I never worked in a fast food joint, but I had lots of friends who did; it’s a common, mundane job experience for a lot of people. It’s not an extraordinary claim at all for someone to say they worked at a McDonald’s in their youth, but to Donald Trump it is some kind of unlikely experience, like claiming to be a UFO abductee. He’s been raging about Kamala Harris claiming to have worked in fast food 40 years ago, and thinks it is a winning argument to deny her experience.
To make his strange point, Trump volunteered to work at a McDonald’s over the weekend.
As Trump put it reporters when he got off his plane: “I’m going for a job right now at McDonald’s,” before adding, “I really wanted to do this all my life.”
I wish he had, although it would be unfair to the customers — he’d suck as an employee. But OK, he charged off to pretend to experience the life of a fast food worker.
One catch: he didn’t. The McDonald’s was closed and the streets cordoned off, while he walked in, spent a few minutes shuffling fries, and then handed out a few containers. That was it. It was a photo-op, nothing more.
Police closed the busy streets around the McDonald’s he was visiting and cordoned off the restaurant as a crowd a couple blocks long gathered, sometimes 10- to 15-deep, across the street straining to catch a glimpse of Trump. Horns honked and music blared as Trump supporters waved flags, held signs and took pictures.
It was a notable event to celebrate, the fact that Donald Trump did ten minutes of actual work.
You just know that in his future rambling babbles, he’s going to claim that Kamala Harris never worked in fast food, but he, the lazy phony, did.
Apparently, he needed someone to tie the apron for him.
If you want to get distracted from the orange terror and the sad, death-related work, look for the comet in the sky.
(Crossposted)
The time is running running out to see the comet with the naked eye, it will be down to magnitude 4 the 22th October.
It is by now quite high in the western sky and you can see it at twilight preferably before the moon rises. For star maps see internet, for instance Sky and telescope.
In other news, that McD’s location was inexplicably out of hamberders after the stunt was over. There was nothing but a pile of ketchup-stained wrappers left behind the counter.
That guy never had a real job in his whole life, did he?
You know, I know political stunts like this aren’t necessarily anything new, but the fact that this poster boy for the idle-rich will hold up this act of cosplaying as a wage-slave for a couple minutes as some kind of fucking achievement is uniquely infuriating.
I hope his next stunt is working on an auto assembly line, from “just taking parts out of boxes and plugging them in,” since “a child could do it.” Of course they’d have to scrap the car once he’s done, for safety reasons…
Next up: Trump puts in a shift at a Boeing assembly plant!
Are we sure that hasn’t already happened?1??
He’s really wanted to do this his entire life? So what stopped him? Did no one ever want to hire him?
And they couldn’t get him to shut up at the drive-thru.
Do they let inmates in low security federal correctional institutions operator deep friers in the kitchens?
Heather Cox Richardson says this in a lead up to her coverage of the MacDonald’s photo:
On the photo op, she says:
Just saw a meme on FB where Kamala is talking to some man…perhaps Emhoff…saying, “Can you believe I triggered that man into suiting up at a McDonald’s to pretend to cook fries?”
McDonald’s Donald Trump Worked at Failed Last Health Inspection
Trump’s McDonald’s stint was simply a showcasing of what his plans will be to replace Social Security.
Trump should be careful what he wishes for.
Kemi Badenoch, currently running for leader of the Conservatives on this side of the Atlantic, claimed she grew up middle class but became working class when she got a summer job at McDonalds. https://news.sky.com/story/kemi-badenoch-claims-she-became-working-class-after-securing-a-job-at-mcdonalds-as-a-teenager-13217266
Seen in a meme – did Trump ask his customers : “Do you want lies with that?””
Wonder if DonOld called them “hamberders?” ( Recall : https://www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18183480/trump-hamberders-clemson-football )
Would even Maccas -as we Aussies call them – really want an employee whocan’t even say* hamburger properly.
.* Okay, technically type but still.
Whenever I’m desperate enough to order from McD’s they never get the order right. A perfect job for someone with dementia. He’d fit right in.
Didn’t was his hands or wear gloves and a hair net. I can see that photo of him as a meme with him asking “Do you want flies with that?”
@15, Schnitzel Von Knobbschafft,
I don’t know why, but that hit home.
I’m on the west side of the pond, but I spent ten years, from the age of 11, working on a farm. But I never considered myself working class. Why? Because I was doing it for spending money, not because I needed what I was earning to eat, clothe, and shelter myself. My family had enough money to ensure I was fed, clothed, and had a roof over my head, and I never gave it a thought that those things may not be possible if I wasn’t earning money to help the family. It wasn’t. That put me squarely into the middle-class. Where things aren’t so bad that I needed to work to eat, but not so great that I was handed all the pocket money I could ask for.
Things seemed much simpler then.
flex #20
Also, you took away the job from someone who needed it.
PZ wrote: ‘You just know that in his future rambling babbles, he’s going to claim that Kamala Harris never worked in fast food, but he, the lazy phony, did.’ Well, he did just that right after the bullshit ‘work’ was done. Hell, I’m pretty sure that was the point the of the whole stupid stunt. And he and his idiots think it was oh so clever.
The owner of the McDonalds must have been paid handsomely to allow for that stunt at his place. Wait, Trump doesn’t pay, so that would make the owner a MAGA cultist.
Franchisee, stuffin.
@15 and @20–
Yeah, a lot of people outside the Commonwealth don’t understand the British class system. You can be upper class and dirt poor (Angus Montagu, 12th Duke of Manchester) and you can be a working class half-billionaire (David Beckham).
If he had done this as some kind of solidarity with the working man then it’d be a silly but noble effort. The problem is it’s entirely designed as a ‘gotcha’ against Harris… It’s cynical and mean and designed solely to call her a liar…
@PZ, @Paul K: His sycophants are doing the same – Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted about it at least…
Steve Shives here – No, Trump Did Not Just Work at McDonalds (5 mins long) on this.
Chrislawson @25
No offense but that’s a stupid system. One the best things America ever did was to not adopt that system.
That is not correct. Donald Trump pretended for ten minutes to do actual work.
I think there’s some misunderstanding about what he was doing there. Donald Trump is just showing how easy it really is to work at McDonalds (or presumably any fast food restaurant or low paying job). If…
… you have no idea how to actually do your job and no one expects you to learn.
… you work at a Potemkin McDonalds.
… the government blocks access to your “work” site.
… all your “customers” are super fans carefully screened to puff you up.
… your “work” shift is reportedly 15 minutes long.
… reporters swarm you immediately after your shift because even this (let’s charitably call it a) “near miss” of a work experience by you is still so amazingly out of place it’s a man-bites-dog news story.
… the whole experience makes The Truman Show look genuine by comparison.
… you still can’t manage to look good after so many people go to this much effort to shine a positive light on you.
Perhaps the height of this farce was when he seemed to really believe he’d had a work experience at the end of it. Something like one of us might have.
Of course the owner gave Trump “the french fry certification pin”, for doing such a wonderful job. Empty validation for an empty man.
The franchisee, gijoel. McDonalds is a franchise. Mostly makes money in the real estate side of things.
—
But it’s indeed cute that the franchisee gave him a pin that is basically one of those toys.
Pinned to a business card.
(Piccie has a funny: https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/10/21/19/SEI226539938.jpg)
(Hey, anyone else remember “freedom fries”?
What are these things called “french” fries?)
[franchise fries]
John Morales @24, @32
You are usually more meticulous in your hair splitting pedantry, but you may be slipping a bit. See:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/franchisee.asp
https://www.franchise.org/faqs/basics/what-is-a-franchise
Though:
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/04/franchise-fundamentals-debunking-five-myths-about-buying-franchise
There’s some nuance but there is still the notion of the franchisee having ownership, so…
No connection to Trump “working” at a McDonalds, but:
https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/outbreaks/e-coli-O157.html
“There’s some nuance but there is still the notion of the franchisee having ownership, so…”
So they are the franchisee. They run it, until they don’t.
I did my due diligence before posting: https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/franchising-overview.html
The nuance is that they get the franchise, but not the ownership of the brand or anything related to it.
—
Yes, news that broke some time ago.
“In a statement, McDonald’s said that a preliminary investigation found “that a subset of illnesses may be linked to slivered onions used in the Quarter Pounder and sourced by a single supplier that serves three distribution centers”.”
(https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33v3klkdy8o)
John Morales@36
What’s the contradiction between stuffin and gijoel using “the owner” and from your source:
Or:
Doing a little more due diligence:
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/us-franchising.html
And:
So how exactly did stuffin and gijoel go astray where you needed to correct them?
Oh, dear.
Franchisees, as you see it, own the business.
It was the owner of the McDonalds, not the owner of McDonalds.
(Heh)
—
<snicker>
Corporate-speak, quite obscure to many.
(Surely Maccas does not impose any requirements upon its franchisees, who are 100% entirely independent!)
—
Me: “The franchisee, gijoel. McDonalds is a franchise.”
You: “So how exactly did stuffin and gijoel go astray where you needed to correct them?”
gijoel: “Of course the owner gave Trump “the french fry certification pin”, for doing such a wonderful job
stuffin: “The owner of the McDonalds”
You know, back in the day, I did payroll for for Australia Post (which had most recently been split and privatised between it and Telecom from the original Postmaster General’s department).
Um, 1978-79, IIRC.
Shitty 16-bit mini where I could buffer at least 45 seconds of fast input.
Anyway. Post office agencies were not the owners of the post office, any more than franchisees are the owners of the McDonalds.
(take away the signage, the support, the oversight, etc… then you have a local burger joint)
Put it this way: try changing the burger or the menu or whatever in that sort of franchise.
(Surely the owner can do that, no?)
Oy, the Post Office ownership is completely irrelevant in comparison to a MacDonalds, seeing as how the post office is a government institution.
Harassing the other commenters over their perceived ignorance about how a franchise works is just the way John Morales is trying to pick a fight. I assume he is very cranky after he stupidly posted a fourth insulting comment at Mano’s blog, and became the second person to get banned. Tsk-tsk.