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McDonald’s fan creates live map to track every broken ice cream machine in America
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:18 am
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:18 am
quote:
McDonald’s fan creates live map to track every broken ice cream machine in America
LINK
A 24-year-old ice cream fan fed up with broken ice cream machines managed to reverse-engineer the McDonald’s app to create a map of every broken soft serve machine in the United States.
Rashiq Zahid, a software engineer, came up with the idea this summer after failing to order a McSundae at a McDonald’s in Berlin because the machine was not working.
The map at mcbroken.com tracks the percentage of restaurants that currently have broken ice cream machines and uses red and green labels to identify stores currently serving up soft serve.
Zahid told The Verge he built a bot that places orders at all of the McDonald’s locations to determine if the machine is currently operating.
Zahid said the tool was created as a joke, but he was surprised to hear many people find it useful.
I just made it for fun,” said Zahid. “But people were like ‘Wow, this is the best thing I’ve seen this entire week.’”
David Tovar, McDonald’s VP of U.S. Communications, seems to support the soft serve savior.
“Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream! So, thanks!” Tovar tweeted. “We know we have some opportunities to consistently satisfy even more customers with sweet treats and we will.”
According to Eat This, Not That!, several McDonald’s franchise owners recently formed a research team to “search for a permanent solution to the soft serve machine problem.”
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:20 am to goofball
This dude keeps creating this thing over and over.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:21 am to goofball
I have one too but it's easier. Working machines are marked with a red pin:
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:21 am to goofball
Either I'm already drunker than I should be on game day at this time or I've seen this before somewhere.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:26 am to Bestbank Tiger
No way that many ice cream machines work in Louisiana.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:27 am to goofball
Someone with CLEARLY too much time on his hands.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:29 am to goofball
What I don't get is that I distinctly remember a thread here from a couple years ago that talked about this same topic. Yet, here we are now with 3 threads in a day and a half about it. I don't get it.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:31 am to goofball
Probably be easier to track the working ones
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:39 am to goofball
Wouldn't this kind of depend on the individual locations to report that their machine is broken? Seems like a waste of time.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 11:44 am to goofball
Imagine being a developer talented enough to create this, and you just get labeled “McDonald’s fan.”
Posted on 10/24/20 at 12:19 pm to Bestbank Tiger
“broken”
I’ve been informed by multiple former McDonald’s employees that these things are rarely broken. They are just a bitch to clean, so the workers will often say it’s broken so they don’t have to clean it (or at night, so they don’t have to clean it again after they’ve already cleaned it).
I’ve been informed by multiple former McDonald’s employees that these things are rarely broken. They are just a bitch to clean, so the workers will often say it’s broken so they don’t have to clean it (or at night, so they don’t have to clean it again after they’ve already cleaned it).
Posted on 10/24/20 at 12:21 pm to notiger1997
quote:
Wouldn't this kind of depend on the individual locations to report that their machine is broken? Seems like a waste of time.
Without spending time investigating something I’m not going to use, I imagine it uses some kind of crowd sourcing, like apps that show speed traps or roadblocks. So customers, not the businesses (who would never participate).
Posted on 10/24/20 at 12:43 pm to EthicalHedonist
Zoomed in on BR-NOLA haha
This post was edited on 10/24/20 at 12:45 pm
Posted on 10/24/20 at 1:24 pm to EthicalHedonist
quote:
I’ve been informed by multiple former McDonald’s employees that these things are rarely broken. They are just a bitch to clean, so the workers will often say it’s broken so they don’t have to clean it (or at night, so they don’t have to clean it again after they’ve already cleaned it).
This is the same that I’ve been told as well. I know for certain this was true pre-24 hour McD locations. I’m not sure what the excuse is now since it wouldn’t really make a lot of sense.
Maybe somebody could use this guys data to track the local time the machines “break”. If they all tend to break around 9-10 PM, and start working again around 10 AM, then it’d be pretty obvious to identify.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 1:25 pm to goofball
This can't be right, none down in the greater Birmingham area and only 5 down in the whole state?
Posted on 10/24/20 at 1:26 pm to SuperSaint
quote:
SuperSaint
10 days, baw.
Posted on 10/24/20 at 1:30 pm to BowlJackson
yeah his algorithm is flawed IMO: he places orders at all the restaurants for a mcflurry to see if it reports available or not, then cancels all the orders. The problem is that there is no way in hell the actual machine availablity lines up with whatever you can order online. You'd get to the restaurant and they'd say that the machine is broken, will you accept a substitute?
Posted on 10/24/20 at 3:28 pm to goofball
So one person, a 'fan' spent his free time and his own money developing this and is also going to spend his free time monitoring their ice cream machines, right? And he's doing this...why?? Does anyone actually believe this??? This is the new marketing/advertising scheme by companies. Put some dumb shite like this out there and people will begin spreading it until it goes viral. Looks like it's working.
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