McDonalds staff 'rough up' prof with home-made techno-spectacles A man wearing computer-assisted spectacles was assaulted by staff in a Parisian McDonalds, who tried to pull the glasses off his head then threw him out of the restaurant, according to a blog post written by the victim. The staff seemed angered by the high-tech vision-ware worn by Dr Steve Mann who is an academic at the …
Am I the only one who thinks the whole "the only reason I have these images is because the assault resulted in the device not clearing the buffer" story completely unbelievable?
Seems to me the device records all the time, but Dr Mann doesn't want to say that. The images posted were clearly taken several minutes apart. Just how big is this buffer?
No doubt this guy thought the no cameras rule did not apply to him, because according to him, he is special. Just your typical sociopath expecting the world to adjust to him.
The facts so far is that no one this guy has come in contact with has reacted positively to him, including the authorities, which leads me to believe his version of events is only so much sociopathic QQing.
I hope he brings his stupid attitude to someplace in the US where fast food employee's will not be so gentle.
You know those areas of town where fast food companies are forced to put people with gang tattoos on the register cause no one else will take the job.
The title of this article is completely misleading - if you actually read the blog post its clear that only 1 of the 3 individuals that approcahed him had any clear affiliation to McDonalds, and that guy was in fact bought over by the person who assaulted (which implies to me that the guy was just looking for the first McDonalds employee they could find to complain to). There is no indication that the guys who attacked him and kicked him out actually worked for McDonalds, and if you look at the pictures on the blog they definitely don't look to me like McDonalds employees.
A clearer title would have been "Prof with home-made techno-spectacles roughed up, happens to happen in McDonalds".
The only relevance to McDonalds is that the employee that was called over didn't do more to help, although frankly if I was that guy I'd call the police and try to stay out of it.
Like I said, look at the photos - the badge (although obscured) doesn't have anything remotely recognisable as a McDonalds logo or branding on it. It looks like an access card to me, not a name badge that a manager would wear. People go to lunch and leave their work access cards on all of the time.
Although its feasible that guy was the manager, at best thats just wild speculation.
Quoted from his blog post
"I was stopped by a person who subsequently stated that he was a McDonalds employee"
"I noticed that Perpetrator 1 was wearing a name tag clipped to his belt. When I looked down at it, he quickly covered it up with his hand, and pulled it off and turned it around so that it was facing inwards, so that only the blank white backside of it was then facing outwards."
"The third person (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 3) was holding a broom and dustpan, and wearing a shirt with a McDonald's logo on it."
So that's the main assailant and at least one of the 2 people with him who are almost certainly restaurant employees.
Micky D's needs to issue a formal apology, and maybe a small token grant for improvement of the visual appeal of this guys prosthesis. I don't care who you are or what you did, it is no cause for assault. either refuse service and ask him to leave, or call the authorities.
The staff involved should be sent to the corporate re-education camp.
Pimple on thce of 'La Belle France'.
I know from my time of working in Annecy that there is Paris and then there is the rest of France. My friends over there would rejoice if Paris disappeared into a hole in the ground.
It is a pity that most Americans who wome to Europe only go to a few Cities and never really see the best bits of a country.
Still, as it is past Bastille Day which meant that at least 50% of Paris has decamped to the south of france until september so even it is half bearable for a few weeks. Sadly, many of the better places to eat have also closed for their holidays.
Beer for when the Vin Rouge has run out.
Legit researcher he may be, but legit researcher does not always equal "easy going, polite and generally bang up chap." Now we are only getting one side of the story, but as everyone who he dealt with seemed to have it in for him, Police, Maccy D's staff and even his own Embassy, I would suggest that the other side of the story may be worth hearing...
This is McDonalds?
On the Champs-Elysées?
And it doesn't allow customers with cameras? I should have thought nobody but tourists ever goes in there. And 90% of tourists have cameras. Come to that, 99% of mobile-phone users have cameras.
This guy must have been their first customer in months.
My experiences of Paris (but not the rest of France) bears this out.
They are worse than Londoners w.r.t. how they interact with the world.
They spend their whole life ignoring what is happening right in front of them.
Then when it is forced into their world view they just attack whatever it is.
Classic flight/fight reaction of many city dwellers and the reason why Parisians are usually quite rude.
I reckon it comes from being surrounded 24/7/365 by noise and people.
I imagine the attack sounded something like this; (translated from French obviously)
"Ugh, freak with camera on face!"
"Kill freak"
"Steal shiny-shiny"
"Shiny-shiny not come off"
"Kill freak!!"
As for camera-face,.... FREAK! <LOL>
I definitely think that even the most hard line union could condone this action. And I'm even more shocked the police did not intervene.
Computer assisted eyewear= Disability discrimination.
Physically attempting to remove eyewear= abh/ gbh?
Preventing him and his family enjoying meal. =assault !
Also, what authority did the individual use to eject this man from the restaraunt? If he identified as a macdonalds employee, this could be a case for action against the whole franchise europe-wide.
Personally, I haven't eaten at macdonalds in decades.. a big mac falls below what I or trading standards might insist are basic advertising requirements.
As for the employee, next time he might not be so lucky. CS gas is readily available on the continent. (or is capiscum spray more appropriate?)
I'm betting it was all a horrible misunderstanding.
From his picture, I'm presuming he was trying to eat in the restaurant shirtless.
Coupled with the "wearable computing" nonsense, it's reasonable to assume he isn't really well-connected to social norms.
Finally, being from Toronto, he probably didn't understand much real French (tee hee), so as the employee tried to more and more physically pantomime why there was a problem, the employee accidentally knocked the preposterous contraption off his face.
While all of you are debating the quality of restaurant food in Paris, this man was attacked by RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES at McDonalds WHY?? For wearing some sort of high tech glasses? WTF??? At a table with his family, and the Police wouldn't even take a report or arrest someone for assault?? Why??
And the ho hum response from McDonalds as if we're discussing customer dissatisfaction instead of STORE EMPLOYEES ATTACKING A MAN IN FRONT OF HIS FAMILY? WTF??
The French police failed to spring into action to aggressively investigate an assault complaint by a Canadian?
I hope the Canadian government pursues this issue through diplomatic channels. After all, this kind of behavior may lead Canada to reconsider participation the next time France is occupied by German forces.
The police can't do anything unless he actually bothers to report the crime. He returned home to Canada, and then sent emails. Even then he's not actually reporting a crime, he's asked for assistance in what is effectively a civil claim for compensation. How do you expect the French police to do anything if he doesn't report the crime, and the main witness is in Canada? You expect them to fly a couple of gendarmes over to Toronto?
All of this discussion has yet to yield an answer to the basic question of why did they attack the person in the first place? Was this ever explained to the wearer in the first place?
From the looks of it this attack was just because he looked weird, and not much else. It also appears that (again from the reports given here) that there was no explanation given to wearer before the attack. Back in the late 30's in another country, attacks for having hooked noses seems similar, but I'll leave that discussion to another time.
All in all, a bad sign.
Advise to all: Get out of Paris and enjoy the countryside. Generally there are better people there (or at least it was that way when I visited last in 1991).
Wonder if they'd be brave enough to try pulling the arms off a man who looks like he could smash their heads together with it.
More seriously, the man was attacked for having a set of high-tech sunglasses... That's moronic. There is rude, and then there is thuggery; rude is telling him "No cameras in here, get lost!" Thuggery is... Well, this nonsense. The shrug of indifference by the police and his homeland's embassy is equally appalling.
The reaction by the staff also makes me wonder just what they may be hiding. And "you have nothing to fear, so you have nothing to hide" certainly does apply in a public place - that's why they're called public, after all.
It would serve these thugs right if this story went global and they got a stream of TV news crews storming the place to get the answers.
Apparently, not only does McDonalds serve the best food in the world, also its employees can be trusted to always tell the truth.
The correct course of action of course, would be:
* review security camera footage
* have a chat with the employees in question
* check consistency
* have another chat with employees
"Erm, there seems to have been a minor technical problem with the recording of security camera footage... How inconvenient..."
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