Well, working in fast food, not all locations are the same. Some people care to clean the stoves daily. Some wait and do it weekly. Some managers change the fry oil regularly, some don’t. You can taste the difference.
I guess I don’t go to fast food often enough to notice. I don’t eat out very often (like once/month?), and when I do, it’s at a better chain (e.g. Five Guys) or a non-chain restaurant (I prefer the local places).
Yeah you hear some horror stories of different locations sometimes. Like floors being so filthy a maintenance worker had to scrape a spot for him to kneel down and the manager got upset, claiming he now had to clean the floors because of it. Places are run with a skeleton crew sometimes and cleaning is the first thing that gets skipped over.