I worked fast food in the ’60s, and I remember everything

In 1968, teens loved hanging out in the McDonald’s parking lot in my suburban Detroit neighborhood.  It was one of only two fast food joints in our area back then.  The other was Arby’s.  Excitement rippled through our town when Burger King announced plans to open a block away from McDonald’s on Michigan Avenue.  The Burger King concept was fairly new in 1968.  I was 16 and ready for a job beyond babysitting, so I applied at the new Burger King.

I remember everything.  Shouldn’t Vice President Kamala Harris be able to offer details about her supposed work at McDonald’s?  After all, 1983 is 15 years closer than 1968.

I remember training for the job at a different location (on Telegraph Road/U.S. 24) from the one I was hired for, which would soon open on Michigan Avenue (U.S. 12).

My new boss’s name was Leon, and he pronounced it with the accent on the second syllable (“Lee-ON”), but we all pronounced it “LEE-on.”  All store managers trained at “Whopper College” in Florida before they could take over a store.

Most of my co-workers were either teens or young adults.  I attended Catholic school.  Many of my teen coworkers went to various public high schools in nearby cities, so I met kids of all different backgrounds and income levels.  I never minded going to work.  We were allowed to chat during slow times, so long as we kept a wet dishtowel moving constantly, cleaning the stainless steel or Formica countertops.

We didn’t “do fries,” as Kamala Harris has said she did, implying that she worked the fry station every shift.  Instead, we reported to work and received our daily assignment from Leon.

Back then, orders were taken and paid for at one window.  Whoppers cost 49 cents in 1968.  The order taker assignment was one of heavy responsibility.  It required writing down a customer’s order, then tallying the grand total in our heads.  If a customer ordered more than one Whopper, the math wasn’t hard, since each sandwich was just one penny less than 50 cents.

If we were assigned to the Push Out window, our job was to bag the order and push it out to the customer, while announcing what the bag contained.  The Fry Station was not a permanent assignment to any one worker, as Kamala implied was the case at McDonald’s.  “Front Board” meant you made all special orders, which were frequent.  Special orders “don’t upset us,” as the restaurant jingle proclaimed.  The “Back Board” worker made standard Whoppers and Whalers (fish sandwiches).

We all dreaded being told that our assignment was “The Broiler.”  It was hot, tedious work loading the cold meat patties onto the moving rack that cooked the meat perfectly, dropping each broiled patty into position for the Back Board and Front Board workers.

That summer, a new Burger King opened on Plymouth Road across from an auto plant.  That location’s new boss, Paul, recruited me to travel to that location.  McDonald’s had just announced a new sandwich, the Big Mac.  I remember that Paul told the workers he was going to McDonald’s to taste the new Big Mac.  He came back and told us, “It can’t hold a candle to the Whopper!”

I remember it all.

Why won’t Kamala Harris remove all doubt about her claim by revealing more details than just that her McDonald’s was “on Alameda” in California?

Barbara Kalbfleisch is retired.  She enjoys photography and is an accredited Shutterstock contributor, specializing in editorial photography.

<p><em>Image: Famartin via <a  data-cke-saved-href=

Image: Famartin via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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