A BLOCK FROM MY APARTMENT BUILDING in northwest Washington, there was a McDonald’s restaurant that catered to the elderly, a few homeless, and tourists from the nearby zoo. The wait was long and the service slow. There might have been only two or three employees in the kitchen putting all the orders together. Even at the height of the lunch rush there was never a sense of efficiency: By the time you received your order, it was already half wilted. After a while, the number of patrons dwindled to a handful. One day a few months ago, it closed.

A block south of my office, there was another McDonald’s located in a dungeon-like food court at the Farragut North Metro stop. Here the lines were always long during the noon hour, though it didn’t take forever to get your order. The problem was the quality. The food just didn’t taste good. It was sloppily prepared. And then there was the matter of cleanliness. Bad enough you were in a basement level food court next to a train stop. But some of the workers didn’t strike you as role models for hygiene. I noticed one swarthy server, in particular, whom many customers tried to avoid. He would mumble and constantly run his fingers through his long, stringy, and unkempt hair. His shirt often came undone and you’d be witness to his tucking it back in, his hands going deep down the front of his pants.