A bazillion years ago, I worked for a semester at the Mickey D's on 3rd street in B-Town. They did it then. It's got something to do with drive thru time goals. It's like American or United loading up the plane and pushing back from the gate on time, even though they know you'll be sitting out there for over an hour before you actually take off. They can still claim the flight departed on time to make their goal and I'm guessing Ronald's folks can claim their drive thru metrics are still within the goal.