and things went downhill from there

In a story eerily similar to the one of Stella and the McDonald's coffee, a woman in Winnipeg was badly burned when a cup take-out tea spilled on her in an accident.

The story varies on a few fronts. First, she was not holding the tea in her lap; it spilled on her when the car she was in was involved in a collision. Secondly, she did not sue Tim Hortons over the spill, but is instead pursuing regulatory changes that would force them to serve cooler beverages. Thirdly, unlike the McDonald's case the tea was not being served at an unusually elevated temperature, it was being served at the normal temperature for tea.

While I sympathise with the extent of her injuries, she comes across in this article as a person who has no concept of personal responsibility. As most of us have learned from previous incidents, taking a scalding beverage in a car carries inherent risks. Obviously the best solution is to not take scalding beverages in the car. If that doesn't work, then the next best thing is to spend $1.99 on a travel mug which is less prone to spilling than one of those shitty cups from Tim's.

Of course, if one learned nothing from the experience then they would campaign for tepid tea, to ensure that they would not get burnt as badly when it happens again.

I would be a lot more sympathetic with her if she was pushing for regulations on safer drive-through cups. Tim Hortons has especially bad take-out cups, which are too tall to be stable (thanks to needlessly upping their beverage sizes a couple of years ago), and lids that leak at the best of times, and are prone to coming off very easily. I would happily pay an additional $.10 per cup if they adopted the ones that McDonad's uses up here.

In fact if this lady was a coffee drinker, my advice to her would be to go to McDonald's for her coffee, since they brew a much better product, and their cups are an order of magnitude better than Tim's. Unfortunately she's a tea drinker, and Tim's actually makes a pretty good steeped tea - in large part because they steep it at the right temperature.

My advice to this lady: get a spill-proof mug and let the grown-ups enjoy their hot beverages.

I got hit with a rush project and a very short deadline on Friday.  That is, I have to run all the jobs and compile the figures we need before Monday afternoon.  Since I can't slow down time, it necessitated that I come in on Saturday or Sunday to get some of the figures squared (or rounded) away.  I don't entirely mind - it's nice working here on the weekend because I have the office to myself.  Casual dress, no interruptions... maybe I should change myself to a Sun - Thu schedule.

On the way here I swung by Home Depot to pick up a nut for our lawn mower.  I felt a bit silly handing a 3/8" nut to the girl at the till (for a grand total of $.15 after tax), but it will be nice to get our lawn mower working again.  Given that I had already driven far out of my way en route to the office, I decided that I may as well make one more detour to that Asian market where I bought those interesting beverages a few weeks back.  They no longer carried that delicious Milk Tea that I bought last time, but they were carrying the same product by Lipton.  It claims to be "Rich & Smooth", but I will see if that can stand up to the "Extra Thick" tea I bought the last time.

I also picked up a box of instant ginger tea.  The ingredients on the box are listed (verbatim) as, "Ginger and Rock Sugar".  That's it.  Not too much you can do wrong with only two ingredients, eh?

If you like ginger, then you'd probably love this tea.  It's exquisitely good.  Maybe "Rock Sugar" is a codeword for "Crack Cocaine", because I'm already twitching at the thought of making another cup.