Venditoris

A woman in Oregon has sued her local McDonald's franchisee after spilling hot coffee from the drive-thru window on herself. She claims that the coffee was too hot and the lid too loose, and seeks $7,500 in damages. According to the suit, "as it was being handed to her by an employee of the defendant, the plaintiff took the cup of coffee and the plastic top fell off and spilled very hot coffee on plaintiff's upper right leg..." She went into "nervous shock," endured pain and has scarring. She seeks $7,182 for her pain and suffering, plus another $318 for ... [Link] [Cache]

As anyone who has tried to carefully count calories knows, the serving sizes on food packages don't have much to do with reality. The FDA has finally realized that putting accurate serving sizes on labels might have an effect on the amount of food Americans cram into our mouths in one sitting. “If you put on a meaningful portion size, it would scare a lot of people,” said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina. “They would see, ‘I’m going to get 300 calories from that, or 500 calories.’ ” The problem is important because the ... [Link] [Cache]

Jeff is patiently waiting for the recently released movies in his Netflix queue, but his taste in films is evidently working against him. He says that the top ten discs in his queue all have long waits, and he is frustrated. Is he being throttled, a victim of having popular tastes, or both? He writes: It's been a while since I've seen any of the dreaded "Netflix throttling" reports here, so I thought I'd write in and share my current experience with the DVD service. I have been a faithful Netflix subscriber for about three years now, and for the ... [Link] [Cache]

A few years ago, Kate made a horrible mistake. As the IT contact for her employer, she gave Dell her cell phone number. She tells Consumerist that apparently this gave the company license to give her status updates on the company's Dell orders between 5 and 6 A.M. Pacific time. Even after she no longer worked in that position. Even after repeated phone calls and e-mails begging Dell to stop calling her. The worst part? Kate isn't the only one. Years ago, I was the contact for IT for the company I worked for. We ordered a bunch of computers ... [Link] [Cache]

Gawker shared photos of pillaged Safeway and Wegmans stores in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Maybe it's my roots in upstate New York's snow belt, but I have to ask: D.C., you do remember that snow melts, right? See, this is the effect of mass weather-induced panic and, apparently, an area almost wholly dependent on takeout food. Snowpocalypse '10: Everybody Panic! [Gawker] [Link] [Cache]

Tales of unacceptable food don't just appeal to our more prurient interests. They do hit the "eww, can't look away!" center of the brain quite squarely, but these stories do more than that. They give us an uncomfortable insight into the complexity of the Western food supply, how industrialized and automated food processing really is, and how underpaid restaurant staff can be really obnoxious sometimes. Fast-food employees in particular. In that spirit of public education and outreach, here are 13 of the grossest food-related stories from the last four years and change of The Consumerist. Enjoy. Learn. Try not to ... [Link] [Cache]