It doesn't happen often, but every once in a great while, some everyday working stiff gets a chance to impress everyone. It takes hard work, timing, talent, and luck, but the stories of those who did it give us all inspiration.
When Richard Montanez was a boy, he was embarrassed to bring burritos to school because the other kids had never seen them before. His mom's solution was to pack him an extra burrito each day, so he could give one away and make friends. Richard ended up selling burritos to classmates for a quarter each. So is this the prologue to the story of him becoming an entrepreneur and starting his own tortilla empire? Nope! Richard dropped out of school and got hired as a gardener.
And a car washer, and a chicken slaughterer. Then he got a job as janitor in a Frito-Lay plant, until one day the machinery broke down and he got to live the dream: taking home a bunch of undusted Cheetos. Having sadly neglected to stock his kitchen with jars of spare cheese crumbs, Richard rolled the Cheetos in chili powder in the style of elote, a Mexican chili corn snack. And he liked the result so much that he figured Frito-Lay should mass-produce it. He decided to pitch the idea directly to the CEO of PepsiCo, Roger Enrico.
You know how the idea took off, but what you don't know is that Enrico was so excited about the idea that he promoted the janitor, and Montanez later rose to executive vice president. Read five other stories like his at Cracked.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jan Videren)