In my experience the major time sinks happen when multiple McFlurrys were ordered. Mixing one takes about 15-30 seconds, and if too many are ordered at once the ice cream would start to come out slower.
When you’re backlogged with multiple people in line, multiple orders, and you’re a 1-3 person crew in the front, every second counts. Ice cream was the easiest thing to cut because of the stereotype that it was always broken so people didn’t question that it was “down”, and those precious seconds made my 17 year old life much easier.
When I worked there during our lunch rush, we would have a person dedicated to every task, fries, coffee, orders, bagging. When it came to the dinner rush, we would have half the staff or less then our lunch rush. So in a sense it is the work of 2 to 3 people.
Also during overnight we would have only one person in the front, and one in the back. Once Uber eats came on the scene our workload increased 3x or more, but no extra staff was added! :-)
Edit: that’s not even mentioning when we would be short staffed, due to people not showing up / calling in, which happened every other day it felt like, and the shift wouldn’t be replaced.
When you’re backlogged with multiple people in line, multiple orders, and you’re a 1-3 person crew in the front, every second counts. Ice cream was the easiest thing to cut because of the stereotype that it was always broken so people didn’t question that it was “down”, and those precious seconds made my 17 year old life much easier.