Obama: Ice-Cream Scooper
Obama’s very first job was scooping ice cream at a Honolulu Baskin-Robbins. He later described the brutal conditions he endured: “Chocolate ice cream gets real hard,” he has said. “Your wrists hurt. [Carpal tunnel syndrome, although] they didn’t call it that.” That’s not the only reason he considers this his worst job — he ate too much ice cream and, consequently, doesn’t like it anymore.
Romney: Factory Security Guard
By all intents and purposes, Romney went straight from the elite Cranbrook private school outside Detroit to Stanford, to Brigham Young, to Harvard Business and Harvard Law, to a job at the Boston Consulting Group, and then the straight-to-the-stars business career that would make him a millionaire many times over. But a line hidden away in a 2007 New Republic article reveals that Romney did have a job before that, as a security guard at a Chrysler plant one summer during his high school years. This was part of George Romney’s regimen of chores and character-building exercises, which included getting an early taste of the working life.