I figured as much, and I would expect a Japanese mcdonalds employee to give slightly more of a shit than say, an American employee so that probably explains the discrepancy in the average experience if you were to compare them.

That reminds me of when I worked at a movie theater. We used to serve the popcorn scooped directly from the popping machine into a bucket. But then they had a corporate guy come in and install warmers so we could pre-load a bunch of buckets/bags of popcorn and hand them out when ordered. Of course the ones from the warmers aren't as good as the ones freshly popped, and this guy gave some bullshit about "ackshually popcorn right out of the popper isn't as good, it needs time to dry". It's not like the customer is about to take their popcorn into a multi-hour sitting activity where they have time to "let it dry"...

I always tried to hook up the nice customers with the fresh stuff when I could, it felt criminal handing them one out of the warmer.