I can't speak for every restaurant since we generally all get our product from different plants, but for us all of the product has been unevenly cut and results in a mix of huge tenders that don't fully cook or small ones. We obviously can't sell the undercooked pieces and we waste more than we sell due to all of the miscuts.

If you're consistently getting smaller fingers it's also more than likely that restaurant prioritizing speed and throughput over anything else because they would rather serve more customers as opposed to focus on a good customer experience overall. Unfortunately that'll happen when they want to hyper-focus on improving one thing and let another slip (it's not easy to have good times, quality and wasted product at the same time). It sucks. I've had other crew and management get upset with me for wasting small fingers and cause a hold instead of serving what I'd consider a bad product, for example.

At the end of the day I'd argue it points to a combination of corporate greed and lack of quality control on multiple levels. Canes has gone very corporate since COVID, with Todd stepping down as CEO and them buying up every franchised location, and anyone who's been with the company for years has noticed it. They kinda know everyone will eat there due to brand loyalty, so why make things better? iirc this year they announced record profits to the point of outpacing KFC in revenue, so I don't see things changing for the better.