I’m voting for Kamala either way, but I’d prefer her not to lie. She says she and her man Doug worked there, McDonalds doesn’t appear to confirm. Snopes lists the topic, “Research In Progress”
I don’t understand, either way it takes a single phone call.
I worked at Burger King in the late 90’s for a year during High School. If anyone called me a liar and Burger King said they threw out the records or wasn’t sure I still have 20-30 guys names off the top of my head people could call. This was 30 years ago and I can still recall specific jokes, stories and drama from each of them. It was a formative period of my life.
I worked at McDonald’s 40 years ago. I can’t imagine there’s a record, and that location no longer exists. I have a photo of me in the uniform somewhere. Nobody lists that kind of job when applying for a professional position. I’ve reviewed countless job applications for university instructors, graduate students, and staff. Nopety-nope.
Even if she found some records from 40 years ago, it would not be wise for politician to consistently be playing defense to whatever accusation the opposing side is obsessed with at the moment.
To whom? Her manager at the time is likely dead by now, and even if still alive, probably wouldn’t remember some teenager who worked for him. Nor are there likely to be business records from that far back, even if that particular franchise is still in business, which it may well not be. The McDonalds corporation, of course, is still around, but there’s no reason why they would have ever had records from every franchise.
Store employees do not work for the McDonald’s Corporation (MCD), which is a franchiser, financier, and real estate investment company, and it likely does not maintain records of store employees, who work for a franchisee, typically in the form of employment by a limited liability corporation which maintains the franchise lease. There are presumably tax records although assuming that both of them worked at a McDonald’s restaurant as teenagers, they are unlikely to have kept those records for forty-odd years.
I’ve worked at numerous restaurants (as a cook, and occasionally as a server or barback). I could not produce any records of having worked there nor be able to provide current contact information, or frankly most of the names, of people I worked with. In many cases, the restaurants have closed or completely changed in ownership, so with one possible excpetion, there are likely no records.
Frankly, I doubt that working at McDonalds as a teenager was a particularly significant time in the life of Kamala Harris or that she maintains contact with people who worked there unless they are family or close friends. I would guess that she views her undergraduate years at Howard University and post-graduate education at Cal’s Hastings College of the Law as being her “formative years” in terms of leading to her personal and professional accomplishments.
Yeah, once you start responding to this kind of petty harassment it just opens the door for a tidal wave of pointless “fact-checking”, and if you later refused to respond you’ll be accused of now having something to hide. Obama spent years proving that he was actually a US citizen, and there are still a thundering herd of people who believe in and promote ‘birther’ conspiracy theories to the point of even denying that his presidency was legitimate.
And quite frankly, what is her motivation to lie about such a trivial non-accomplishment? If Harris had a long reputation of lying and misrepresenting herself it might be another tiny twig on the fire, but aside from the absolutely normal political waffling and post hoc rationalizations, I can’t recall any instance where she has been caught in a bald-faced lie. Unlike, for instance, her political rival’s unbroken string of false claims about Harris. Well, at least he’s consistent.
This is a big part of it. The vast majority of McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. are franchisee-owned, and are, in most cases, small businesses, where the franchisee owns a small number of restaurants.
Corporate headquarters likely never had records of every person working at every single McDonald’s (especially not teenagers working part-time), because they were not directly working for the corporation, but for the franchisee. Even if the particular restaurant where Harris worked still exists, it seems unlikely that the franchisee has maintained records of every employee from 40 years ago (and even less likely if the restaurant has changed hands since then).
So, no, it’s very likely not a matter of “a single phone call.”
Huh. I worked at a variety of jobs in the mid nineties–two different bakeries, a lawyer’s office, a college tutoring center, a clinical research center, and more–and I don’t remember the name of a single co-worker at any of them, and I can count on one hand the number of boss’s names I remember.
I just wanted to add that her employment probably would’ve been in the early to mid-80’s, as opposed to the OP’s mid-nineties.
Business records were all paper back then, and I doubt anyone ever computerized something so insignificant as the decades old pay records of part time teen employees.
I’ve tried to find business records from the late seventies, records that were much more significant (police records relating to my sister) and it was an exercise in futility. It certainly isn’t a matter of just making a phone call.
I worked at a McDonalds around the year 2000 for around a year and then over the summer back from college. Call it a year total. I don’t have the contact information for a single person that worked there and the only name off the top of my head is a guess. Remembering personal details of 30 people off the top of your head from a menial job 30 years ago is, I imagine, widely outside the norm.
But also agree with the rest of the thread, the proposed solution makes everything worse. Hell, indulging in the question at all is the entire point of this bullshit slander.
My feeling is that your level of memory and number of connections to a HS job 30 years ago is very unusual. I worked a few low-level, minimum wage jobs throughout HS and college and can’t remember the names of anyone I worked with off the top of my head. For instance, I remember I worked at the Hilton, but I can’t remember the names of anyone I worked with. I kind of think I remember my boss’s first name, but I’m not really confident. If I had to prove it, I would probably need to round up the people in my friend group from back then and hope they could confirm I worked at Hilton.
Ditto. I never worked fast food but I was a retail drone at a drug store chain (think ancient Walgreens) that is now long out of business. I couldn’t give you a single name of another worker, or any facts about any of them beyond the habit of the store manager to keep his shirt unbuttoned to show his gold chains and chest hair, and his love of telling stories about moose hunting in the break room.
I worked at a fast-food restaurant decades ago; I’ve listed it on zero job applications, I have no physical stuff on hand proving it, and — even with a gun to my head from someone asking if I could give them a name — I’d honestly be limited to just recalling that, well, no, but a woman who worked there asked me a particularly memorable question about oral sex.
And of all of my entry-level jobs in high school and college, I can only remember the name of one co-worker at one of them, and that’s only because that guy was already a friend of mine from before that job (in fact, he’s the one who told me they were hiring). I can remember a few other details, too (like that one of the managers at that job went to the same high school as I, because that came up in the hiring interview, and that the manager at my college work-study job was inordinately fond of Frank Sinatra), but none of those details are of the sort that could really be used to confirm anything.
Ultimately, though, it’s such an ordinary claim that the standard of evidence required for it is nearly nonexistent. Harris almost certainly worked at some entry-level part-time hourly job as a teen. If it hadn’t been McDonald’s, it’d have been some other fast food place, or cashiering at a grocery store, or something. The only way to know which one it was is her own word, and it doesn’t really even matter what it was.
But how the moose got in the break room, I’ll never know.
I worked as a waitress at a couple of places in the 1970’s. I remember the experiences clearly (one was a lot better than the other), and the towns/cities they were in; but no longer remember any of the names. One of the places has certainly been out of business since shortly after I worked there; about the other I have no idea as I haven’t been anywhere near there since. I have no records that I know of (it’s possible there’s a note somewhere in the back of the attic, but I rather doubt it; if I kept any tax info or similar from then, it was by accident.) I remember the names of some people who knew at the time that I worked there, but I don’t know where most of them are now, and some are no longer alive. So at most I could maybe scare up one or two friends who remember it; and most of their memories are probably vague enough to be easily challengeable, even if anyone who would doubt my word wouldn’t also doubt theirs.
I worked for considerably longer at a particular winery, mostly in the vineyards. I remember a few names – but most of the people are probably dead, and I don’t know where any who are alive are, except for only the same couple of friends who might be able to confirm it but who could, like me, not provide any proof. I remember the winery’s name, but it’s been out of business for years. The one now open at that location is unlikely to have the employment records of their predecessors – why would they? I very much doubt that, even if it were the same business, they’d keep such records much longer than the law requires; which is I think four years; especially when they had to keep them on paper.
Lots of people worked for McDonald’s in their teens. It’s not the sort of accomplishment that gets your name in the papers.
Social security has these records. Until very recently, the estimated SS benefits statement I’d get every year went back to my earliest jobs in the 1970s. Nowadays they send a version that condenses all that.
I’d bet she saved or can access her tax forms from that year, if she earned enough to file a return.
Our political culture is so screwed up now that claiming to have worked at McDonalds opens you up to accusations of stolen valor? Even if she proved she worked there, they would quibble that she never qualified for the “fries station”.