In German there is a word, Schadenfreude, which roughly translates as “joy at someone else’s harm”. It refers to the pleasure one feels at watching another person suffer or fail.
Friends, don’t do it. It’s not nice. Especially in our business. I know that some of our competitors can become actually insufferable, and when they get hit with bad harvests or wiped out by pests, we can’t help feeling certain relief.
But it’s still wrong. We know all too well that we could be next when fortune’s wheel rolls round again.
And yet… I cannot suppress an enormous guilty pleasure when I watch the technology tycoons crashing — over and over again — every time they put a tiny foot into the world of food, or directly into our agricultural and fresh produce business.
I no longer know if it’s the influence of Hollywood films, which have turned the “billionaire tech-bro” into the favorite villain of our times. Well… I know is a stereotype, but I don’t think I can blame the movies for this one.
I think this guilty pleasure has more to do with the arrogance I perceive in the projects these billionaires launch. And it goes without saying that this business (the fresh produce business) smashes the arrogant.
You can have all the money in the world and all the confidence you like, but in our sector, just a couple of consecutive mistakes bring well-experienced professionals to their knees.
So, in the fresh produce industry we live in a different kind of film, with no clear superheroes and no clear villains. We live more like in a low-budget B-movie — but our characters (I have to say) are far more authentic than theirs.
Anyway, let me tell you about the adventures of some of these tycoons in our business.
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