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People do chose fast food by the neighborhood. When I was at McDonald's - 30 years ago so this may have changed - corporate policy was you would clean your parking lot and everyone for one block. We were encouraged to paint any abandoned building in the one block range at our expense just to ensure the area looked nice.
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If that's really your take on this then I have no option but to accept it.

Let's move forward.

What incentivized them to provide the trash cans to begin with, might you suppose? They aren't cheap to buy, or to maintain, or to keep emptied daily (or as they fill up, or whatever). But yet: They were things that existed, and their existence was definitely deliberate.

What motivates companies that still provide outdoor trash cans to continue to do so?

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It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation. Or the shopping center design. We know as a society, that we need garbage cans, so they are budgeted for and installed.

But owners are always looking for ways to save money. If the garbage can works fine, it gets maintained. But if it gets hit by a car, or the wind blows it away, it might not be at the top of the list of things to fix. The remnants of the garbage can are removed. The expense gets put off for another month. And slowly the lack of garbage cans becomes normal, and staff can remove another responsibility from their list.

Now the situation becomes, who wants to spend a bunch of money to put in garbage cans, and also add onto the staff's workload? It's not like customers are asking for the manager to install garbage cans.

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