Why Barack Obama Doesn’t Like Ice Cream Anymore
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Work, Self, Culture, Society, Politics

Obama talking about his first job got me thinking about ice cream, and my first job myself. I worked as a stocker at Walmart on the 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift on the “booster team,” which was meant to assist the stockers in the morning shift and people who worked the night shift. I worked the job before college, and a friend of mine had just started working at Walmart and told me to apply. He was working in the Lawn and Garden section of the store and told me:

“This is the easiest job ever. I don’t do anything.”

Unfortunately, I did not get assigned to Lawn and Garden. The job itself, in retrospect, was a necessary stepping stone. Minimum wage in New York in 2015 was still $8.75, and Walmart paid me $9 an hour. I thought that was a joke for an entry-level salary, but I had to work my way through college at Emory University in Georgia, and I was paid even less the next four years.

The work itself was boring and monotonous, and in the early stages, I had significant hiccups. But there were a lot of people who came onto the job either around the same time as me or way after me, and I made friends with a couple who showed me the ropes. Mainly, that meant knowing what food, detergent, or soft drinks went where, and what shelves to put different items on.

I always remember that my least favorite items to stock were detergents (they’re heavy). We would have to bring pile jacks from the back of the Walmart to the aisles, and I don’t know what other people’s experiences were, but it ended up being a job that taught many life lessons. I remember thinking it was a bit sexist that whenever the guys in the back of the store needed help unloading items from the truck, they would pull all the men off the booster team, but not the women, but we laughed that off. The work day was long, and that portion of the day would only last 30 minutes.

My first job at Walmart taught me that the work day is a marathon and not a sprint. During my first couple days on the job, I would try to conquer the world by storm and be an ultra-productive machine who got more stocked than anybody else. And I did — for two hours. I would even be arrogant enough to think I could skip my allotted 15-minute breaks. Although I wasn’t allotted to be a customer service representative, there is a substantial difference between telling someone where to find the baking soda versus leading them to the aisle with the baking soda. When I felt under pressure, I would do the former rather than the latter, putting productivity above people.

What I failed to realize was that I was working nine-hour shifts, and it would have been better to play it like the tortoise than the hare — slow and steady wins the race. By pacing myself throughout the day, I was able to get more done, not feel so frantic needing to get everything done all at once. The work day at Walmart, just like a work day as a teacher, is a marathon, not a sprint.

I also remember thinking that my job wasn’t bad personally, but couldn’t imagine working at the company for years, or even decades. On my first day getting paid, myself and Paul, a man who was laid off after decades working as a printer, were shown a “training” video. The premise of the video was the corrupt nature of unions and about how if you were suspected of being in a union, you would be in trouble. The video advocated an open door policy where if you had a dispute, you could go directly to your supervisor. I eventually found this video on YouTube, where an associate says at the end:

“I don’t like giving my signature to anyone, much less unions who spend so much time trying to hurt my company.”

I was baffled at the video, and then I turned to Paul, who was shaking his head and cursing at the video right in front of our would-be supervisor. He expressed that he wouldn’t have been able to buy his house had he not been supported by the printers’ union. In my summer at Walmart, Paul and I would learn the ropes together, but I would always feel a level of guilt that I was leaving to go to college so soon. I still don’t know what he’s doing today.

Based on all the pay scale papers I saw in the break room, apparently, your salary increased by 40 to 60 cents per year, depending on how a supervisor assessed your performance. However, as the minimum wage kept increasing on a state level, people who’d been at Walmart longer than me said their pay increases were not consistent with the minimum wage. For example, if minimum wage was $7 and you got a raise to $7.60 after one year at Walmart, a rise in minimum wage to $8 would keep your salary at only $8. It seemed like there was no “raise” in that scenario, and it seemed like an awfully convenient loophole for the company.

The people I worked with were awfully kind, resilient, and helpful. I worked with a lot of people only a couple years older than me, but one person who was especially helpful as a mentor was Jake. Jake looked like he was in a bike gang and always had an American flag bandana on his head. Coming back to the facility from my breaks, I would frequently see Jake smoking outside the store.

Jake worked the night shift, and we had an overlap between 10 to 11 p.m., and he would compliment me on how hard I was working and the job I was doing. He showed me a couple of trade secrets on how to work faster with less effort, and then talked to me and another worker about his life and his time at Walmart for the full hour we worked together. He told us he used to bike, but didn’t anymore. While we worked together, if I was too short to get something on a shelf without a ladder, he would do it for me. If we had to stock cans, which we had to do often, he would usually help me stock half of them, cutting the time needed by half.

I would eventually hear from the grapevine that Jake was homeless, and slept in his truck. Someone told me he survived off Chef Boyardee cans that he heated up in the break room. While I thought that comment was insensitive, I saw Jake at the store even when he wasn’t working, and frequently saw him hanging out in the back of his truck in the side parking lot of the building. I never asked him about his living situation since I didn’t feel like it was my place.

Eventually, I would fly to Atlanta and go on to college. But Walmart would leave me with a lot of life lessons about work and workplace cultures. First, I learned that everyone is in it together. When everyone supports each other and pitches in to help each other, everyone’s job becomes a lot easier. I would impart the same spirit of solidarity that people like Jake gave to me to mentor new people for any job I was in. Even people I barely interacted with, like cashiers or people who worked in electronics, would direct me in the early days where I didn’t know where to find anything. When I worked at my college gym, I spent some time as a supervisor, and I always helped attendants with folding towels, doing laundry, and more. We would have some long days, but at least we were in it together.

Now, as a teacher, the theme that we’re all in this together is even more important to internalize, especially during a pandemic. To any beginning teacher, prioritizing your relationship with the school’s secretary or custodian makes your job so much easier. In my case, all were at the school for a long time, and all had relationships with the students over the years we could only dream to have as new teachers. I also noticed the days became torturous if any of them were out — schools often cannot run without a secretary or custodian. In a lot of ways, if either were sick, the school would fall apart with phone calls going unanswered or the hallways looking like an absolute mess. Also, having a problem with your secretary is the number one way to have a terrible time as a teacher.

I think a lot about politics, and with my left-wing beliefs in a welfare state and a much greater social safety net, I wish entry-level jobs paid more, especially with so many people breaking their back to earn $7.25 an hour. But everyone still had to work and show up regardless of what the government and politicians decide to do — and I realized one thing above all else: relationships supersede politics.

How you treat people you interact with every day says much more about you than what you post on Twitter. I didn’t know the political beliefs of people like Jake and Paul. But based on what they said about Obama and Obamacare, I can assume they didn’t like him nor Democrats that much, which fundamentally opposed my own beliefs.

I also had to reckon with the fact that they were good, hard-working, and genuinely kind people who dropped everything to help a co-worker who needed it. They helped me when I needed it. They dropped everything to help a customer if they needed it.

I don’t miss my first job that much, but I do miss my co-workers and the biggest lesson they taught me: that loving your neighbor means treating everyone as human first, everything else second. And I want to thank Obama’s reminiscing about working at Baskin Robbins for making me remember that.