Working for no paycheck doesn't bother Pruitt. It's actually part of his inspiration. In his words: "The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union ... So I'm very conscious of what it can mean to make knowledge free." His reward for all of this selfless hard work is, of course, his very own Wikipedia page. It's 2,500 words shorter than Batboy's, but still.
Related: 18 Powerful Groups (And People) That Secretly Rule The World
4
John Harrison Controls Your Ice Cream
"Ice cream taster" sounds like the dream job of an eight-year-old who eventually grows up to be an accountant. But someone does have to test new flavors and perform quality control on existing ones. Otherwise there's a risk that a batch of French vanilla goes out tasting like American vanilla. And for ice cream giant Nestle, whose brands include Edy's and Haagen-Dazs, that someone is John Harrison.
Harrison's job is to take a gallon of ice cream, sit down, and taste it with his golden spoon. No, literally. Silver tarnishes, while wood, steel, and plastic all have a mild aftertaste. Besides, if you were a professional taster, you'd take any excuse to pimp out your spoon too. Harrison tastes around 60 batches a day over the course of four to five hours, following his rule of "swirl, smack, and spit." And to keep the decadent Roman Emperor theme going, he gives whole batches a thumbs up or thumbs down. Around 100,000 gallons of ice cream are rejected annually and given to food banks, like a gift from a chubby Caesar, for being too icy, not fluffy enough, or sorbet in disguise. You don't count, sorbet. You will never count.
106 Comments