McDonald’s menu is enormous, much larger than In n Out. If you’ve ever worked in the quick service food industry (it sounds like you haven’t), you’d know this considerably affects how every facet of the restaurant functions.

I also completely disagree that In n Out is “dramatically better” and I’d be very surprised if that was the resounding opinion across Americans. It is fine, but again, it serves a different purpose, so making such broad apples-to-apples comparisons seems a little short sighted.

“Competence in operations” is a nice sound bite but without some real examples related to restaurant management I’m just not convinced. I ensure you that it has indeed come up in a McDonald’s boardroom that raising their wages would result in more competitive hiring, that is not a novel observation. I did three years at McDonald’s and another several at other restaurants; admittedly it doesn’t sound like this comment was made from a place of experience, more a place of convenient idealism.