.

They may have them, but that's no guarantee the staff will be willing and able to use them.

Some years ago, I went out for coffee with a friend. The coffee shop's card terminal was down for whatever reason. I could see an imprinter and a stack of the slips on a shelf behind the counter. I even offered to show the barista how to use them, but she...ah...declined.

When I worked in restaurants they would force us to use them. It was rare but it happened a handful of times.

Hah. I had an amusing situation when an employee of Domino's couldn't make a swipe with my card. It didn't had a chip and it was back in 2016.

I can bet $50 the total of 'carbon copy machine' in the whole country is the double digit number, only because some biz older than 20 y/o are still in the biz and they have it somewhere in some closet.

Edit: ah, yes, imprinter

I'm in the US. Since 2000, I've only had my card used in an imprinter once. (And I'm not sure if it ever happened in the 1990's either.) I remember who did it, it was the Days Inn on the north side of Disneyland.

Not invoices, just cash transactions need receipts.

The receipts are issued by machines that can sync with the government services frequently, but it's not synchronous. All transactions are written in a special "flash" memory and synced via the included data sim card each 5-10 minutes.

Buffering up to 24 hours is possible.

You can do a receipt by hand, or ignore altogether, frankly. This never stopped anyone in the real world.

The EU has been going down the rabbit hole of administrative madness for years now but that should not stop anyone from facing emergencies.

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

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

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

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.

I don't get it anyway, burgers are about the simplest food to make yourself.

_A_ burger? Sure. _The_ burger? Not by a long shot.

I've been trying off and on for a year to recreate my platonic ideal of a burger, the (German) McD Quarterpounder with cheese of yore before they switched to their "made to order" system.

I've yet to nail either the patty or the bun. Recreating something specific at home is non-trivial.

But fortunately it's trivial to do better than that specific.

No, it isn't, which was my point entirely.

Besides — are you American? If you are, you are unlikely to know what my _that_ even is. I have eaten at McDonalds in the US, and it's not an experience I would care to repeat.

So if that's true, I can kinda see where you are coming from, but still - different strokes and all that jazz?

I thought your point was about exact reproduction? I was being slightly snidely critical of fast food burgers in general, saying it's easy to make better. (If you really want exact, the only helpful things I can think of which I almost said are to add more/introduce sugar to the bun - yet somehow keep it more like a washing-up sponge than brioche - and cook the burger from frozen, it'll change the texture.)

No, I'm British, I don't know how British McDonalds burgers compare to German ones, but it's probably almost 20y since I've had one anyway. I did have one in the Netherlands ..10y ago (though gosh, that visit feels much more recent!) which was certainly different to here, but y'know, it's still fast food.

Adding more sugar to the buns is an interesting idea, thanks. I will give that a shot for my next batch.

The texture of the patty is one of the things I have nailed; that was just a matter of adding salt into the mince instead of seasoning from the outside - that makes them a little denser, more meatloaf-like, like freezing would.

And yeah, the regional differences are interesting. I had my last one in the Netherlands.. 21 years ago, and they still served them in styrofoam containers, many years after they had been phased out in Germany.

And in Denmark, you could draft your own condiments into little waffle cones. Cute.

Fascinating! The made to order system has them cook the patty "fresh" as shown here:

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IVRlYugm69Y

Just to be clear, are you trying to mimic the burger as it was made before this new system was introduced? Because that was just a frozen puck...

Right! I'm talking about the "batch-made burgers resting in a warming cabinet until sold" process.

That resting process gives them some time to meld together, I presume. To me, a good burger is a messy, fused together thing that looks as if someone has taken a nap on them.

With made-to-order, McDonalds not only lost the "fast" in "fast food", but the result is just some stack of components that is so lukewarm, half of the time the cheese hasn't even melted.

Regarding fresh vs. frozen - I honestly do not know whether they have changed anything there, at least here in DE. If they did, I cannot taste the difference, and I regularly grind my own meat at home.

In the video they use a seasoning that looks like it is more than salt (maybe salt + black pepper?). Maybe combine a big mac patty with that seasoning and you might get close to the original Quarter pounder?

Also did you follow procedures for cooking like they do? (mainly crushing the patty on a grill).

>That resting process gives them some time to meld together, I presume. To me, a good burger is a messy, fused together thing that looks as if someone has taken a nap on them.

You can do that today by just putting the crushed patty into a warming bin. But its got to be something in the meat mixture that causes all that grease and taste you are looking for.

You might be able to find that seasoning on eBay or make friends with someone who works at a mcDonalds and have them sneak out some of the seasoning or some of the uncooked patties so you can compare.

At least that should be the proper thinking. If you watch all the videos in the channel above they essentially show every item being made. Its various combinations of mostly the same ingredients. My first job out of school was at a Wendys and I saw the same thing there. Small set of SKUs and all the menu items were various combinations of the same things.

The old non freshly made patties have got to be similar to their regular cheeseburger/big mac patties because this is a fast food place so they must be keeping unique SKUs to a minimum. Wikipedia does state that the change in 2018 was a move to fresh beef with "preservatives removed".

The way i'd start is by first ordering two items, a big mac with nothing but the meat as well as a quarter pounder with no meat. Then quickly put the patty on the quarter pounder(or just ask them to do this lol). Start with that as a taste test.

  In the video they use a seasoning that looks like it is more than salt (maybe salt + black pepper?). Maybe combine a big mac patty with that seasoning and you might get close to the original Quarter pounder?

That is a really good question for which the answer has so far eluded me. The texture I have pretty much nailed by adding salt into the ground beef instead of seasoning from the outside, which makes it denser, more meatloaf-like, pretty much like freezing them would.

And the warming bin effect can be faked by wrapping it in grease paper and microwaving them for ten, fifteen seconds.

Thanks for the link to the channel! I'll give some of the other videos a watch. I'm pretty sure though that German burgers have never used preservatives or fillers — the former would not have been legal and the latter because they were always steadfast that the patties were 100% plain German beef.

And the taste test with everything else removed is a good idea, too! I'll give that a shot.

Man, now I really want to make another batch. Maybe together with the beef tallow fried fries I have always wanted to try...

Some McDonalds burgers are made using dehydrated onions on the griddle along with the meat patty.

I don't recall if that's the case for the QP because I never order that.

Interesting, thanks! I didn't know that.

That channel is owned by a American Mcdonalds franchiser (maybe they unofficially are promoting him? idk). Any way it shows a great deal of insight into how an American Mcdonalds operates.

Personally, having the buns, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, etc. are a little hassle.

I've always find salad ingredients tricky to keep and maintain. Otherwise I would make my own burgers a lot more.

(I seldom go to fast food places)

I had the very much the same problem, until our fridge died and the replacement I bought came with one of those temperature and humidity controlled vegetable drawers.

I hadn't paid it any mind, since I assumed it was just some marketing gimmick. But much to my surprise, those things actually work — vegetables easily keep three times as long in them.

Doesn't help with the buns, of course.

> If I want cheap fast food I get a Döner Kebab for 4 Euros

lucky you. In London, kebabs are routinely >£8 (I've seen >£10), and they are almost invariably terrible. My biggest gripe being that the bread (when it's actually a doner rather than a wrap) is a soft soggy waste of flour. For some reason they also insist on assembling the doner by putting bread at the bottom of a styrofoam box then piling up "fillings" on top of it, making it impossible to eat on the go.

It's not like it's hard? They already have the right ingredients, I'm not even picky about quality, just get half-decent bread and you're good to go!

Most McDonald's are local businesses and probably more law-abiding than random kebabs places (especially if you care about "lowly-paid migrants" and cleanliness)...

McDonald's can be cheap-ist. The trick is to stay away from their headline burgers and ask for the simple hamburgers/cheeseburgers instead, which are massively cheaper. For instance, here a hamburger is £1.19, cheeseburger £1.39, medium fries £1.59. Cheap. But of course they focus your attention to fancier burgers which cost £5 to £7.

It helps that there is two layers of oversight. First you have state that want their taxes. But then there is also the McDonalds who want their cut and know pretty much all data. From expected sales, to I think how much raw ingredients have been ordered. So ordering too much waste will look suspicious.

Until recently, and since 1980s the cheapest is no meal deal just egg sausage burger.

I'm assuming you're in Germany. Where are you getting a Döner for 4 euros? Those also got hit with inflation pretty hard, at least here in Berlin. Gourmet burger would also be closer to 12-13 now I think not 9.

No not in Germany. In Austria you can find plenty of places with 4 Euro Kebab in less fancy districts. Sometimes even less than 4 if you pick some dodgy places. It's definitely cheap here compared to most of EU.

Quality is another topic though. Half of them have been found to have stool bacteria in them.

> employing lowly paid migrants from the job center

Feels a bit like casual vilification of migrants.

“Lowly paid” migrants have a high motivation to get the job done properly. They need the money and are grateful for the job that some non-migrants would never consider. If the restaurant is dirty then management is probably to blame.

Management in such situations has tyrannical power. They probably just haven’t prioritised cleanliness in the restaurants you seem to describe.

Ah yes, can't even say anything with migrants in the context, before someone does some mental gymnastics to infer you must have something against them.

No mate, read my comment again. I was vilifying the employers who focus exclusively on job center migrants because they're the most vulnerable to exploitation.

Sincerely, a migrant.

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...

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.

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.

"Leave The World Behind"

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