Did Kamala Harris lie about working at McDonald’s during college?! Take a look at the viral claims, and find out what the facts really are!
Updated @ 2024-10-21 : Updated with new details from McDonald’s, and a friend of Kamala Harris
Originally posted @ 2024-08-31
Claim : Kamala Harris did not work at McDonald’s!
Some people are claiming or suggesting that Kamala Harris may have lied about working at McDonald’s during college. Here are some examples / excerpts:
Ryan Fournier : BREAKING: McDonald’s Corporate sources have come forth and said they have no record of Kamala Harris working at any of their locations.
Who lies about working at a McDonalds?! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The Washington Free Beacon : ‘I Did Fries’: Kamala Harris Claims She Worked at McDonald’s, but She Never Mentioned It Until She Ran for President. Did She Really Toil Beneath the Golden Arches?
Harris’s résumé a year after she graduated college makes no mention of McDonald’s
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Verdict : Kamala Harris likely worked at McDonald’s
This appears to be an example of fake news about Kamala Harris, and here are the reasons why…
Kamala Harris often spoke about working at McDonald’s
Let me start by pointing out that Kamala Harris has often spoken about working as a cashier, fry-maker, and ice-cream server at McDonald’s in Alameda, California during her summer off while studying at Howard University.
It was a short stint – she only worked at McDonald’s during the summer of 1983, but it appeared to be a memorable experience for her. In 2019, Harris would join a picket line of McDonald’s workers who were striking for a $15 minimum wage.
At that time, she said that while she “did the french fries and the ice cream” at the Golden Arches that summer, “there was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table, and keep the bills paid by the end of the month” like those McDonald’s workers.
Months before she ran for President, Kamala Harris spoke about working at McDonald’s on The Drew Barrymore Show – “I did fries, and then I did the cashier“.
Kamala Harris worked at many small jobs when she was younger, and may be leaning heavily on that summer job at McDonald’s during the 2024 Election, because it’s more relatable to working class and middle class voters.
In contrast, her rival – former President Donald Trump, is famous for his love of eating (not working) at McDonald’s, and is not known to have ever worked at any minimum wage job in his life.
McDonald’s would not have franchisee’s employee records
Back in 1982, there were two McDonald’s locations in Alameda, California – at 1346 Park Street, and at 2031 Webster Street. It is not known where Kamala Harris worked that summer.
However, it is more than likely that both McDonald’s restaurants were owned and operated by franchisees, as McDonald’s was expanding rapidly through franchising in the early 1980s. Even today, some 82% of McDonald’s restaurants are owned by franchisees, and not owned by McDonald’s Corporation.
McDonald’s franchisees handle their own employees, and McDonald’s corporate would not have those employee records. So even if someone at McDonald’s Corporation took the effort to look into employee records, they would not be able to see employee records handled by franchisees.
I should also point out that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s in the summer of 1983 – 41 years ago. It is highly unlikely that McDonald’s Corporation or even the franchisee would still have employee records going that far back!
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McDonald’s do not have all job records for the early ’80s
While Ryan Fournier claimed in August 2024 that McDonald’s corporate sources have come forth to say that “they have no record of Kamala Harris working at any of their locations“, he provided no evidence.
At that time, McDonald’s itself never commented on Kamala Harris’ summer job, much less said that it has “no record of Kamala Harris” ever working at any of its locations.
On 20 October 2024, McDonald’s USA issued an internal statement on former President Donald Trump’s photo op at a Feasterville McDonald’s outlet, in which it clarified that it no longer has records for all jobs dating back to the 1980s.
Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches. While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes “1 in 8” so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had.
While some people claim that this is “evidence” that Kamala Harris did not work at McDonald’s, that’s not true. It only confirmed my earlier point – it is highly unlikely for any corporation or franchisee to still have job records going back 40+ years!
McDonald’s also took pain to refer to “1 in 8” – that 1-in-8 Americans have worked at McDonald’s at some point in their lifetime. In other words – it is plausible Kamala Harris worked a summer job at McDonald’s like many other Americans.
An old friend recalled Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s
While the Harris campaign did not make any of her friends or family members available for interviews about her work experience at McDonald’s, The New York Times independently confirmed that summer stint at the Golden Arches (archive) with a friend of Kamala Harris from her teenage years.
Wanda Kagan, a close friend of Ms. Harris’s when they attended high school together in Montreal, said she recalled Ms. Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time.
Answering questions by email, Ms. Kagan said that Ms. Harris’s mother, who died in 2009, had told Ms. Kagan about the summer job years ago. Ms. Kagan said she herself had also worked at one of the fast-food chain’s many franchises in those years.
“That’s what us regular folks did,” Ms. Kagan wrote. Still, she indicated that it had not been a frequent topic of conversation for Ms. Harris. “We didn’t talk much about our McDonald’s days back then,” she said.
And why should it be a frequent topic of conversation? It was a low-paying job that many young people in North America did on their summers off. It was not like she snag an internship with a Senator or a Supreme Court justice!
But there you have it – confirmation from at least one friend from that period that Kamala Harris did work a summer job at McDonald’s.
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Kamala Harris listed her most recent jobs
The Free Beacon pointed out that when Kamala Harris applied for the position of a law clerk in the Alameda County district attorney’s office in October 1987, she failed to mention her summer job at McDonald’s four years earlier.
If you look at the form below (archive), you can see that Kamala Harris filled the three available slots with her three most recent jobs:
- working as a law clerk for Alexander, Miller & McGee from June to August 1987
- working as an operator for Charles Schwab & Co from July to August 1986
- working as a student assistant for the Federal Trade Commission from April to May 1986
While her other jobs were not listed, it seems more than likely that Kamala Harris would have other jobs to list before she would need to list her stint at McDonalds in the summer of 1983. In fact, her resume stated that she also worked as a U.S. Senate Intern for Senator Alan Cranston in the summer of 1984 – a year before her summer job at McDonald’s.
It also seems likely that Kamala Harris would have realised that a summer job frying potatoes and working the cash register at McDonald’s might not impress the Alameda County district attorney’s office, even though some people might feel otherwise.
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This is just political fake news
Ultimately, this appears to be yet another example of political fake news surrounding the upcoming 2024 US Presidential election. Here are some other examples I fact checked recently:
- Is Kamala Harris disqualified due to mother’s immigration fraud?!
- Did Klaus Schwab warn of Era of Shock Events for 2024 Election?
- Did California DNC delegates refuse to vote for Kamala Harris?!
- Did Harris-Walz campaign use fake AI crowd photos?!
- Has Michigan begun arresting people for posting fake news?!
- Was Tim Walz once hospitalised after ingesting horse semen?!
- Did Joe Biden + Kamala Harris offer 9/11 terrorists plea deal?!
- Elon Musk shares fake, digitally-altered Kamala Harris video!
As the 2024 US Presidential election draws close, you can expect more of such fake news to appear, so be wary and skeptical!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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