Donald Trump may love eating at McDonald’s, but he still has a lot to learn about working at the fast-food chain.
According to staff, the former president should have worn a hairnet over his famously coiffed locks for a start when he put in a (short) shift at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. There were no gloves on his hands, maybe because he thought his fingers were too big to fit into the mandatory plastic gloves (he hated being called a “short-fingered vulgarian” by Vanity Fair owner Graydon Carter).
There are two health violations right there, despite Trump’s assertion that the French fries, “never touched the human hand.”
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And he would certainly get a dressing-down from his supervisor for not wearing the requisite uniform, hat, or non-slip shoes.
“Where’s his approved uniform shirt? His hat?” asked social media user DodgyRogue.
“As evidenced by other pictures, he’s not wearing non-slip shoes, and he wasn’t wearing a hairnet,” added Adinnieken.
McDonald’s workers were also unhappy about his techniques.
“The box is, like, backwards. He doesn’t seem to know how to do it,” New York MacDonald’s employee David Ye told the New York Times after he spotted Trump scooping fries into its red carton.
Maybe Trump was simply trying to boost drinks sales by dousing the food with salt, but a McDonald’s manager from Flatbush, Brooklyn, was unimpressed.
“Supposing we want some extra salt, can I do it like that?” Trump asked before adding several shakes of seasoning and throwing a handful over his left shoulder to ward off bad luck.
“You don’t throw salt like that,” the manager, Kishia, told the Times. “Somebody could have been behind him, you know?”
The former president would no doubt take issue with another worker’s complaint about his campaign stop. Venus Rodriguez, 55, general manager of a Williamsburg McDonald’s, said that, for safety reasons, a 78-year-old should not be left in charge of the fryer.
While some thought the stunt was great for morale at the fast food giant, others were not so sure.
“Great, so he passed out bags of food for 5 minutes for a photo op..... now let’s see him actually take on the responsibility of a full shift every day for a few years, “ wrote Rofflewafflelol, according to The Independent. “This is cosplay and insulting to people who have actually worked any amount of time in their lives.”
The roasting didn’t bother Trump who showed off a pin he was awarded for his performance during a campaign visit to survey some of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina on Monday.
“For those of you who did not get to see it, I offered, because you know, I also own McDonald’s restaurants, I know that you perfected your skills behind the counter a day or so ago. And it was my honor to present President Trump with the French Fries Certification Pin,” Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) said as Trump preened for the cameras.
“Thank you very much, that’s really nice,” said Trump, who also won praise from pollster Kristen Soltis–Anderson, who said: “I think this was an unbelievably smart move! Because one thing that has differentiated Donald Trump from other really wealthy politicians is that he has never been seen as the aloof, the billionaire who would never deign to hang out with the commoners. Like he has always sort of portrayed himself as I’m the rich guy who doesn’t really like the other rich guys. I’m one of you, and this is part of this. I think this was insanely smart!”
Trump also used his McDonald’s visit to double down on his claim that his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris never worked at the chain in 1983, as she has claimed.
“We have checked with McDonald’s, and they say, definitively, that there is no record of Lyin’ Kamala Harris ever having worked there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “In other words, she never worked there, and has lied about this ‘job’ for years.”
However, the Washington Post said it obtained a message to staff in which it said it didn’t have a record of Harris’s employment, but that did not mean she did not work there.
“Though we are not a political brand,” the message reads, “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.”
The ”1 in 8” reference highlights a marketing program claiming that one in eight Americans have worked at some point for McDonald’s.
