In the spring of 1960, just after he turned 16, Chuck Stout went to work as a “garbage boy” at a McDonald’s in Toledo, Ohio. For 85 cents an hour, he swept and mopped the floors, kept the drive-in lot tidy, filled the shake machine, and washed dishes. Chuck loved the job. It was an escape—somewhere to go that wasn’t the Weiler Homes public housing complex, where he lived with his mother and sister. They were barely scraping by. “My mom drank so much,” he says, “she didn’t know what I was doing.” Not only did Chuck love his job, the job loved him. He went from garbage boy to french fry maker to burger cook to cashier. He became a manager, then a supervisor, then a field consultant, then a professor at Hamburger University, where McDonald’s trains new franchise owners and managers. By 1976, Chuck was serving as a director of product development for the entire corporation. The next year, he was on the team that brought ice cream sundaes to the chain’s menu. For the effort, Chuck was rewarded with a handsome bonus and a personal letter from founder Ray Kroc, whose wisdom Chuck was fond of quoting…