I'm having lunch today at a fast food restaurant. I notice on the curly fries box, in small-ish, low-contrast print, it says, "Caution: Contents are hot." This brought back memories of the old-school lawsuits (yes, "lawsuits", plural) against McDonalds claiming that the coffee was too hot and scalded some guy's crotch because he had the cup between his legs while trying to drive away from the drive-thru window. (Can we say, "Darwin Awards"? Actually no, because he didn't die....)

So it got me thinking... I wonder if someone has ever, or will ever, sue an ice cream shop for ice cream or a milkshake that was too cold and gave a person a brain freeze that caused them to drive into a tree. Then we'll start seeing on ice cream cups and cones a warning, "Caution: Contents are cold."

It's nice to know that people are looking after us, but it's sad that the only reason we have warning labels at all is because someone tried to do what the label tells us not to. I'm not talking about simple things like, "Keep hands away from moving parts." If you don't know better than to keep your fingers out of a metal fan, then maybe you should lose a finger or two. I'm talking about things like this.



¶ 12:54 PM