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Comment by hlynurd | Hacker News Reader

You would think it's in the interest of whoever is responsible for keeping those areas clean to offer garbage cans.

I live by a park. These places don't care for the same reason the park doesn't care: the wind blows it all in my yard, not their problem anymore.

It would be, if the responsible parties were making rational decisions.

It is unlikely the low-ranked employees responsible for cleaning up garbage are making decisions on whether to construct or retain garbage cans.

Agreed. It was never my intent to suggest that they would be doing so.

So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.

Someone -- at some point -- did make a decision to eliminate outdoor trash cans at these establishments. They used to be present and no longer are, and they didn't disappear on their own.

I'm not sure that anyone in the management ladder is affected. People don't generally choose a fast food restaurant or convenience store based on the cleanliness of their parking lots, so sales isn't going to be affected. Nor is staff, already cut to minimal levels, going to be given additional hours to keep the parking lots clean.

There even might be a disincentive to have garbage cans if they can't be maintained. People who don't litter will either take the extra step of going indoors, or they might leave it in their own car to throw out later. Whereas people who do litter will do so regardless of when there are trash cans. By removing outdoor trash cans, you've "saved" the staff the time to monitor and clear out those trash cans.

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?

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.

Every single time we interact, it becomes increasingly clear that you aren't picking up my words at all.

I feel like I'm chatting with ChatGPT 3, as I was years ago when it would just articulately weasel its way around everything I asked with a profundity of deflective nonsense in response to any query.

Or at least: That's what it did when it wasn't confidently introducing hallucinations as rote facts.

> It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation.

Why were they required? What motivated this requirement?

Someone, somewhere, at some point: They decided that there shall be trash cans. This is a thing that happened. What compelled them to make this decision, might you suppose?

(If you don't have an answer, then that's fine by me. It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've already internally rejected your reasoning for the trash cans becoming gone while outwardly accepting that your opinion is simply inflexibly the way that it is. It is unlikely that I can be further swayed by a lack of an opinion for why the trash cans originated to begin with.)

I thought that was obvious. Stores specify garbage cans outside for the convenience of their customers. People generate trash, especially while eating. But also when they buy stuff. So we have garbage cans so they don't have to carry it with them, and the trash is contained. But they're not entirely necessary, just like public bathrooms.

We seem to be just talking past each other, so maybe we should just agree to stop wasting each other's time.

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.

> So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.

No matter what, big or small, it's always a Republican's fault, huh.

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