Kamala And Me

​​                     Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:   
     "Equal And Opposite Reactions"      http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
     "Hail Mary"                                           https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
     "Tropical Depression"                        https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

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​Kamala And Me

      Okay, guess what Kamala Harris and I have in common?
      You're right! We both worked at McDonald's!
       Not only that, we both worked there during college. Kamala worked between her freshman and sophomore years in the 1980's at a newly-built McD's in Alameda, California.  I worked between my sophomore and junior years at the McDonald's that still stands over half a century later at the corner of Bustleton Avenue and Red Lion Road near where I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia:

      The previous summer I had worked as a waitress at Krispy Kreme donuts, which I liked pretty well,    

​​...but not nearly as much as I liked working at McDonald's.
       In fact, and this is the Lord's honest truth: Of all the different jobs I've ever      had - and I've had a variety - I enjoyed that summer job at McDonald's more than I've enjoyed any other job. And I'm not talking just about my summers jobs. I'm talking about all ​my jobs. (Including teaching piano, which comes in at a close second behind working at McDonald's).

    I especially liked the job after I was switched from the 11 am - 7 pm shift to the      4 pm - midnight shift. In fact, when I switched to the night shift, I asked if I could work that shift seven days a week. I told my manager I wanted the extra hours for the money - in the fall I'd be leaving for Paris to spend my junior year abroad - but the truth is that I just really liked working there. And it gave me somewhere to go and something to do every night, social stick-in-the-mud (unless it involved something arty or French-y) that I tended to be during that time of my youth.
           Back then - the summer of 1971 - McDonald's was  a considerably             smaller - though no less popular  - organism than it is today, and probably smaller than it was ten years later when Kamala worked there. Ours was a come-up-to-the-window-and-order operation, the come-in-and-sit-down restaurant concept not having yet arrived, though on the patio in front of our store there were several picnic tables.
     Our menu was also quite basic: At our location we served hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, fountain drinks, shakes, hot apple pies, and, the newest wildly popular addition, the Big Mac. As for the prices, back then I believe a burger was around a quarter, a cheeseburger a few cents more, fries a few cents less. I do remember our biggest advertised draw was  that one could buy a Big Mac, fries and a shake and receive change for a dollar. 
        As for why I liked working at McDonald's so well...I don't know, I guess I liked my managers, a good-cop, bad-cop duo, though I liked the bad-cop manager as much as the good cop one. The bad-cop guy was actually stricter and more of a stickler for the rules and regulations, which I appreciated, being myself someone who preferred order in the workplace. (Except for one incident involving me and the French fries fryer, which I'll get to in a bit).
        I recall that I also liked my co-workers, an economically and racially diverse group of high school kids, middle class-to-affluent college kids like myself working for some extra spending money, and adults for whom, as Kamala Harris noted when contrasting her reason for working at McDonald's with some of her coworkers' reasons, this McDonald's job was necessary to support their families. 
        One of my day shift coworkers was my neighbor, the funny, good-hearted Italian lady who lived across the street from me, mother of my childhood playmates and my mother's good friend. I was aware that, unlike myself, my neighbor was working not as I was for fun and disposable income to spend in France, but to put food on the table for those of her seven children who were still young and dependent. 
         Was working at McDonald's a life lesson for me in economic disparity or, as Kamala has pointed out, the needs of many American working families? Nah. I grew up in one of those old city neighborhoods of yesteryear where a doctor, as my father was, could, as we did, live across the street from a factory worker and next door to another factory worker who lived next to an undertaker who lived next to a plumber who lived next to an aeronautical engineer, around the corner from a house painter who lived next door to a milk man who lived across the street from a teacher. That was my neighborhood.
​           The view of our street from our house:

     By the time I was working at McDonald's I knew, as I knew when I went off to college while other neighborhood kids went off to work or to work their way through college, that I was what the nuns at my Catholic grade school would have called a Privileged Character.
       But let me give a shout out or two to the McDonald's where I worked: Though it was a small, rather cramped space, it was a cheerful ambiance, thanks to our good-cop, bad-cop managers who I always assumed must be products of the McDonald's corporate culture. Or else they were just both good managers and good guys.
       After my summer stint at McDonald's I never had any concerns about food safety issues at their restaurants. Cleanliness (of the facility and the workers) and food safety were top priorities, with food temperatures always being monitored and recorded, and an hourly bacteria - or, hopefully, lack of bacteria - count done on the milkshake machine.
         Kamala Harris stated that when she worked at McDonald's she did the fries and worked the cash register. While I could work that cash register like ringing a bell, I was not permitted to work the French French fries fryer after one time when, instead of using the timer, I decided to just eyeball the fries and pull them up when they looked golden brown to my liking. Unfortunately my idea of golden brown was considered burned by my manager and the whole batch was thrown out, and I was fortunate not to be thrown out with them. ( I also got caught over-filling the soda cups. I had a tendency to over-do things back then. Alas, I still do).