Dr Mann. Who? No, he’s not related to Dr Who, but Dr Steve Mann is a cyber man, and whether he’s the world’s first, or not, he’s certainly the first we know of to be hassled by French McDonalds staff – a case that has done little to stem the perception of Parisians as an arrogant and unhelpful bunch of people when it comes to foreigners.
As Dr Mann states at his blog, he took his family to Paris, and, while he doesn’t characterise it this way, he had the extreme misfortune of visiting the world’s most famous deliverers of the unclassiest way to obesity.
Reading Dr Mann’s blog posting, you really do feel like reaching through the screen and teaching the three alleged McDonalds scumbags a serious lesson in politeness and customer service, and then the same to the Maccas HQ people who had the audacity to claim there was “no physical altercation” – something that prompted Dr Mann to add a new photo to his blog post showing a Maccas man with his hand most definitely in – and past – Dr Mann’s face.
Dr Mann explained how he ordered some Ranch Wraps, a burger and a mango McFlurry, a flavour not available in Australia, as well as have his daughter test out her French.
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The allegedly whacko Macco’s went on to rip up a letter from Dr Mann’s doctor, which is astoundingly awful behaviour, and damaged Dr Mann’s lens too - you really must see Dr Mann's blog posting (linked again here) because you really won't believe how awesomely roughly or horribly he was treated, if Dr Mann's cyborg-eye-witness account is to be believed!
McDonalds posted a statement which is republished here at Laptop Mag, which says in part that Maccas interviewed its staff members, launched a thorough investigation (which does not sound terribly thorough when Dr Mann could so easily show photographic evidence of his side of the story), with the company appealing to people presumably like myself who read Dr Mann’s story and feel especially angry at McDonalds saying “We urge everyone not to speculate or jump to conclusions before all the facts are known. Our goal is to provide a welcoming environment and stellar service to McDonald’s customers around the world.”
Well, we hope the truth surrounding the entire affair is established quickly, because it really does look incredibly bad for McDonalds in Paris.
Admittedly there is talk that “cameras” or recording equipment may not have been allowable under the policies of that store, but if so, everyone owning a modern day smartphone is breaking those policies. I mean, is that person over there checking their email – or recording someone or something?
Whatever it is, cybernetic technology (for better or worse) is only going to become more common, and unless the world is going to go through yet another episode of discrimination against others – this time against people who qualify as “cyborgs” – common sense had better prevail, because we sadly don’t have a Dr Who to get us out of our messes.
