Trump got off way easy at the McDonald’s fry station

OPINION |

By Royal Calkins

Like Kamala Harris and, now, sort of, Donald Trump, I once worked at McDonald’s. It wasn’t a particularly difficult job. Mostly, it was almost as easy as he made it look. As easy as being Donald Trump. I doubt he would ever attempt anything difficult without lots of lawyers and fabricators. Surprisingly, though, his photo op on Sunday involved what I remember to be the hardest Golden Arches job. French fries.

When I worked at my hometown McDonald’s during high school, my friend Ron was the French fry guy. He had a significant disability and the burlap bags of potato weighed 60 pounds. Trump couldn’t have kept up with him for 10 minutes.

Unfortunately for French fry guys of that era, the fry station provided room for only one French fry guy. (There were no women when I worked there. It didn’t really seem odd at the time, 1967. No odder than the rules allowing high school girls to join only the tennis or swim teams. The P.E. teachers explained that letting them play basketball or soccer or golf would make them bulky and hairy. Makes sense, said some who probably never admitted their mistake.)

I usually had the easiest job, working the window. Cashiering and handing over bags of burgers. I’m a friendly guy and I can make change. It was better than making milkshakes all day, or cleaning the soda machines. I met my natural father while working the window, but that’s another story.

Ron, the fry guy, less friendly, sometimes used a snarl to keep co-workers away because it was hard keeping up with the demand for fries. And this was back in the day when potatoes were potatoes. They were stored in lumpy bags in the basement, which doubled as an employee break room/dressing room/pot dispensary. That meant slightly built Ron had to clank down the metal steps about every hour or so, heft a bag over his shoulder and climb back up to where he would toss 10 or so spuds into the sink, where he would wash them and then place them one at a time into a long-handled French fry cutter. After being properly shaped, they would be tossed, by Ron, into one of two side-by-side vats of some sort of oil. Maybe 10-30, certainly super-duty.

Ron proudly did not use a timer like lesser fry guys. He could tell when they were ready by the color of the fries and the descending sound of the sizzle. With little eruptions of oil popping toward him, he would lift the fry cage and quickly dump the shiny fries into a warming chamber, where they would be properly salted and gently tossed, by Ron. Then dispatched into little paper bags. Super-sizing was yet to come.

The minimum wage then was $1.10 an hour. It was easy to figure out what your take-home would be. If you worked 20 hours in a week, you’d take home about $20. And so on. No one ever worked much more than that. The owner/manager, Magruder, said that if we started working more, “You’ll start acting like you own the place.”

Magruder owned three McDonald’s in the area. He got the money from a settlement after a garbage truck ran over a relative. He used all sorts of tricks to keep personnel expenses as low as the basement. If you worked four hours, you were supposed to get $2 worth of food. But if the schedule said without explanation that you were working two two-hour shifts, you’d get $0 worth of food.

Ron proudly did not use a timer like lesser fry guys. He could tell when they were ready by the color of the fries and the descending sound of the sizzle.

Sometimes Magruder would be seen in a furniture store across the street from our place of employment, which the company always called “stores” rather than restaurants. He’d sneak in, poorly, and pull out binoculars so he could spy on us. From his vantage point, one could only see customers and cashiers. If employees were pocketing money, he couldn’t tell. I think he just enjoyed the idea of spying.

Ron the fry guy was fired late that summer during a staff meeting. Magruder had assembled us all in the parking lot so he could recite some new rules. The only interesting one involved the length of one’s hair and sideburns. Beards were out as well but that went without saying.

Anyway, Magruder said something dumb like “Can anybody here name somebody important with long sideburns?”

Ron had an answer.

“Jesse Unruh,” he offered crisply.

I doubt Magruder was familiar with that California political figure of the Sideburns Matter era. Regardless, he quickly replied, “Ron, you’re fired.”

Ron untied his apron, tossed it to the pavement, walked to his unrestored Packard and chugged off. He didn’t bother to collect a Fillet-O’-Fish sandwich on the way out. He went on to be a lefty political activist, then for years and years he was an admitting clerk at a large public hospital and then and therefore to be an unhappy retiree who I think might vote for Trump.

I was fired, sort of, a couple weeks later, another victim of a staff meeting. This one was at Magruder’s desk. He sat while reading another list of rules and I stood nearby with a view of the top of his head that prompted foolish me to say, “Hey, Magruder. You’re losing some of your hair up top.”

He didn’t say anything to me ever again. He simply stopped putting me on the schedule.

Seeing Trump on T.V. flipping some fries around won’t change my vote on Nov. 5. But here’s something that would.

When I worked at McDonald’s, it was a ritual to start the new guy on the milkshake machine.

You would demonstrate exactly how to make each of the myriad (3) flavors. You’d show him how to take the metal mixing cup away and to leave as much ice cream as possible on the blending arm. That’s so when you got him to scrunch down and look at something or other on the bottom of the machine, you would push the start button, sending all the much-as-possible ice cream directly onto the trainee’s face.

We thought it was hilarious.

So here’s the deal, Donald. If you will let me, or anyone else, take you to a McDonald’s and show you how to work the milkshake station. I will, in fact, change my vote. I’ll vote for Harris just once this November.