Media Encoder taking too long to queue

I'm on the latest versions of Premiere (22.5.0) and Media Encoder (22.5).

Sending a simple mp4 to be encoded in AME takes way too long to queue, sometimes it can be 10-15 minutes for the file to show up. Even sending an mp3 to be encoded takes time to load.

Not sure what is going on this version but it seems extemely buggy, not to mentiontion the bad redesign.

Also, why has the software stopped supporting using the rendered preview files when encoding in AME? In Premiere Export when you hover over the "Use Previews" option, it says it will opnly use the previews when you export directly from Premiere.  Why has this changed??