Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage during a campaign rally at the McHale Athletic Center on September 13, 2024.
Before going into politics, Vice President Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's in her 20s, she confirmed in a recent interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle.
While Harris describes her time at the popular fast-food chain as a summer job she took in college to earn spending money, she believes her experience there allowed her to connect more authentically to the financial struggles of everyday working Americans in her pursuit toward the highest office in the country.
"It was not a small job," Harris told Ruhle. "There are people who work at McDonald's in our country who are trying to...raise families and pay rent." To Harris, working at McDonald's inspired her to make lowering costs and raising economic security a "top priority" if elected president in November.
Taking a job at McDonald's is common — approximately 1 in 8 Americans have punched the clock at one of the chain's 13,500 restaurants, according to an October 2023 press release by the company.
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No matter if your stint at a fast food restaurant lasts three days, three months or three years, working a service job can help you develop the ability to work under pressure and communicate effectively. These are valuable skills in any career, Tiffanie Boyd, senior vice president and chief people officer for McDonald's, previously told CNBC Make It.
The skills learned at a service job "can help you excel in any job, whether you're a software developer, leading a retail team or working in investment banking, because you're able to calmly process a lot of incoming information, take action quickly and deliver some type of result," Boyd said.
A number of successful people launched their careers at McDonald's
Money Report
Harris isn't the only successful person who has learned valuable skills while working in fast food. Just ask Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bezos worked at a Miami McDonald's while in high school. "My favorite shift was Saturday morning," he told Fast Company in 2001. "The first thing I would do is get a big bowl and crack 300 eggs into it."
On a practical level, Bezos gained useful customer service skills, he told Fast Company.
"You can learn responsibility in any job, if you take it seriously," the Amazon founder later told author Cody Teets in the 2012 book, "Golden Opportunity: Remarkable Careers That Began at McDonald's." "You learn a lot as a teenager working at McDonald's. It's different from what you learn in school. Don't underestimate the value of that!"
That's true for former U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge, who told Teets in 2012 that working at McDonald's helped her learn to "size up people's concerns, guide them through the process, apologize if something went wrong, and hold [her] ground if someone's stopped being reasonable."
For Oscar-nominated actor Sharon Stone, working at a McDonald's in the '70s taught her "really good lessons — hard work, showing up, being there on time and paying your dues," she told USA Today in 2021.
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