Should McDonald's Pay Compensation for a Mistake in Service?

McDonalds have been at the center of several lawsuits recently over supposed mistakes in their service. For the majority of people encountering minor errors in service at many restaurants and fast food outlets is something that we encounter every now and then. And it is certainly a minor annoyance, but not something that you would ever consider suing over. So before deciding if McDonalds should pay for errors in its service we should first define what an error in service is. Surely they can't be expected to pay out if they give me an extra order of fries by mistake. But by the same token if they give me something that I didn't ask for that I'm allergic to then perhaps they should.

The first thing to consider is that the employees of McDonalds are trained to get the food ready as fast as they can. So even if you ask for something without pickles, you might still get them because they are sued to making things a certain way, at high speed. So putting everything into a piece of food that they usually do is often second nature, even if they don't intend to get your order wrong. Also they are often under pressure to get orders complete as fast as they can, especially at busy times, due to the fact that every customer at places such as this expect fast service.

There are examples of course where McDonalds is to blame for bad service and cases where they aren't. For example a woman recently sued McDonalds because she sent to the drive through and ordered a coffee, then preceded to drive around with the cup between her legs. And of course then when the coffee spilled she was burned. So the question that presents itself to me here is whether putting hot coffee between your legs and driving around is a good idea.