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Bot orders $18,752 of McSundaes every 30 min. to find if machines are working:
Burgers, fries, and McNuggets are the staples of McDonald's fare. But the chain also offers soft-serve ice cream in most of its 38,000+ locations. Or at least, theoretically it does. In reality, the ice cream machines are infamously prone to breaking down, routinely disappointing anyone trying to satisfy their midnight McFlurry craving.
One enterprising software engineer, Rashiq Zahid, decided it's better to know if the ice cream machine is broken before you go. The solution? A bot to check ahead. Thus was born McBroken, which maps out all the McDonald's near you with a simple color-coded dot system: green if the ice cream machine is working and red if it's broken.
The bot basically works through McDonald's mobile app, which you can use to place an order at any McDonald's location. If you can add an ice cream order to your cart, the theory goes, the machine at that location is working. If you can't, it's not. So Zahid took that idea and scaled up.
[...] "I reverse-engineered McDonald's internal ordering API," he explained when he launched the tool, "and I'm currently placing an order worth $18,752 every minute at every McDonald's in the US to figure out which locations have a broken ice cream machine."
[...] The Verge interviewed Zahid about his project once his tweet announcing it took off.
NB: The bot does not actually place the order. It attempts to set up an order, and if it is allowed to add the item, it is assumed to be available. Taking note of that, it then exits out of the attempt. At no time is money exchanged. Also, he discovered that he had to back off to once every 30 minutes or it got blocked.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by progo on Tuesday October 27 2020, @04:47PM (5 children)
My local Burger King has been taking orders online for ice cream they can't fulfill. They even completed an order for some fried Chicken item when the fryer was down. I myself have never ordered from Burger King online, but I saw these problems play out where people tried to pick up their orders at the counter, or came back later to complain again about being out a few dollars with nothing to show for it.
How many McDonald's locations make sure the status of items offered for online orders really matches reality, as soon as a status changes? 50%? 30%?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:48PM (2 children)
I'll say something to McDonalds' credit.
Back in the 1990s, at a specific single store, before or just at the start of the dot com bubble, a McDonalds location began having higher and higher error rates with drive thru orders. It got to be intolerable. We made angry phone calls. Got "credit" and "gift cards". But doesn't really make up for missing or wrong items in your order. An alternative is to hold up the line while you do a detailed check of your order right in the car.
McDonalds got a website.
It even had a feedback form.
I wrote a polite, unusually non sarcastic letter using that form. I pointed out how long the problems had gone on. How employees come and go at this location, but the problem never gets better. It got so bad that obviously management made them start using brown bags pre printed with "Double Checked For Accuracy!!!!" warnings. And yet the errors continued. That was insult to injury. I pointed out that they spend tens of thousands of dollars on POS equipment to make sure they exactly collect the amount due right down to the exact penny! No errors there! You can bet they don't make mistakes in taking your money! Unless it is in their favor. Yet why can't they use that same technology to make sure you get your exact items at the drive thru window?
I got a short polite reply.
It wasn't overnight. But I noticed sometime later that everyone in that entire store was now different people. I probably wasn't the only one complaining or calling corporate HQ. They started getting POS equipment that printed out, on "receipt curly paper" at the window a Pick List of what exact items should be in each order. Whether this was coincidence or due to something I said, it was a genuine change. Orders are wrong far less often.
Now if only their food were any better. Some of the breakfast items are among the more edible. Sausage Egg Biscuit with gelatineous cheese-like substance! The taste of their food is most definitely highly engineered. It's addictively delicious. Even if it is junk. No other fast food place has such a taste. Often that amazing taste only lasts as long as the food is warm.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:50PM
>It's addictively delicious.
I remember hearing once that their secret is using lots of sugar in their frying grease. Take that for what you will.
"Hey Garfield, wouldn't it be great if there was a unit to measure how good food tastes?"
"Oh there is John, there is. It's called the calorie."
There's probably also some distinctive seasoning blends - one of the big reasons fast food tastes so good (in addition to lots of calories and salt) is they actually use a lot more spices than people typically use in home cooking. And I will say that doubling, even tripling the seasonings used in most recipes enhances them greatly (and that's before you even get in to introducing new ones). I suspect that traditional European cuisine especially suffered greatly from most spices being expensive imports, and has remained relatively bland mostly by tradition.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 27 2020, @08:37PM
That's kind of all it should take to bring the error rate down drastically:
Eliminating *errors* like this requires providing and then following an articulable step-by-step [newyorker.com] process [theatlantic.com], but that shouldn't be a problem for fast food workers. It won't make the food any better, though.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:50PM (1 child)
That shit fast food restaurants sell isn't even close what you can call ice cream.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:06AM
Fun fact: McDonalds are not allowed to call the stuff they sell "ice cream" where I live, because it doesn't meet the requirements.
It doesn't stop them selling lots of whatever it is though.