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Part of the issue as I understand it, is that the machine is fairly opaque as to why some failures occur can appear somewhat "flaky" as a result. When this occurs during a cleaning cycle, the whole cycle is void and a new 4 hour cycle must be run.

If the machine was clear about communicating the issue, it would be fine. It's not and can require a technician to come out with a tool to both read the machine status in detail and tweak the machine in the necessary ways to stop it being flaky.

This would all be fine except for the fact that 1. Only technicians from the manufacturer are allowed to be used. 2. Those technicians are unreasonable expensive. 3. The company could make the machines easier to diagnose and repair, but don't because repair calls are lucrative 4. Third parties can, and have, made tools that do make the machines easier to diagnose and repair without the need for a technician, but cant legally sell these solutions because it involves circumventing a digital lock (DMCA violation) 5. McD corporate has an agreement with the manufacturer to maintain this status quo in return for a kickback

I worked at a McD's franchise 20 years ago that had hired a "retired" ice cream machine guy to work for the franchise full time. With only a half dozen stores, he would still almost always be too busy to make it to our store the same day and sometimes we'd have to wait as long as 3-4 days. Flaky does not even begin to describe how awful those machines are.

I'm not sure if having that guy employed by the franchise was technically kosher or not with McDonald's, but you have to imagine the smart franchises all do this.

McDonald is big enough to change suppliers of machines and impose easy maintenance.

In principle, but they probably contracted this out decades ago. Theres a lot of licensing requirements and regulations surrounding dairy.

This is actually the real source and meaning of the classic track by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, "Safe as milk." Dairy is a huge systemic risk, operates on extremely narrow windows everywhere in its production and if left unmanaged will cause outbreaks of horrifying diseases like Typhoid.

It's not a problem to be solved from McD corporate's perspective.

... If incentives were properly aligned to make this the correct strategy, then this is probably what McDonald's would do. Unfortunately not. https://www.today.com/food/trends/why-is-mcdonalds-ice-cream...

Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.

Somehow I doubt DQ employees are paid better or are better trained or more diligent about regular maintenance. The difference is they don’t have a machine designed to require expensive maintenance visits with a DRM lockout to retard attempts to maintain it by normal restaurant/HVAC maintenance contractors.

My stint as a EU McD worker did give me a feel of how well scripted low skill labour can feel like pleasant work. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but it was six sigma checklist everything. There is a magic to smooth operation. In all my other jobs (dishwasher, mechanic, cleaner and now 20 yrs in insurance) nobody came close to the McD smoothness of operations. I hope I bring some of this smoothness to the people working in my lines of operation. I’m going to ask them!

I had the same experience working at one in US from ages 15-19.

The thing that stands out about that job that makes it unique in my perspective is decision-making. Every other job, from dishwasher in a sit down restaurant to engineering team lead, works best when I make good decisions and my coworkers all do too. Everything runs most smoothly when everyone is on their game and consistently making the right choices.

At McDonald's, everything ran most smoothly when no one made any decisions at all.

Their system was literally that good. No one else's has ever come close. And you're right that there's a weird freedom and pleasantness to that: your job requires literally zero brain power most of the time and your sole responsibility is to keep up with the person behind you and not overwhelm the person in front of you, which isn't usually something you worry about. So all that energy every other job has got from me, I still had (and so did everyone else) which made it the most social, most fun workplace too.

> My stint as a EU McD worker did give me a feel of how well scripted low skill labour can feel like pleasant work.

Would you care to write some more about this?

I was under impression that scripted work is generally considered bad and makes people feel like cogs in a machine.

Thanks to not feeling alone in the world (thanks u/oorza). I mentioned this story at work today. Is autonomy a necessary part of work happiness? I don’t think so.

Being part of a staff that manages successful delivery (in this case of food items) where at peak moments you deliver in concerto 10x average throughout, time after time was just good for morale. Plus the general goofing of teens. I don’t remember the things that I currently associate with cogs in the machine (say, scripted unpaid toilet breaks for call centers, or a lack of ownership). You owned your tiny part of the customer experience and was near all other parts.

The cogs in the machine part is imho unsuccessfully scripted work. You can’t live up to your own expectations of proper customer service because you are forced in a mold that doesn’t fit, but can’t fix the mold.

Then comes the part that I’m still thinking about. What’s easier to achieve? Great processes and happiness via lean / kaizen that treat autonomy as foundational or great scripted processes that deliver satisfaction without autonomy.

Complexity and autonomy are probably related. Higher complexity makes scripted processes that fit all exceptions a lot harder. On the other hand my experience is that so-called experts frown upon standardization and quality suffers. I’ve done standardization for professionals and have hoped to find a sweet spot between autonomy and scripted work (The Checklist Manifesto comes to mind). But I must admit those sweet spots are harder to find the less I’m intimately aware of what people do from minute to minute.

I would say that there is an upside to restaurant work in that, they're very small operations on a site level, and everyone's jobs usually feed into each other. So if you have a good leader and the team gets along, you're basically spending the day with people you know well and get to enjoy a pretty loose dynamic.

My favorite days were when I had my preferred set of team members and and the day barely felt like work at all for us. Working in a bigger org now, days like that aren't nearly as common.

> Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.

Heck, even Ikea has successfully been selling ice cream (from self serve machines!) here in the Netherlands for like 20 years now. €0.50 back in the day, €1 now. Can't remember the last time all machines (yes, they do have at least 2 usually) required maintenance.

As a former DQ employee, I think they are better trained. We were required to know how to take down the machines and rebuild them, and we did it daily for cleaning. But DQ is in a unique position, because ice cream is the majority of their draw. We also taste tested the ice cream 5 times a day and measured air content 5 times a day.

people who get angry at the underpaid employees are the worst, treat them like human beings please

The world would be a better place if more people had to work an underpaid service job at the start of their employment.

I agree with the sentiment, but ideally people should not have to do X to empathize with/respect people who do X. It's sad that they have to, but I wish people just learned empathy/respect better.

Some people have internalized that underpaid employees get what they deserve (i.e. they're not actually underpaid at all) and I believe that's one of the factors that leads to the abuse.

> any lacking maintenance and proper cleaning, especially if there has been a power outage will turn the the machine into a rapid incubator for bacteria that will make you ill.

Yes, the correct frame of reference here is “how can we scale ice cream delivery to millions a day while keeping everyone healthy?” At this scale a single failure can make a lot of people very sick in a very short amount of time. Under these conditions maintenance needs to be extremely rigorous and performed by qualified people.

“Right to repair” says that equipment owners can’t be stopped from performing repairs if they want to. They’ll still be on the hook for demonstrating that they were qualified to make the repairs, so I predict this will do little to improved McDonalds ice cream availability: They’ll still need to wait for the qualified technician.

Yeah no, McDonalds in Europe don't have this problem at all. Maybe we take better care of our machines, but I can assure you the turn over is huge too.