Working at McDonalds the summer of my freshman year of college taught me a great deal about leadership because of the amazing manager I had there. He was the first Black man I'd encountered (my state was 95% white at the time) and unbeknownst to me, he faced immense performance scrutiny due to racism. But he never let that frustration show to his employees. Yes, it was a minimum wage job but Roy made it a great place to work because of his attitude, work ethic, and encouragement. He taught us kids to hustle to ensure the customer got the right order in a timely manner.
Like VP Harris, I have no proof of working at McDonalds 40 years ago but the lessons I learned there were invaluable.
I've worked at FOUR shitty pizza joints in my early employment life in high school and college. Not Papa John's, but I was a salad bar girl for Godfather's, delivery driver for Domino's and some other local chain whose name I can't remember, and also was a front counter person for the Flying Tomato. At all four places, I had to make pizzas, wash dishes, fold boxes, and close, which sometimes meant working for hours after the late closing time to clean up the joints. Do I put this hard work experience on my resume nearly 30 years later? Hell no.
I actually have something in common with VP Harris. My first job where I needed a social security number was at the McDonald's on Westlake Village drive in Thousand Oaks California. I'd worked off the books jobs before that. I did put myself through college working anywhere I could anytime I could. I made $1.25 an hour to make french fries and take and bag orders. Back then we had to tally them up manually and make change manually. I quit my one food service job after being assaulted in the walk in (and fighting back I forced my assistant manager onto 17 racks of eggs destroying them). I went on to work in a department store, a blue chip stamp redemption store, a bedding factory, an amusement park and a print cutter at fotomat labs. Try to find one of those today!
Bottom line, as soon as I got my first real job in the real world after graduation, those jobs were all dropped off my resume like a hot potato. I'm not ashamed of anything I did to earn my degree and I'm betting a shit ton of other people have been in the same position Kamala and I have been. But don't ask us how we prove it.
I suppose if this is the best attempt at scandal they can come up with, it is a good thing but how frustrating it is even out there. Many people will believe it just because fox or their favorite right wing commentator say it.
I too worked minimum wage (at McDonald's) as a teen. I was earning some spending money the last couple of years of high school. I bought a (very old) used car, paid for my own gas, and went to see my then girlfriend about a half hour's drive away. I met her at that McDonald's. That was in the mid-1970s. I never listed that crap job on any resume or applications. The only living person who might remember that I worked there is my now ex-wife.
Demanding that Kamala produce evidence of her time working at McDonald's is the height of ridiculousness. It's hard to imagine that everyone in the right wing blogosphere is so utterly out of touch with lower to middle class reality.
I think Trump's argument that Harris needs to validate she worked at McDonalds is fair. And she should produce some proof, just after Trump documents: his bone-spurs were real; that he had a high GPA at Penn, as he claims; an independent assessment of Trump's actual physical and cognitive states of health; the letters and communications he exchanged with Kim Jung Un and Puti; his actual net worth and the worth of his companies; and he releases all of his employees or staff from the confidentiality restrictions in their non-disclosure agreements. One last requirement, to be fair: Trump should waive any executive immunity he might enjoy, including immunity for non-official acts he undertook while President.
Why assume they don’t understand? It implies that if they DID understand, they’d think and behave differently. No. We’ve lived with this assumption for far too long. They DO understand. They DO. They simply don’t care, and they understand how to use the narrative in service to their plans. They. Understand.
I began babysitting when I was 12 ('64), and worked full-time two summers in high school at a fuse (if you don't know Google it) factory. I also worked 20+ hours a week for the nuns at one of the high schools I attended (answering the phones and working in the nuns' kitchen) so my dad could pay less tuition. I worked at a McDonald's one semester while in college. The franchisee decided that the women had to work the registers and the men cooked. This was a college town so we were swamped at lunch and dinner times. Back in the old days, you only had a couple of menu items and people would wait in line 15-20 minutes and then not know what they wanted (they must be the undecideds of today). I'd ask them to step aside and wait on the next person until they figured out what they wanted. Someone complained so the owner asked if I'd rather cook, including doing fries, and I said yes. During college I also worked in a record department (vinyl and figuring out which needle someone needed for their record player), in the university library (best job of all), and in the university cafeteria so I could get free food. While getting my MBA I worked reconciling inventory records (hand-written) for a company that sold equipment to utilities. I worked for Dow Chemical as an accountant for a year, taught a night class at the local community college and then went back for my PhD (accounting, specialty in Federal taxation) and had a long career as an academic and an associate dean of a business school. I never put any of these jobs on any resume but they all helped me get where I am today, which is happily retired. I'm very introverted and diagnosed in my 60s as being on the autism spectrum. All those low-wage jobs helped me to learn how to interact with people, when to stand-up for myself and when to turn the page. One of my Irish-American mother's frequent comments to her five kids when we were getting "full" of ourselves was "Who do you think you are?" Can you imagine Vance working in a McDonald's; he can't even order a donut like a normal person.
I live in NJ, and there are Papa John’s here, but I prefer my local family owned pizzerias. That being said, I worked at an Arby’s in the 70s and have no way to prove it either. My kids, all in their late fifties, remember it, but it doesn’t mean I used it on resumes to get other jobs.
The GOP will lie about anything if it makes someone else more relatable to ordinary citizens.
I was going through paperwork the other day and found my half-sheet 1040 Tax form from 1973. Attached was my W-2 from the large insurance company where I worked the summer after my first year of graduate school. Guess I'd better save it in case I run for office some day.
Would anybody applying for a more substantive, higher-level position even deem it *appropriate* to include entry-level food-service gigs on their résumé? As one climbs the professional ladder, I’d think such “summer-job” positions would (or at least should) fade into irrelevance.
I have no documentary evidence that I frosted and filled 250 dozen donuts every night working the overnight shift at Donut Depot in Michigan during the summer of 1986, either. However, I bet I could walk in and do it again with excellent muscle memory, and I still feel vaguely ill when exposed to the hot sugar smell in similar places… thank goodness Dunkin has a drive through when I need to grab a coffee. 😆
Working at McDonalds the summer of my freshman year of college taught me a great deal about leadership because of the amazing manager I had there. He was the first Black man I'd encountered (my state was 95% white at the time) and unbeknownst to me, he faced immense performance scrutiny due to racism. But he never let that frustration show to his employees. Yes, it was a minimum wage job but Roy made it a great place to work because of his attitude, work ethic, and encouragement. He taught us kids to hustle to ensure the customer got the right order in a timely manner.
Like VP Harris, I have no proof of working at McDonalds 40 years ago but the lessons I learned there were invaluable.
I've worked at FOUR shitty pizza joints in my early employment life in high school and college. Not Papa John's, but I was a salad bar girl for Godfather's, delivery driver for Domino's and some other local chain whose name I can't remember, and also was a front counter person for the Flying Tomato. At all four places, I had to make pizzas, wash dishes, fold boxes, and close, which sometimes meant working for hours after the late closing time to clean up the joints. Do I put this hard work experience on my resume nearly 30 years later? Hell no.
I actually have something in common with VP Harris. My first job where I needed a social security number was at the McDonald's on Westlake Village drive in Thousand Oaks California. I'd worked off the books jobs before that. I did put myself through college working anywhere I could anytime I could. I made $1.25 an hour to make french fries and take and bag orders. Back then we had to tally them up manually and make change manually. I quit my one food service job after being assaulted in the walk in (and fighting back I forced my assistant manager onto 17 racks of eggs destroying them). I went on to work in a department store, a blue chip stamp redemption store, a bedding factory, an amusement park and a print cutter at fotomat labs. Try to find one of those today!
Bottom line, as soon as I got my first real job in the real world after graduation, those jobs were all dropped off my resume like a hot potato. I'm not ashamed of anything I did to earn my degree and I'm betting a shit ton of other people have been in the same position Kamala and I have been. But don't ask us how we prove it.
I suppose if this is the best attempt at scandal they can come up with, it is a good thing but how frustrating it is even out there. Many people will believe it just because fox or their favorite right wing commentator say it.
I too worked minimum wage (at McDonald's) as a teen. I was earning some spending money the last couple of years of high school. I bought a (very old) used car, paid for my own gas, and went to see my then girlfriend about a half hour's drive away. I met her at that McDonald's. That was in the mid-1970s. I never listed that crap job on any resume or applications. The only living person who might remember that I worked there is my now ex-wife.
Demanding that Kamala produce evidence of her time working at McDonald's is the height of ridiculousness. It's hard to imagine that everyone in the right wing blogosphere is so utterly out of touch with lower to middle class reality.
I think Trump's argument that Harris needs to validate she worked at McDonalds is fair. And she should produce some proof, just after Trump documents: his bone-spurs were real; that he had a high GPA at Penn, as he claims; an independent assessment of Trump's actual physical and cognitive states of health; the letters and communications he exchanged with Kim Jung Un and Puti; his actual net worth and the worth of his companies; and he releases all of his employees or staff from the confidentiality restrictions in their non-disclosure agreements. One last requirement, to be fair: Trump should waive any executive immunity he might enjoy, including immunity for non-official acts he undertook while President.
Don’t forget his tax returns!
I hadn't heard this one....so ridiculous. They know they are not doing well and so are content to lie, steal, and cheat to win.
Charlotte, why give them this out:”It’s also not one bit surprising that so many in rightwing media don’t understand this common experience…”
Why assume they don’t understand? It implies that if they DID understand, they’d think and behave differently. No. We’ve lived with this assumption for far too long. They DO understand. They DO. They simply don’t care, and they understand how to use the narrative in service to their plans. They. Understand.
I began babysitting when I was 12 ('64), and worked full-time two summers in high school at a fuse (if you don't know Google it) factory. I also worked 20+ hours a week for the nuns at one of the high schools I attended (answering the phones and working in the nuns' kitchen) so my dad could pay less tuition. I worked at a McDonald's one semester while in college. The franchisee decided that the women had to work the registers and the men cooked. This was a college town so we were swamped at lunch and dinner times. Back in the old days, you only had a couple of menu items and people would wait in line 15-20 minutes and then not know what they wanted (they must be the undecideds of today). I'd ask them to step aside and wait on the next person until they figured out what they wanted. Someone complained so the owner asked if I'd rather cook, including doing fries, and I said yes. During college I also worked in a record department (vinyl and figuring out which needle someone needed for their record player), in the university library (best job of all), and in the university cafeteria so I could get free food. While getting my MBA I worked reconciling inventory records (hand-written) for a company that sold equipment to utilities. I worked for Dow Chemical as an accountant for a year, taught a night class at the local community college and then went back for my PhD (accounting, specialty in Federal taxation) and had a long career as an academic and an associate dean of a business school. I never put any of these jobs on any resume but they all helped me get where I am today, which is happily retired. I'm very introverted and diagnosed in my 60s as being on the autism spectrum. All those low-wage jobs helped me to learn how to interact with people, when to stand-up for myself and when to turn the page. One of my Irish-American mother's frequent comments to her five kids when we were getting "full" of ourselves was "Who do you think you are?" Can you imagine Vance working in a McDonald's; he can't even order a donut like a normal person.
I live in NJ, and there are Papa John’s here, but I prefer my local family owned pizzerias. That being said, I worked at an Arby’s in the 70s and have no way to prove it either. My kids, all in their late fifties, remember it, but it doesn’t mean I used it on resumes to get other jobs.
The GOP will lie about anything if it makes someone else more relatable to ordinary citizens.
Thank you Charlotte! You are always like a breathe of fresh air that clears my head.
I was going through paperwork the other day and found my half-sheet 1040 Tax form from 1973. Attached was my W-2 from the large insurance company where I worked the summer after my first year of graduate school. Guess I'd better save it in case I run for office some day.
Beautiful!
Wow they are really grasping at straws here. They must be panicking.
Would anybody applying for a more substantive, higher-level position even deem it *appropriate* to include entry-level food-service gigs on their résumé? As one climbs the professional ladder, I’d think such “summer-job” positions would (or at least should) fade into irrelevance.
They would be passing over that resume for sheer lack of judgment!
I have no documentary evidence that I frosted and filled 250 dozen donuts every night working the overnight shift at Donut Depot in Michigan during the summer of 1986, either. However, I bet I could walk in and do it again with excellent muscle memory, and I still feel vaguely ill when exposed to the hot sugar smell in similar places… thank goodness Dunkin has a drive through when I need to grab a coffee. 😆
And no, it never hit a resume.