Yeah, @the_sean is spot on - that sounds like a rough lesson to learn.

You really have to babysit that stuff the whole time, huh? I used to think it was all hype but now I get why people warn about it.

See I totally agree with you @garcia.jake because Ive seen the same thing at my local spot. The machine was running but the ice cream came out all watery and thin. The girl at the counter just shrugged and said machine was broken. But like the machine was literally on and making noise. So I think there's a big difference between a true breakdown where it wont dispense at all vs when the quality is bad and they just dont wanna deal with fixing it right then. Ive even asked a manager once and they admitted the cleaning process takes like 4 hours so if its close to closing time they just say its down to save the hassle. So yeah 6 times a month sounds about right but half of those are probably just them not wanting to do the cleanup work.