> I am not sure the lie started out that way. He did pitch something and the Flamin’ Hot Doritos came out in his market subsequent to that pitch, so the charitable explanation is that he genuinely thought his pitch influenced the final product.
Reread the article. It concludes he pitched the concept of a marketing line called “Sabrositas” in 1994. Sabrositas included pre-existing products, including Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, which had been on shelves as early as 1989. It also included the pre-existing cheeto flavouring on top of popcorn, which was his only new product in the line. And he was already an exec, having been promoted from a Machinist (not janitor) apparently on the basis of initiative shown in waste-reduction ideas and not cheetos-flavour invention, when he pitched Sabrositas.
Alone, it requires a lot of charity to square this with his version of events. Did he, in picking products for his marketing pitch, somehow imagine the cheetos one didn’t exist before he picked it? Did he forget that he was an exec when he pitched the marketing line, too?
But on top of that you have all the elaborate details of his claim of having developed the flavour profile (in talks, he literally claims to have sat around fucking around with spices trying to get the flavour right) and dunked unflavoured cheetos into it to present to the CEO & execs, when again the article concludes that the seasoning is sourced from a supplier called McCormick since 1989, years before his pitch. His claim of convincing all his family to buy out the test market for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, in California where the Flamin Hot Cheetos test market wasn’t, years after it had already entered general sales. And the secretary remembering that he first spoke to the CEO in 1993-1994, only after he was already an exec, despite his elaborate story of pitching to the CEO (who wasn’t the CEO at the time he was a janitor) as a janitor, which he hadn’t been for over a decade when the CEO joined and he made his pitch.
It requires something well beyond charity to believe he genuinely believes his story when so much of it is based on elaborate details that are well out of line with the bare facts.