What baffles me about this whole situation is McDonald’s (corporate) role in perpetuating it. It doesn’t make sense as a way to squeeze money from the franchises, because the extracted rents¹ don’t go to corporate; it goes to Taylor. It’s a loss to the franchisee, and no benefit to McDonald’s central.

This smells of graft. Someone at McDonald’s corporate is getting paid off illicitly.

¹ In the political-economy sense of “rent”, not the one that means “lease payment”.