Hustle Culture and the Big Lies of Success
One day, Richard Montañez, then a janitor at Frito-Lay, took an unseasoned pack of Cheetos from a broken machine on the assembly line home with him. He experimented with them and came up with the idea for spicy Cheetos. Inspired by a motivational video from the CEO, he then called the assistant of the CEO of Frito-Lay at the time (Roger Enrico) and demanded to pitch his idea to the boardroom, which he did two weeks later to “top executives” at a meeting of over 100 people in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Montañez’s product, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, would go on to become one of the most successful chips of all time, leading to him become an executive at the company - a beautiful rags to riches story (there’s a little more to his tale, which VICE breaks down). It would lead to national news coverage, become the hustle culture bros’ favorite story and is set to become a movie.
Except it’s a fabrication. An LA Times report doesn’t simply break down the realities that debunk Montañez’s story (Flamin’ Hot Cheetos existed before his time at the company, Roger Enrico wasn’t the CEO, the meeting never happened, he wasn’t involved in the test market at all and so on), it shows that Montañez, like many people who choose to live their lives based on lies, chose to embellish a relatively impressive story to make it a really impressive story:
