Don't know what mcdonalds you're in, but most of them combine the kiosk revamp with cuts to the amount of staff hours. It's definitely not faster to join the single line in 5th place than use one of the 3 (of 5) vacant kiosks.

The McDonald's nearby doesn't allow counter orders anymore. You can only order through the kiosk, or using the phone app.

Both of them have numerous problems, and it's more time-efficient to order Uber Eats. But that has massive added fees.

I considered signing up to be an Uber Eats driver and filtering for anyone within 1 meter of me so I could pick up my own orders and save time(Uber's app is better), but there's not enough precision to do that.

So I ditched McDonald's and mostly drink Soylent nowadays.

They don't have ads where I live, and as a result they're about as fast as the counter.