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Dumb Critique or the Dumbest?

Fast food silliness.

Steven L. Taylor
34

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Ok, so I noted this the other day:

On the one hand, this is frivolous, but what the heck?

I am roughly 3 years younger than Kamala Harris and, I too, worked at McDonald’s in my youth (indeed, if I understand her bio on this point, I worked there longer than she did). It was my first real (i.e., not babysitting or something along those lines) part-time job that I got while in high school and into college. I worked there for several years, rising to the level of shift manager. I am not 100% certain, since that was almost 40 years ago, but I think the last time I listed that job on a resume was when I looked for a new part-time job during my time in college. Maybe I listed it on my first adjunct teaching application while I was in grad school (but I doubt it). I am almost certain I did not list it on any application or resume for any job after that fact. Why would I?

The application that the tweet above contains was for a legal-related job and she listed legal-related experience. Yes, it asked for all employment and said additional pages could be included, which meant probably using a type-writer at the time (it was 1987), and who in their right mind wanted to fool with that if the job in question was irrelevant to what you were applying for?

And, really, who brags about working in fast food?

So add to this to her laugh as one of the most ridiculous attacks to date.

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34 responses to “Dumb Critique or the Dumbest?”

  1. mattbernius Avatar
    mattbernius

    I, for one, take heart in how dumb the critiques of Harris (like this one) and Walz (over “lying” about his dog) are. It represents how little of substance they have.

    14
  2. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    My first part-time jobs were de-tasselling corn, selling soft serve ice cream and renting tuxedos. I have never mentioned any of those on any resume I ever pulled together.

    9
  3. steve Avatar
    steve

    Jobs I never listed on a resume (CV)

    paperboy
    fast food worker (Red Barn-Extinct I believe)
    Stockboy- Woolworth’s
    Summer construction jobs- painting, rough carpentry, cement work

    Steve

    7
  4. becca Avatar
    becca

    I worked in a state mental hospital as a janitor and spent some time “tying ‘backy “ in a barn in rural Ohio. I suppose these jobs would stand out on a resume, if I had ever included them.

    Also, I worked as a housekeeper for a big time bookie. That one didn’t make it in either.

    3
  5. inhumans99 Avatar
    inhumans99

    Heck, I had a call center job job from 1989-1999 (year I went to UC Santa Cruz), and my brother, who is really good at putting together resume, said to leave it off the resume, and if asked about the time I can bring it up but not having it on my resume will not hurt me. Again, I left off a job I held for 10 years(!) and unless you dig up a resume from quite a few years back, you would not know I worked at a call center for a good chunk of my life.

    As I said in my longer than heck post to Matt B in another post, I am getting the vibe that the GOP is just at a genuine loss as to how to blunt Kamala’s momentum.

    Trying to change the subject from Trump’s extraordinary foul up in trying to use Arlington as a campaign ad to where is McDonald’s(?) on Kamala’s resume (and the fact that this is the gotcha uncovered by a FOIA request just cracks me up, a bit of effort for no return what so ever) speaks at least a medium sized books worth of words about how panicky the GOP is.

    September is right around the corner, we are no longer that far out from the election, tick tock GOP, tick tock.

    4
  6. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    Reminds me of my part time job scrubbing toilets and floors and emptying trash baskets at the headquarters of a major pharmaceutical company. While I was getting my masters. There were 16 men’s and women’s bathrooms. BTW, the women’s bathrooms were the grossest. No I didn’t put it on my eventual resume.

    That job did give a lifelong lesson in human behavior. I travelled all over that corporate headquarters. The office workers for the most part ignored me as if acknowledging my existence was a step down. The company president and vice presidents always said hello and even asked personal questions. Even got a good German beer one evening when the President was working late. I always remembered and valued that and acted similarly in later life.

    7
  7. Modulo Myself Avatar
    Modulo Myself

    How does it take 3 reporters to file that story?

    8
  8. DrDaveT Avatar
    DrDaveT

    Cutting to the chase, how exactly does this reflect badly on Harris? How is it a “gotcha”?

    1. She lied. Sorry, Trumpists can’t win on that line of attack. If lying is bad, Trump is the worst candidate ever. Trump makes Joe Isuzu look like George Washington. Attempting to diss Harris for untruthfulness is SNL “Chico Esquela” levels of dumb.
    2. She held a menial job. Um, why is that bad? Doesn’t that put her more in touch with the common folk than a privileged trust kiddie like Trump? Don’t Americans value actually getting your hands dirty?
    3. She couldn’t do any better than working at McDonald’s. Sorry, as the thread above points out, most of us held a similar job at some early point in our professional lives. (For me, it was working as an usher in a multi-screen movie theater, back when that was a thing.) Her subsequent career shows that she got over it.
    4. …I have no idea? Maybe Drew or JKB can explain it to me.

    5
  9. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    @Joe:

    De-tassling corn. Yuck.

    2
  10. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @DrDaveT:
    I thought their line of attack might be that she didn’t make shift manager. I mean, if Dr. Taylor can do it. . .

    Actually, being me, the fact that ST made shift manager is perhaps his most compelling credential. I like people who’ve had to wash a cheesy polyester uniform smelling of grease. Hell yeah, man of the people.

    6
  11. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    First job: Toys R Us stock clerk. I was great at it, worked my ass off. I was so into keeping my doll aisle stocked I barely had time to improve the anatomical accuracy of Ken and Barbie. Or hang a Cabbage Patch doll.

    2
  12. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    FWIW, my first job was being a “deck steward”–which meant cleaning the goose crap off the docks of a local sailing club.

    2
  13. Bill Jempty Avatar
    Bill Jempty

    My first real job was as a Publix bag boy in Lighthouse Point Florida. I did that from 1977 to 1979. That was when all groceries were put in paper bags and Publix stores were closed on Sundays. My store manager was named Lyle Thomas.

    Before that, I helped out at my father’s hotel in the summers of 74 and 75. Dad sold the Beacon in 1976. You can even find a brief mention of my father in this and this.

    Why does the U of VA have this stuff archived? Dad’s hotel was on Long Island.

    Interestingly, my LHP home is not there anyone. A totally different home is on the property.

    1
  14. Assad K Avatar
    Assad K

    @DrDaveT:

    They screech about bootstraps etc. And then mock former bartenders for having been a bartender.

    7
  15. qtip Avatar
    qtip

    First job: lobby and bathroom cleaner at McDonald’s. You had to be 16 to work the grill.

    That picture is of the Adams Morgan (Northwest DC) McDonald’s – I was living nearby at the time that crash happened.

    2
  16. Bill Jempty Avatar
    Bill Jempty

    @Joe:

    I have never mentioned any of those on any resume I ever pulled together.

    Nor have I mentioned having to do pecker checker duty when serving in the Navy.

    2
  17. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    @Scott: More previous jobs:

    -Age 7 or 8, mowed front lawn for a quarter (pretty sure it was a bad job) which is spent at the Carvel Ice Cream truck the same afternoon.

    – Age 12 or so: Morning paper boy for the Suffolk Sun

    Age 16-21: Worked at a garden center. Most fun part: driving the fork lift at high speed around the parking lot at closing. Not a lot of supervision happened at that job.

    Age 19-20: Worked at small family pharmacy as counter clerk and delivery boy. Best memory: Customer came in asking for Trojans (they were behind the counter then) and I unintentionally asked “What size?” meaning quantity. Guy turned bright red.

    2
  18. de stijl Avatar
    de stijl

    @Joe:

    In my last year of college I needed to rent a tuxedo for a wedding.

    The guy in the shop was a guy I knew from high-school. He was a bully and an asshole back then. Not the worst person, by far, but no one I would associate with.

    Hey, I worked at a grocery store, convenience store, as a janitor
    Humped hay bales into a stack in a barn loft and nearly died of heat stroke. None of that was on my post-collegiate resume. Shelf stocking seemed irrelevant. I did bring some of that up during interviews, though, to impress them with my inherent work ethic and my stick-to-it attitude.

    1
  19. de stijl Avatar
    de stijl

    @Scott:

    I was a security guard on campus during college. During overnight shifts we would go to the basement of the athletic center and practice archery. No one got shot, and no one broke anything important, on purpose anyway.

    Giving a 19 year old a master key for the entire campus is a bad idea.

    Our “boss” was a forcibly retired cop from one of the nearby ‘burbs. An unrepentant alcoholic who drank on the job everyday. By 4 he could barely stand.

    The only time real shit ever happened there was late at night and on weekends. Mostly drunk folks doing silly shit. We almost always just scooted people back home. There were only three instances when I narced on people. We would call the St. Paul cops when things got out of hand.

    One night there was a bonfire made out of couches pushed out of windows outside the jock dorm. One dude came at me when I was trying to scoot every drunk asshole home so I squirted him with a fire extinguisher. I beat a hasty withdrawl and radioed in for actual cop backup. Multiple arrests.

    Seriously, I’m making minimum wage for work-study. I am not going to put myself in danger.

    4
  20. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    I too, cleaned bathrooms in one of my first jobs. It was at a resort trailer park with semi-permanent residents. The bathrooms had outside access. The median mens room mess was a bit worse than the median woman’s room mess. Men would track in a bit more dirt and leave water (not “water”) on the floor a bit more.

    But the really big messes were always in the women’s room.

    But no, I didn’t put that job on any resume I pulled together for a Silicon Valley job.

    4
  21. Gavin Avatar
    Gavin

    The critique is also dumb in addition to being ignorant of the job history of most Americans older than a teen.
    The reason you don’t put McDonalds on a resume is because….. it’s not relevant to any professional job you’re applying for.
    Your resume isn’t a personal address history.. that’s a background check.
    Your resume is a list of professional experiences that support your qualifications for a job. McDonalds is something you do for cash, not to Further Your Law-Talking or whatever. I sold Cutco for a month one winter during undergrad.. and somehow unexpectedly, none of my professional applications for industrial engineering jobs requiring 10 years of experience list that.
    The notion that this is an attack on Kamala… to me says that the person doing the asserting has never applied for [let alone acquired] a job requiring professional achievements and demonstrated increasing responsibilities as required history.

    4
  22. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Bill Jempty: Your dad’s hotel was in The Green Book. That book is important because one upon a time in this greatest nation ever created by God, Black people needed a guidebook advising them of where they could stay when away from home and hope to wake up alive in the morning. Or even be welcomed in and offered a place to sleep.

    Why UVA has this stuff in its archives is because, sadly, racism colors our lives to this day and it’s important for students to have documentation of our history–warts and all–if we want to even hope to set aside that past. (And we don’t all agree that we do want to.)

    3
  23. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Assad K: Yes, but only the brown ones. White ones become symbols of Murkan meritocracy. ETA: And a “see, you could do this too, if you were deserving like he was” message to the people being punched down on.

    2
  24. Grommit Gunn Avatar
    Grommit Gunn

    I was magically able to get two different job offers over the past month only including relevant academic and industry experience from the past 20 years on my resume.

    I’m 53.

    What a ridiculous argument.

    3
  25. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Michael Reynolds:

    a cheesy polyester uniform smelling of grease.

    I was working there when my wife I started dating during our senior year of HS. I went to her house once after work and left a greasy footprint on my FIL-to-be’s immaculate driveway. I was asked not to wear those shoes on the drive again.

    3
  26. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DrDaveT: Honestly it seems to be that notion that she lied to burnish her middle-class roots.

    But, yeah…

    3
  27. de stijl Avatar
    de stijl

    @de stijl:

    One of the cool things I learned about people during the campus security job is that they will (or might) self-organize in the absence of leadership. We did, anyway.

    We were students that were tasked with kinda, sorta policing our peers. We had absolutely no leadership or structure. Our “boss” was a joke and not a factor at all. He’d stumble out to his car at 4 drunker than a skunk. No hierarchy beyond seniority – older hands weren’t in charge, just more listened to. No ranks.

    It was a fairly small student body – 4000 folks or so, so you knew almost everybody by sight at least. That was a boon, actually. If you know their name it helps a lot in de-escalating the situation. “Hey, X, get your drunk ass home. Stop acting foolish.”

    Mostly, it’s a nothing job. Pull door handles to make sure they’re locked. Walk around. Be present in uniform. Escort lost visitor people during the day, and escort drunk / high people home at night. Drunk people are far more entertaining.

    It was a bit gender regulated. Looking back, I would advocate to change that. As a general rule, boys walked and girls manned the radios. Sometimes girls walked too, but always with a boy.

    We came to a rough, working consensus. We were students policing our peers. So no assholish, over-bearing cop-like authoritay shit. De-escalate. Cool vibes. If things get messy call the St. Paul cops immediately. We were not trained enough, paid enough, or capable enough to deal with anything serious.

    In the absence of structure, we invented a rough organic one. It worked.

    We had one dickish guy who apparently liked to hit people, and loved to lord what tiny fraction of power he thought he had over people. If we were working the same shift I would usually partner with him to try to keep him from thumping people and mitigate his assholishness. No one liked working with Dave.

    3
  28. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    My first job was assembling cheap injection-molded plastic toys for a company called Gay Toys.

    That definitely didn’t go on my resume.

    7
  29. de stijl Avatar
    de stijl

    @Michael Reynolds:

    There is a bit of pride in doing a shitty job well. There is something about doing a physical thing well. You can point to it.

    To this day, if I pull something off of a grocery store shelf I pull the next one back up to the front of the shelf and make sure it’s faced properly. If I’m stopped and staring at a whole shelf stymied by the choices trying to decide to pick one (for example, salsa) the old habit kicks in and I start fronting and facing the whole shelf.

    When I leave a grocery store it is a guarantee that it is in better shape, product display wise, than before I entered.

    I can’t stop myself from doing it.

    3
  30. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    Is it a job if you don’t get paid? It is definitely work.
    I was 14 in 1962 working in my daddy’s donut shop for no pay and all the day old donuts that I could eat. He did provide me with shelter and my grandmother’s cooking as we were living with his parents at the time.
    I remember the year because the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening and I listened to reports on the radio at the donut shop of missiles out of their silos out west. I remember thinking that there was nothing that I could do except wait and see what would happen.

    3
  31. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    @de stijl:..shitty job…

    The longest two years of my life were in the ’70s. I worked at the sewage treatment plant in
    Murphysboro IL. I had to put up with crap from everyone in town. I still have my Certificate 0f Competency, Class 4, as a Sewage Treatment Plant Operator issued by the state of Illinois EPA on the wall.
    When the only work that I could find was as a telemarketer cold calling people selling AT&T Long Distance Service I would come home from a telemarketing shift and look at that certificate and try and decide which job was worse.

    2
  32. de stijl Avatar
    de stijl

    I once did telemarketing for a day and a half. Selling time-shares.

    We did not get leads like Glengarry Glen Ross, we got a page ripped out of a phone book. Literally. No fooling.

    The gig was to call up random folks from the phone book and entice them with a free 2 night stay at a resort up near Bemidji in a scam to get them obligated to sit through a six hour sales pitch to buy a timeshare. Unethical, at the very least. Dodgy, sketchy, repulsive. Technically legal.

    I’m sorry I went back for the second day. I feel the need to apologize to the world I did not immediately bail after orientation, after an hour. It was obvious that this was a bad place run by bad people. I should have noped out immediately. My moral sense was at war with my work ethic.

    Second day. Went on lunch break. Couldn’t go back. Can’t. Won’t! My moral center won the internal conflict. I went home, called my boss. Said I was unable to continue, but thanked him for the opportunity.

    It was a boiler room type situation. I did surprise the boss man by calling with the what (I didn’t say why). They were used folks bailing out soon, apparently.

    They actually sent me a check. I didn’t cash it.

    Very, very thankfully I never closed once. No one I called accepted the offer. Thank Odin, or I would be eternally damned.

    1
  33. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    left a greasy footprint on my FIL-to-be’s immaculate driveway

    Love that detail. That’s the kind of thing writers strain to come up with.

    4
  34. Ken_L Avatar
    Ken_L

    I’m reminded of the forms they ask you to fill in when you’re being scheduled for elective surgery, asking for full details of all the illnesses and operations you’ve had in your life. I doubt if any of us elderly folk bother to cite more than a few that we think might be relevant to the pending procedure. That broken toe 40 years ago? Forget it.

    3

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