A great big game of confusion

Receipt and "Now Serving" screen at McDonald's, Vancouver, BC (Both are for number 134)

Receipt and "Now Serving" screen at McDonald's, Vancouver, BC (The receipt is for order number 773 and the "Now Serving" screen is showing number 567)

McDonald's has rolled out self-serve kiosks in some of its Canadian locations. You place an order and pay by some form of card (Credit, debit, or gift). The machine then spits out a receipt with an order number on it. You then proceed to the order delivery area and await your order.

Logical and confusing. The order number you get depends on the place your ordered with each self-service kiosk and each cash register getting a different starting digit. In the lower example my kiosk's orders started with a "7", while the order up for delivery was from a  kiosk that started its orders with a "5".

In reality the first digit is irrelevant.. In the bottom example I had order "73" and order "67" was currently being served. So, I could have thought that I would have to wait for over 200 orders to be delivered before my number came up.

So why have the starting digit? I think it is because orders may not come out in sequence, and this adds another layer of confusion for the customer. This way the slow-witted person who orders 15 burgers won't be able to figure out that the person who ordered a single cup of coffee got their order first.