Honestly, I believe it.

I have worked at an amazon warehouse. Bezos was never referred to as anything but Jeff and every day during the stretches we would be told how impressed Jeff was with how well we were doing.

At Costco, we would have daily meetings. At least twice a month the assistant manager would interject to remind everybody that they had once had lunch with the original CEO. There was also this strange creation myth of how the company was able to dominate the grocery industry within less time than everybody else. It involved the CEO inventing a new way to filet a Chinook salmon or something like that.

Cult behavior is surprisingly strong within corporate America.