The experience now is definitely worse but even back in the early 2000s, owners tracked drive thru service order times and the managers constantly reminded us of this.

I didn't know it at the time, since it was my first job, but they got bonuses based on how fast they could make us work to fulfill those orders during certain times of the day. A backed up drive thru line would always get faster treatment than in store customers. Unless it was a special case, like a bus kid of field trip kids. I assume in those situations the managers could argue for their bonus based on the large amount of sales they got in store.

They obviously didn't share those bonuses with us.