Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy criticized American culture for prioritizing “normalcy” over excellence, which leads tech companies hiring foreign-born workers over Americans.
In a post on X, he argued that U.S. culture celebrates mediocrity and undervalues nerdiness, hard work, and academic achievement.
His comments sparked backlash across the political spectrum, with critics labeling him out of touch with American culture.
The controversy may jeopardize his standing in the Trump administration.
Somewhat related story, but I’ll share it to put a win for the little guy somewhere in these comments.
When I was in my late teens I worked in the deli of a large supermarket chain. We had a hot food section with reheated frozen crap that was always dried out and gross, and a pizza oven to cook school cafeteria quality pizzas. Needless to say, no one bought anything.
Right next to that was the deli section where I worked evenings. We had the fancy Boarshead stuff, including a bunch of fancy Italian meats. Nobody bought that stuff either cuz we’re not redneck here, but city people kind of treat us like we are, and nobody knew what soppresetta and that kind of thing was.
All this stuff would just sit until it got thrown out from not being sold. I would take bits of it all on its way to the trash, and I started making calzones with the pizza dough and the nice deli meats and ringing myself up for the price of like a quarter pound of meat, which was fair to me and the store. I made them for myself at first, and then some other people in the department.
The one day I made a few and gave samples out to some of my regular customers and of course they liked them because they were made with care and attention and better ingredients than any of the store stuff. I started making them in nights I was in and putting them in the hot bar and they sold decent.
One day the manager came back and cried it wasn’t in the plan-o-gram and blah blah and I had to knock it off.
Maybe a week later, they came back to me again and asked how I had been pricing them and I said I was basically just charging the weight of the deli meat and they tweaked the price a little and I kept making them, as people had been ticked when I said I wasn’t allowed to make them anymore.
I left not too long after, and I can’t say it was due to me or anything, but now all of those sites around here make little calzones and have them in the deli section as a grab and go item to cook at home.
It wasn’t enough to teach me everything I needed to know about how companies treat people that go above, but it definitely contributed to my education about work vs reward. But I’m glad I won that one. I liked saving food from the trash, and I liked seeing people enjoy something that was my idea and made purely by me and my skill. I guess I learned some things about myself as well.