During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills of coffee. This policy by the fast food chain is the reason the jury awarded $2.7 million dollars in punitive damages in the McDonald’s hot coffee case. Punitive damages are meant to punish the defendant for their inappropriate business practice.
It’s pretty screwed up how the media made light of this lawsuit.
A lawsuit that ended in gross negligence, and the media shamed the lady involved for a decade.
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This is ultimately why I hate capitalism.
These corporations spend tons more money fighting against stuff than they do paying it out. The woman wanted her hospital bills paid, that was it. Instead, they go to town spending so much money with the intent to misinform and spread propaganda than just paying it.
Many of these large employers do the same with unemployment cases and on-site work injuries. Spending more time and money doing fuck all than just paying it out like the greedy pigs they are.
This has little to do with capitalism, capitalism doesn’t dictate that the more powerful smear the weaker into submission and autocracies around the world show that it doesn’t need capitalism for the powerful to suppress the weak. This was a failure of the justice system. They could’ve ordered McDonalds to spend as much money as they spent on smearing the lady to fully admit guilt and apologize. It is the justice system that failed.
It’s literally capitalism. It’s not “smearing the weak”, it’s a company spending money to potentially save money later, regardless of the consequence to anyone else. That’s the point.
Edit: lol I got blocked. Weak as piss.
TIL USSR was capitalist. /s.
No, trying to do more with less is not capitalism. It’s material reality.
It’s power being the only criterion, which means there’s no working fallback criterion. There should be at least one (which is where left libertarians are), or the structure of power should be different (which is where right libertarians are). Neither thing can be made fact to full extent, which is why we need both.
Which is why I am a distributist.
And that still has nothing to do with capitalism. Unjustly exerting power happens under any system. It’s the justice system that allowed for this exertion of power to occur, if you want to blame anything, blame the weak laws protecting individuals against smear campaigns.
A lot of people around here say “capitalism” when they mean something more like “the Kali Yūga”, “this fallen world, this vale of tears”, “the age in which the Tao is lost”, or “this age of muck and clay, in which we are lesser than our fathers of iron, who were lesser than their grandfathers of silver, who were lesser still than the ancients of gold.”
The folks who speak this way, if you asked them, “Was there any wrongdoing in the world before the first stock certificate was issued?”, would say “Of course there was!”
If you asked them, “Did pre-capitalist kings or judges ever favor the unjust over the just because the unjust gave them riches?”, they would say “Yes, they did!”
If you asked them, “In ancient times, were there rich and well-fed tribes, and poor and starveling tribes, and did the richer tribes lord over the poorer ones?”, they would say “Certainly.”
Which all goes to show, at some level they do know they’re not really talking about “capitalism” in the economic or historical sense. They’re not talking about an economic structure or a stage of Marxist history. They’re taking about wickedness, graft, injustice, abuse of power – things which are much, much older than capitalism.
They’re merely using their favorite snarl word instead of just saying “evil”.
But capitalism specifically favors the greedy and individualistic. It’s no surprise that if you base your society on capitalism, people will get more greedy.
On top of that, capitalism enables some uniquely capitalistic evils, such as commodity fetishism and alienation.
Also, some consider capitalism inherently unjust, making it an evil in its own right.
And why do we blame capitalism instead of generic “evil”?
Because capitalism is the system that actively promotes it and is in every facet of our lives.
It’s greed not evil.
Murdering a baby is evil, letting millions starve to death is business.
Okay, maybe you really do think kings and warlords were more virtuous than shareholders or CEOs. Alas, it was not that way. They were buttholes too. Buttholery is not controlled by the economic system of the day.
You seem to think that I wouldn’t also reject authoritarianism?
Capitalism opens an avenue for greed to be used for the benefit of the many, whereas any other form of resource distribution has no place for greed and as such no place for the greedy. At that point it becomes the same kind of discussion as the prohibition discussion. Do you ban it or do you allow and regulate it. Banning greed won’t make it go away, it will only force it into hiding and to undermine the current system. Capitalism forces greed to the surface, at which point people can have a discussion about how much greed should be permitted.
an avenue for greed to be used for the benefit of the many
Wow, that’s some impressive horse shit! The very nature of greed means that it will always benefit the few over the many and the nature of capitalism is that greed is elevated to a virtue, inevitably hurting the many to serve the few rich and powerful.
any other form of resource distribution has no place for greed and as such no place for the greedy
First of all, that’s false. Pretty much every centrist and right wing structure of government centers the individual and thus caters to the greed of the individual over the needs of the many.
Besides, if that was true, that would be a good thing! Being greedy isn’t some inescapable natural urge that must be satisfied or you explode. Making space for the most base parts of human nature isn’t good with cruelty, deceitfulness or (except in the ordered and consensual context of sports and even that is a bit iffy in many cases) violent tendencies, so why do you want to nurture and protect greed?
Banning greed won’t make it go away
Sure, but just like the other vices I just mentioned, discouraging it and making it disadvantageous to act in a greedy manner will suppress and lessen its impact on society.
Capitalism forces greed to the surface, at which point people can have a discussion about how much greed should be permitted.
Yeah, that’s the same thing people said about right wing extremists when Trump emboldened them and look how that turned out…
Bottom line is that capitalism directly encourages greed and in doing so indirectly encourages cruel indifference towards the lives, health and happiness of anyone who stand in the way of greedy people and corporations. This lawsuit is 100% a symptom of how capitalism hurts people.
Ok, and we still create laws to combat it. I don’t think “evil always existed, so let’s not have the FDA because it’s not that we’re protecting citizens from bad food, but simply from evil.”
This is such a weird “I’m 14 and this is deep” take.
Of course it needs laws to curtail the worst of the impacts capitalism has. Capitalism is a system that distributes a finite amount of resources between demand that outstrips supply. It doesn’t concern itself dishonest actors, that is what the judicial system is for. McDonalds was such a dishonest actor and that they got away with it is a failure of the judicial system.
You’re confusing actual institutions with its philosophy.
Capitalism is also not the only system to distribute resources. Capitalism isn’t concerned with anything as it’s not an actual living thing. But to pretend that it doesn’t incentivize ruthlessness or greed is simply untrue.
It might not be a DIRECT result of capitalism, but guess what screwed up the “justice” system? Underregulated capitalism!
It’s specifically designed to work for the rich and powerful and against everyone else, because that’s who make the laws and keep the lawmakers in somehow legal bribes.
Capitalism didn’t screw up the justice system, the justice system failed to be impartial. It failed just as much in the USSR. Western european nations also have capitalism and they are far better off than the US is. It is not capitalism that is to blame that bribery is all but legal in the US.
Thank you for having a brain in this thread.
Only it’s the mass media system that failed rather. Which works in the way allowing to spend money on forming opinions with predictable outcomes. Which enables much worse things than dangerous customer service.
And she only wanted to be reimbursed for the hospital bills…
There’s no evidence to suggest that they paid to spread disinformation, that would be massively illegal and open them up to way more lawsuits. Ragebait has just always been popular.
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Soup!
It’s pretty scary how media can influence us so much, even when we think they aren’t, and even when we think “only dumb people fall for it.” No my friend, the majority fall for it. Not cause they’re dumb, but because they’ve scienced the hell out of human nature and know precisely how to do it right under our noses. It started with marketing and advertising that works well, unfortunately. They’ve cracked the psyche code. Media adopted it. Big tech improved it. Gah… this is turning into a rant about capitalism; I didn’t intend to go there. Eek.
Manufacturing consent is a good book on this topic.
We ALL fall for it, just not all the same things at the same time.
That’s what’s so insidious. I’m sat here thinking “you rubes, I read into the details right away, and knew something was off about the story”. So then I have to ask myself, “ok, smartass, what are you falling for that you think you know”.
Its just so damn insidious.
Corporations gonna corporate
I even was thinking if that episode from Seinfeld not just a scheme pulled by McDonald’s.
The woman’s scalds were almost enough to kill her. She spent weeks in hospital and needed skin grafts. To make it worse, McDonald’s had received multiple complaints about the temperature of their coffee.
Her lawsuit was just to help cover the medical expenses. McDonald’s didn’t want a precedence of being sued so their PR cooked up a narrative of greedy frivolous lawsuits and America bought this story hook line and sinker.
She even started out planning to accept the $800 oopsie poopsie money McDonald’s offered her until her family was like “um. No? You’ve gone from independent living senior to permanently disabled. You deserve for them to pay the full medical bills”
It fused her labia together. The coffee was so hot and the burns were so bad that her labia fused together.
how the fuck does coffee even get that hot?
Step one: keep it on a hot plate that keeps it at 200° so that you can serve it longer
That is all the steps
There is an additional step:
- Serve it in a disposable container that doesn’t soak up any of the heat.
Pouring hot coffee into a thick cold porcelain cup, tends to quickly cool it down to drinkable levels. A flimsy paper cup… not so much.
And now imagine giving that to a person in a moving vehicle without a lid.
There’s so much fucked up here it’s almost unbelievable. This is legitimately a bigger safety risk, after all is said and done, than many risks in an industrial chemical plant.
Good point
but water only goes to 100 degrees, even with other stuff dissolved i can’t imagine a water-based liquid going much higher than like 120 degrees at most…
200 Fahrenheit. That’s 93.3C. Just below literal boiling.
Edit for more information, an adult human will suffer 3rd degree burns if exposed to 150F (65.5C) liquid for two seconds. This was 133% hotter than liquid that will cause 3rd degree burns. And it was poured directly in her lap, soaked into cloth that she could not easily remove. This was straight up evil levels of negligent.
Just a quick note but neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit degrees can be used the way you’ve described - 200°F isn’t 133% of the temperature of 150°C and neither is 93.3°C 133% hotter than 65.5°C because the ‘zero’ point on both of those scales are entirely arbitrary.
The two temperatures you’re talking about are ~366.45 K and ~338.65 K, as kelvin is the only true SI measurement for temperature whose zero point describes a natural or true zero, meaning that the higher temperature is roughly ~8% hotter.
Brought to you by the National Department of Pedantry
I was a bit annoyed at the nitpickiness of this comment until I saw that you’re from the NDP. I salute your good work and consider myself more educated.
Nice
To add on, even when something isn’t boiling, it’ll generate an appreciable amount of vapor. The boiling point is just the temperature at which bubbles form within the liquid. The top surface is still going to give off hot steam. I honestly don’t know if near boiling vs boiling is a meaningful distinction in terms of how dangerous it is.
I wonder actually if a boiling liquid would be slightly safer because there’s more vapor and less liquid.
They’re using the stupid units.
We’re talking bald eagle units
Humans being fragile creatures is how
So if you get 3rd degree burns on your pelvic area and you go to the hospital, they should just tell you to stop being fragile?
What? No, hot water is bad because people are fragile. I was being serious; this isn’t some jab, it’s just life
Sorry, I misunderstood your post. It seemed like you were saying she was weak and fragile for getting burned. I read it as she should have “rubbed some dirt on it and walked it off”.
Don’t worry dude. I understood what you were saying. Not sure why so many people took it a weirs direction
They had a slush fund set up specifically to pay out settlements for coffee burns.
They knew it was a problem, but decided it would be cheaper to pay off burn victims than to serve their coffee at a safe temperature.
When you dive into that case, you definitely side with the lady. She had some pretty serious burns, like way beyond what most of us would get if we spilled coffee that we made at the house.
If my memory serves me well, she originally only asked them to cover the medical expenses. So their greed ended up costing them far more.
The injuries involved the phrase “labia fused to leg”.
Oh… I can’t unread that…
And you canot unsee it if you ever saw the court pictures
And you can’t unsee the imagined version of that if you imagined what that eould look like
Well then. TIL that third degree burns can fucking fuse your body parts together. Jesus Christ
It was used as the definitive “Frivolous Lawsuit”, but… in reality McDonalds just told Media Companies “Make us look like the victim here, or we’re pulling our precious advertising dollars.”
The picture of that poor woman’s thighs is all you need to see to know this was not a frivolous suit
Also, McD’s had years of complaints from their own store managers that the coffee was too damn hot.
Important to note that the women initially just asked McDonald’s to pay for her treatment, and they told her to get fucked.
I just wish the victims lawyers had responded to those claims with the pictures of that poor woman’s third degree burns. she suffered horrifically and for years.
Fortunately we have actually come aways since then, if a company tried that kind of stunt today, Not only would they be called out for it online, but they would also likely catch a second lawsuit for defamation.
hopefully, she deserved so much better.
And media did a bang-up job portraying the victim as a petulant child who is too dumb to drink coffee. Classic corporate Uno reverse card.
I thought this was indeed one of those ridiculous American lawsuits. Until I heard of the injuries later. No I would never wish this settlement money for myself if it included those injuries on that part of my body. Justice was served to the McD.
Yes… Melted labia is not something I was expecting. $2.7M seems too low of a punitive damage for the big arches clowns.
It’s more the fact that McD was aware that their coffee strategy was a ticking time bomb due to many complaints from staff and customers, but they didn’t fix it.
IIRC the reason they heated the coffee that much in the first place was that it prolonged the time the coffee tasted fresh, so they didn’t have to make a fresh batch as often. Aka more profit.
The good news is the only way they’re able to get away with it was because the internet hadn’t caught on as much, and because this was before the media was afraid of catching defamation lawsuits.
Must be one of the more successful smear campaigns in recent history. I’m not even from the us and we heard about that shit and used it as an example of greed and frivolous lawsuits. It was only like 5 years back I learned the truth. Believed that shit for 25 years…
Edit: oops should’ve responded to the media part of thread
Poor lady. Her labia was physically fused together from the heat, but she was still called dramatic. I can’t imagine everything that she had to go through.
And she originally only asked for McDonald’s to cover her medical expenses ($20k) which they refused.
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Do you really think she just sat there and willingly watched her vagina boil?
Also, she was wearing jeans, so you’re just making shit up.
And have you seen pictures? They’re horrendous. I’ll assume you have already, since you’re an expert on this incident, but in case you haven’t, here you go (very NSFW)…
The woman was 79 years old. Getting the pants on before her labia was fused together by intentionally overheated coffee was probably a fucking chore.
Holy shit, this is one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever read.
Listen, do this as a test, pour water a cup of water on your pants. See if your legs get wet. Better yet, heat it up or chill it (not enough to hurt yourself) and see how cold or warm your legs feel.
They had also been warned several times previously to stop doing it.
Stop what? Brewing coffee with hot water?
If they started waiting until it cools down there would be massive complaints that it takes them too long.
Serving as hot as they did. Try reading the legal case. It is common everywhere for there to be a maximum temp you are allowed to serve hot drinks at for this reason. The store was cited multiple times for serving over that limit.
I’ve spilled freshly brewed coffee at home on myself, and I just needed to run my hand under the faucet for a bit and then clean up the mess.
This woman needed skin grafts from third degree burns. Saying the coffee was too hot is an absolute understatement.
The other day I put my coffee(that I just made) in the fridge door and without thinking proceed to bend and try and grab the milk in the fridge’s door bottom, well I spilled that shit in my ear, neck and cheek, screamed like a motherfucker and ran to the shower.
The area was red for a day or two and I used aloe vera, that Mctrash coffee was dangerous hot.
It was so hot it fused her labia together. Do you really think most places make coffee that hot?
Except for the YEARS of McD’s own managers complaining about the excessive temp and requesting to reduce it.
It caused third degree burns. I’ve spilt half a pot of fresh food-service coffee on my arm and had both first and second-degree burns, but not third. You know, because food-service coffee makers all heat to the same temp, except for McD’s, which has their’s set much higher. (Go research why McD’s milkshake machines are always down, despite being the same machines everyone else uses).
Having worked in many restaurants and some fast-food joints, they’re all the same, and don’t seem to have the supposed problem you claim.
Oh man there is so much to this case. First, she asked for like $40k, enough to cover the cost of the medical bills. To be clear, she received extensive burns as the coffee was so hot that it would burn in seconds (the wiki had a breakdown of the times/temps and they were illuminating). Moreover, it wasn’t even the hottest coffee available. Starbucks was serving much hotter coffee at the time (the hottest I think recorded). In the end, she got paid, but McDs never cooled their coffee (nor did anyone else), all they did was make better lids lol.
AND she was in a car with no cup holders. It wasn’t a standard feature in sports cars in the 90s. She had borrowed it from her son.
And you’re right that it didn’t change coffee temps that much:
“During the Liebeck court proceedings, McDonald’s said it served its coffee between 180 and 190 degrees,” according to The New York Times. “The company has refused to disclose today’s standard temperature, but Retro Report shows a handbook for franchisees calling for temperatures 10 degrees lower.”
If it doesn’t sound like much, it’s because it’s not. McDonald’s chooses to keep their coffee scaldingly hot because, according to attorney Butch Wagner, hot coffee stays fresh for longer. They save money by doing this (millions per day, in fact, across their US franchises alone), even if it means paying out for other hot coffee settlements—of which there are plenty.
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Yeah but that’s not the point of THEIR coffee, the point is that they make as much money as possible, the rest is whatever
Yeah but then you buy a second cup
What? Caffeine doesn’t break down until like 450°F. Keeping coffee hot is absolutely the best way to keep it “fresh”. Adding external heat does usually cause off flavors but has absolutely no effect on caffeine content.
People love narratives that are simple and have an easy to understand moral to them even if they’re absolutely wrong. In this case, the narrative is that she asked for hot coffee and got hot coffee, and the moral is that people are greedy and stupid and you have to protect yourself from them. I’ve often found that one well-constructed point can blow these narratives up though. I was talking with my dad about this particular case, he’s a big “gotta do something about these frivolous lawsuits” guy because he used to own a business that was adjacent to real estate and real estate is probably the most litigated business in America. I’m a big “frivolous lawsuits is a term exploitative industries use to get people excited to give up their rights” guy, so we were at loggerheads about this one. Eventually I was like “Have you ever spilled coffee? When you did, who paid for your skin grafts?” Turns out that when crafting their narrative about how she was “suing them for giving her what she asked for”, the industry lobby left out the part where she had to spend 8 days in the hospital and have multiple reconstructive surgeries.
And she only asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills. It was the jury who threw out her request and instead punished McDonalds with the huge settlement, because they were horrified by how grossly negligent the company had been and decided her request wasn’t a strong enough punishment.
Don’t forget they had previously been ordered several times to reduce the temperature and refused.
the same goes for the Dingos Ate My Baby woman
dingos did eat her baby.
They also left out the fact that this was not the first injury nor the first complaint and that McDonald’s knew their coffee was inappropriately hot. The majority of damages weren’t to because of medical costs, but we’re punative as punishment for knowingly serving a dangerous product. It was intended to make them change their practices. That didn’t happen though. McDonald’s had the amount reduced in appeals and continues to serve coffee that is hotter than almost anyone wants.
But, butt… if she spilled the coffee, then it’s on her for being clumsy… right? /s
they gave it to her without a lid when she ordered in the drive thru
Ouch… that’s an asshole move, they deserve the punitive damages.
The fact that someone actually was dumb enough to sue over coffee being hot was a punchline in the 90s and 2000s. It’s amazing what kind of misinformation can run amok in a world where you don’t have easy access to the internet and whatever corporate wants the spin to be, that’s what every Outlet is going to tell you.
Thankfully proper research has revealed that news groups were strong armed by McDonald’s into leaving important details out to save their stock prices… and this version of the story is the one that’s catching on.
I certainly hope that a better research clears up other misunderstandings ( the amount of people who actually believe Mother Teresa was a sadistic serial killer thanks to Christopher Hitchens riding the New Atheist wave of the early 2000’s with his easily debunked Hell’s Angel book is… way too high. The book claims among other things that she ran sham hospitals when in fact she ran hospices long before the concept was a thing in mainstream medicine and is credited for pioneering the concept of palliative care.)
If you want to defend Saint Teresa of Calcutta and how she funneled charity money to the Vatican while being unable to afford analgesics in her hospices, calling pain “Jesus’s kisses”, or defending child molesters and getting an exorcism to heal her heart attack while opposing both abortion and contraception, then you shouldn’t encourage people to do better research… which they can start with at:
Did you even read this link before you sent it?
Other than the parts I copied from it? Yeah, probably. You?
Are you a ChatGPT bot comment?
You /s but someone in this very same conversation posted a comment above basically saying the same thing.
Sort by “top”, they’ll be below… *sigh* there’s always gotta be a reason to require the /s, ain’t it?
Why is she in quotes?
Emphasis maybe?
Why are you “asking”…? (there, edited, hope that helps the tokenizer 🙄)
because I’d “like” to “know”. Some people use them to communicate dubiousness, some people use them to indicate they’re actually quoting someone, some “people” use them for emphasis.
“Assume good faith unless proven otherwise”… should be a rule. Anyways, we good now?
I once worked in a chain and spilled fresh brewed coffee on my arm. Looks half a pot. Got second degree burns.
Company paid for my ER visit, naturally. No way in hell was our coffee as hot as McD’s, by a long shot. And I we still in pain for weeks.
No pictures? Disappointed, McDonalds spent millions trying to scrub them from the Internet.
I have to admit that i didn’t expect that not boiling water could do so much damage.
She was wearing jeans. The superheated water absorbed into the fabric, and held it right against her skin. Part of the case was that McDonald’s knew it was handing these cups of near-boiling water down, into vehicles, in which people were restrained. It made their conduct more negligent.
I had a soda spill on me once at a drivethrough. Everyone in the drive through business surely knows that things spill, down, onto customers.
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212° is the boiling point of water
212 is the boiling point. Either way, that’s going to cause some nasty burns.
°F not °C
if it was past the boiling point it would have already boiled off
Damn, that was far worse than I could imagine. Poor woman
FYI I Can’t see it because it’s blurred and I don’t have an account.
Didn’t realize the reason was this petty. I always thought it had something to do with how many beans it took, or the time or something like that. Not that it just took longer for a customer to drink Beca they’d be burning their mouth. I’m glad she got what was owed to her. Poor woman.
I remember hearing that it was based on market research that a significsnt number of people would pick up coffee on their way to work/home, and drink it once they got there. So they superheated the coffee so that it would be at its ideal taste/temperature when they got to their destination.
But the refill thing sounds much more likely
They serve it that hot so that it’s less obvious when the coffee isn’t fresh. That way, you can save money by making fewer batches, and the people who are served old coffee won’t realize it until long after they left the drive-thru.
They fuck you at the drive-thru, okay? They fuck you at the drive-thru! They know you’re gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked! They know you’re not gonna turn around and go back, they don’t care. So who gets fucked? Ol’ Leo Getz! Okay, sure!
Yeah cuz mcds was losing millions on …checks notes…coffee in the 90s
Can someone explain this to Dunkin Donuts and their molten coffee?
Ask for less ice, or even better than that, make coffee at home.
Fun fact. The guy who served her the cup of coffee is related to the owner of a Panera franchise that I use to work for. Both him and his brother-in-law (I think that’s how they were related) would talk about how that was their claim to fame back when they we’re franchising with McDonalds
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Inner thighs and labia :-(
Bro?
Yeah, it was kinda the stuff of nightmares. I think it actually… fused … some things together.
180°©?!? Did they keep the coffee from flashing to steam instantly?
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That must have been not far off boiling!
190 degrees Fahrenheit. They served it that hot to make it less obvious that they (usually) weren’t selling fresh coffee.
How much is that in degrees Celsius?
87.8°C
This is 12.3°C below the boiling point.
I always make coffee and tea at 100°C and drink it when it’s cooled off.
Only a couple degrees off, yeah. The elderly woman who spilled it ended up getting third degree burns across her entire lower torso and had to have multiple skin grafts done.
During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money.
People aren’t understanding the coffee science here. Optimal brew temp is 195-205 degF.
Now it should be regulated that the coffee is required to cool to a certain temperature, probably 160, before they’re allowed to serve it. But coffee is supposed to be brewed at a dangerous temperature.
It wasn’t fresh coffee though
Yeah, I was confused by this as well. The lady screwed up, coffee is hot by default.
You weren’t confused. You’re just stupid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Businesses are not allowed to sell “dangerous by default” products to their customers without a clear warning and sometimes even a signed waiver.
Stuff like “don’t put cat in microwave”, and similar.
