For most of us, the lives of the “1 percent” are a complete mystery. When people have that much money, what could they possibly be spending it on? If you’re imagining elaborately decorated private jets and spontaneous trips around the world, you might not be too far off.
Someone asked people on Reddit who work directly for the super wealthy to share some of their best (and worst) stories, and many of these employees delivered. We’ve gathered some of the wildest tales about these affluent employers and what they spend their money on, so we can all get some insight into the mysterious world of the wealthy. We even were able to speak with personal finance expert and creator of the blog Making Sense of Cents Michelle Schroeder-Gardner to hear what it's really like working with rich clients.
Enjoy this list and if you’re hungry for more of these stories afterwards, be sure to check out Bored Panda’s previous publication on the same topic right here.
#21
I worked for an upscale condo complex, starting at 500k and up, so most of these people were pretty wealthy. Most people were really nice, I got all kinds of Christmas gifts and even left over things I didn't care about like clothes and food.
Best story, I was talking to a guy about why he drives a beat up car compared to everyone else, it was like a 1998 Yukon, and he said his thing was jets. Then oreceeded to take me to his private hanger after work, showed me his 3 private jets and offered to fly me anywhere l, anytime I needed, just ask. Never took him up unfortunately.
The worst was a lady who was just never happy with anything we did. Just hated all employees. We were too nice, took too long to get her car, got her car too fast and was wasting gas, took to long to say hi, s**t like that. Everyone hated her. Other than that, these people were really cool.
Being aware of all the devastating poverty in the world only makes it harder to accept that billionaires are simultaneously hoarding wealth. According to a 2020 report from Humana, “Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.” And as Humana India’s CEO Amitabh Behar points out, it should not be up to individuals to solve the issue of wealth inequality.
“Governments created the inequality crisis —they must act now to end it. They must ensure corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share of tax and increase investment in public services and infrastructure. They must pass laws to tackle the huge amount of care work done by women and girls, and ensure that people who do some of the most important jobs in our society —caring for our parents, our children and the most vulnerable— are paid a living wage. Governments must prioritize care as being as important as all other sectors in order to build more human economies that work for everyone, not just a fortunate few.”
#22
I used to work in a private school, and a few dozen of the students were children of the local super-rich from Bay street. One mother started coming into the school every day to visit the uniform shop and buy new uniform items for her child. This went on for a week straight before the shop attendant asked her if everything was okay, the child keeping track of their clothes, etc.
The mom responds with, "Oh, we're fine. It's just that our nanny is on vacation for two weeks, and I have no idea how to use the laundry machines at home." I was stunned into silence when the shop attendant passed that one along to me.
When rich people want to buy a Jaguar in the UK, they get assigned a special sales person who is incredibly knowledgeable, meet in a special fancy office, and special arrangements can be made. This was my friend Chris's job; he had access to things that a normal Jaguar sales person wouldn't have. Once, a Saudi prince wanted to buy a new Jaguar that had been released, so they met up and spent a full day spec'ing the Jaguar out; the final price was, like, £125,000 for the vehicle. The factory had 16 different color options for this model, and the prince asked if he could sleep on it as it was getting late, so they set a time to meet tomorrow. The next morning, he decided to just order one of EACH color.
"They quoted delivery time, the prince agreed, and he was presented with ocean travel options, to which he said, 'What about air cargo?' In the end, 16 of the same Jaguars in different colors ended up being loaded on a plane and flown to Saudi Arabia — and the total cost was around £2.5 million.
Worked at a restaurant where a few of the regulars were the children of billionaires. After being asked how she has so much money, I once heard a student say, 'I told my parents that my tuition costs $500,000.' Another time, I was serving a table and was asked to bring a tray of 60 Patrón shots ($600 for a 19-year-old student). I must have had an incredulous look on my face because his only response to assuage my concern was, 'My father owns diamond mines in Africa.'
It’s almost impossible to even comprehend the wealth of the world’s richest people, especially those in the top two slots: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. However, there is one website that can help you understand their riches a little better. On Simple Texting’s blog post “How Long Does It Take Tech CEOs to Earn Your Salary?”, visitors can choose one of 14 tech CEOs and insert their personal salaries, mortgage payments, or student loan debts to see how long it takes these CEOs to earn that amount of money. For example, if you earn $100,000 a year from your job, Elon musk earns that same amount in only 23 minutes. He also earns $260,736 per hour and over $6 million a day. Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, earns a modest $149,353 per minute. These numbers are hard to conceptualize, but they make it understandable why some people pose the question, “Should billionaires even exist?”
#25
I worked for a guy who is approaching billionaire status. Hes a complete a*****e. I wont say what business he is in but he flies around in his jets visiting his businesses every few weeks. He is also major booster for a big college. His kids are OK, one is a party hound / coke head. The other is poised to take over the corporation. He treats his employees like complete s**t, only seeing them as dollar signs. If you aren't making money for him you are expendable. His employee turnover rate is huge. Managers can expect to be out of a job within 18 months (keep in mind he has over 40 stores that are managed). He is also the biggest chauvinist I've ever seen. He hits on every woman he comes across to the point of many lawsuits, which he doesn't care about, his accountants write checks. He once told a black guy that a monkey could do his job......he had to write a check. His quarterly meetings were all about how great he is and how we should all be like him and work 80+ hours a week. I don't miss that piece of s**t.
I used to work for a composer who is worth around $100 million. He was generally a really nice guy and was genuinely hilarious. There would be some times where he was in a really bad mood and would lash out at people, specifically when it came to preparing food for him. One guy got chewed out for handing him a can of coke by holding onto the top of it rather than around the side. One specific incident that sticks out was when somebody went to get a whole lobster for his dinner and set it out on the table. Our boss hadn't come out to eat it for hours, and it was probably around midnight at this point, so the kid just sat down and started eating. Whaddaya know, big boss comes into the dining room to eat his lobster and sees an intern sat down at the table wearing a bib eating his super expensive (now cold) lobster dinner. That kid didn't come into work anymore
One of my boss' vacation homes were featured in architectural digest. I came across the article just after I received my "bonus" for working 90+ hour weeks for two months straight. It ended up being a $50 Amazon giftcard
There will always be people flaunting their extravagant wealth and others with much less in the bank working for them. But clearly, as the stories on this list show us, money can't always buy you a great personality. I'm happy to live a modest lifestyle where I never have to worry about personal employees sharing crazy stories about me on the internet. Enjoy reading the rest of this list, and don't forget to upvote your favorite posts. Then let us know in the comments if you've ever worked for a wealthy person or witnessed ridiculous displays of affluence, we'd love to hear from you!
#28
I nannied for two upper class social ladder climber families.
The first family was much more well off than the second, and they were awesome. Paid for me to accompany them to Disney World "in case they wanted me to watch the kids one evening so they could have dinner." They ended up buying me all the alcohol and we got ridiculously wasted in Epcot and in our rental house every evening. They even paid me my salary while on the trip. It was fantastic, they were very generous and very sweet. I miss them and their kids a lot.
The second family was not as well off, but still fairly wealthy and they were awful. Passive aggressive notes about not doing laundry correctly (not only were they particular about the setting everyone's laundry was on, but the husband could not wash his own clothing, seriously had no idea how to work the machine), the kids were bratty and made comments about how I made the beds wrong (wtf kid doesn't make their own bed?!) and I need to correct it because "that's what our mom pays you for." They under paid me to not only nanny but "light house keeping" which turned into cleaning all four levels of their house every day.
They basically treated me like an appliance, had no regard for my time (would come home late all the time, no phone call etc but would passively aggressively b***h at me when I requested a day off here or there for school or family visits). It was super uncomfortable.
Oh also-the husband and wife of the second family had separate living quarters. Like, she had the master bedroom and bathroom and he had the "bonus room" above the garage with an attached bathroom. It was super strange.
And I off handedly made a comment to my husband that my employer seemed like the kind of woman who would have a surrogate carry her children as to not mess up her own physical appearance, and wouldn't you know that at least 2 of her kids were carried by surrogates (her kids confirmed it, but they also told me not to say anything because it's a huge secret). I know that makes me sound very insensitive, but the amount of importance that she put on appearances made it plausible.
This was ages ago; I worked in a DVD store, and a woman came in with five, double-sided A4 pages of movie titles and just asked me to fetch what we had. I ran about and collected DVDs and Blu-rays close to $1,000 worth. I asked what they were for — she was a PA for a billionaire and getting them for his yacht.
Nothing really bad, with the exception of thinking that because he paid me marginally above minimum wage, I was his f*****g slave. Due to this there was a steady increase in daily expenditures.
He didn't usually sweat the small s**t though, except for the time I got into a fender bender in one of his cars I used for work. Literally a dent in the pass door, that could be popped out, with no paint damage. He threw a hissy fit, and I was like, f**k this, I'm out. A few weeks later he apologized and hired me back, because no one else could tolerate him.
He is a mostly decent guy, we got along fine otherwise.
