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by dathinab 1781 days ago
But us not knowing better still doesn't mean that their decision is backed by data.

In my experience quite a lot of business decisions are not backed by data, especially when it comes to people generally perceived as "less liked" like e.g. homeless people.
1 comments
yourenotsmart 1781 days ago
So is your thesis going to be that attracting groups of homeless people in your restaurant is positive or neutral with regards to attracting customers, staff dealing with problems, additional maintenance and so on?

Surely if you had a restaurant, you'd want to invite your customers to the smell of pissed pants and drunk people begging for change?

Let's be real here.

Homelessness is an issue that shouldn't exist, but it's not McDonald's issue, that's not their role in the game, and they can't offer their services at a level, when they need to deal with homeless people on their premise. If your country sucks and can't take care of social issues, it's not suddenly the role of private businesses to play that role for those in need.

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ClumsyPilot 1781 days ago
You just critiqued the author for assuming he know whether the decision was made on data.

Now youare assuming its about homelessness - you dont know that homelessness was even considered in any way when this decision was made, so this entire critique is baseless.

For all we know someone wanted to look like their are innovating, and got some brownie point for their end of year

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yourenotsmart 1781 days ago
How can you say "I assume" things which are literally SAID in the parent comment? Do you know what "assume" means?

As for the "all we know" thesis, for all you know the Sun might not rise tomorrow. But odds are it will. And therefore all thought process and decision making is made on odds. Not on absolute, perfect certainty.

And the odds are that management decisions at McDonald's have a higher quality data sourcing and analysis process, and have spent more time figuring a problem out, than bunch of random people on Hacker News, who spoke about McDonald's that day simply because they saw a tweet about it.

But of course, "for all we know" maybe the Einstein of fast food is here among us, so who knows?!

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