I'm guessing with your location the new manager was all fired up to do things his way. Little did he know, the old way worked, and his way was shit.
During my failed attempts to find the sauce I found out that my location charges $1.00 more for Mcnuggets than base price. Another location charged $2.00 more.
The only other "quirk" at the local location is they refuse to make a bunch of the items on the menu.
Franchisees can be real fuckheads.
I read an economics article a while back about WHY McDonalds became more expensive, and those articles are not written for the consumer. Franchisees fucking HATE customers. They hated the dollar menu the most, because the dollar menu actually keeps prices down. Specifically, if people can get a budget cheeseburger for a dollar, and the cheeseburger deluxe is $4.50, they're going to buy the budget cheeseburger, and complain about the deluxe.
Also, apparently price hikes are extremely difficult in the midwest because the customers will stand at the counter and insist that the price is wrong. They'll waste as much of the employees time as they can get away with, because that's their entertainment for the day.
Also found out the "magic number" Mcdonalds is aiming for is $30 tickets. That's right, their goal is to get you to spend $30 every time you go in there.
This isn't the $30 article, but it does talk about how Mcdonalds despises poor people, or as they call them "Value Customers"
This reminds me of how before covid, all the car companies discontinued their sub compacts because they wanted customers in larger, more expensive vehicles.
If anyone could track down the $30 ticket article, I'd appreciate it. Search engines aren't particularly helpful.