That was a joke in reference to the Van Halen album 5150, which in fact did not include the track Hot for Teacher, as that was on the album 1984, and I was being facetious.
5150 is also the name of Eddie (and subsequently Wolfgang) Van Halen's recording studio where 1984 and many other seminal albums were recorded.
The studio was named after Section 5150 of the Welfare Code of California which allows officers or mental health professionals to detain individuals for involuntary psychiatric holds.
There is infrastructure involved with monitoring subscription status to make sure you're not pirating heated seats. Also for taking payments to unlock your adjustable lumbar supports. They gotta pay for it somehow!
I haven't read the transcript of the earnings call, but I read the article(s) and the Wendy's blog post in response.
It seems like there was indeed some misunderstanding somewhere along the way, in that the "dynamic pricing" that was referenced was not to be construed as surge pricing in any way, and was intended to reflect decreased (ebb? discounted? receding?) pricing that would be presented during off-peak hours to drive business.
The practice in itself isn't inherently bad, but I can see this as an incremental move towards true surge pricing across the industry - which for the record I am against - and there isn't really a way to position it in such a way as to be seen as a benefit to the consumer.
As with everything else, customers will vote for this practice with their wallets, and by the state of several other industries in which similar models have been adopted and begrudgingly accepted as the norm, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for a positive outcome here.
There's a corporate initiative where I work that we're going to offer AI in 2024. When I politely asked to expound on that, I was met with blank stares.
Like motherfucker do you realize even MS Teams uses AI for meeting transcription
That joke lands better when spoken