If you look over this....they’d have to hire some kid to stand there with a stop-watch, and count minutes on each table. Whoever made this decision...is not long for the business-world, and had better look for another occupation. The only acceptable reason to run something like this is that you have an enormous crowd who shows up in the AM, and sits there for an hour chatting with associates.
I’ve eaten at probably forty McDonalds over the past decade and never seen big crowds in the AM.
you just check the timestamp on the receipt. You can scroll back through all the orders and see when each one was placed.
How about a little civility in a situation like this? If the restaurant is not busy (people waiting for a seat), then an occupied booth is better than an empty booth, just for the optics. If the restaurant is busy (people waiting for a seat), then the civil customer ought to be sensitive to the situation and vacate as soon as possible. A little give and take between customer and proprietor would seem to be in order here.