60 Employees Of Ultra-Wealthy Families Reveal The Most Absurd Things They Witnessed

I mentioned this on Reddit before and people didn't believe me.  I worked for a billionaire for a couple years.  He traveled constantly and didn't like having to deal with luggage.  So he just had his assistant buy new clothes everywhere he went and threw them out when he left instead of taking them with him.

My sister worked for a very wealthy couple, who were very nice and down to earth, but the wife was kind of crazy.
My sister never really figured out what her beliefs were, but one thing she was really afraid of were barcodes.
She did all their groceries, everything had to be organic and ideally without any packaging. If the packing had a barcode on it, she had to put all those groceries on a “random” wooden plate in their backup kitchen to “neutralize the barcodes” 😭😭, some kind of energy thing.
This plate, which looked like a nice cutting board costs over 2500€ (I know not a lot for people like that), but how can one be so rich, yet so freakin delulu.

My former boss was the CEO of MySpace and Demand Media. I worked for him more recently. They had a Superbowl party at his house (next door to Dr Dre, Tom Brady, Arnold Schwarzenegger) with a bunch of different exotic animals that people could interact with.

Anyway, it started raining, so they brought the animals inside. Their hooves ended up ruining his floor, and it cost something like $30k to replace them.

The guy is the most charismatic person I've ever met, though. A really nice guy that tried doing well for his employees. And super smart. It's easy to see how he became so successful when you sit down with him for a few minutes.

My friend nannied for a family that was absolutely befuddled that pasta comes dried in a box for us poors.
They’d only ever seen their personal chef make pasta by hand.

Someone I met told me she worked as a newborn care specialist for very wealthy people. She never met them. There was a house manager on site to let her in the property and take her to the child. The previous shift’s newborn care specialist would hand her the baby. No parents around.

There's a really nice cottage country near me (called the Muskokas) with $10+ million dollar places, and on the road going up north there's a decent hamburger place - nothing that special but it hits the spot and it's on the highway. Not on the water so, not accessible from cottages unless you drive.

Unless you're the guy who I watched pilot his four-seater helicopter to the park across the road. Got out with his wife and dog to go get a burger.

I passed him on the way in and really wanted to ask him what choice he made early in his life that got him to the point of flying his helicopter to a burger place, but I didn't have the nerve.

I am a lawyer and have worked for some of these people. One guy got sued and was willing to pay my firm $100,000 plus a month to prove a point by continuing to fight in a lawsuit where I was able to negotiate a dismissal (no pay) for him. He was that willing and able to throw away money. But, he would also pay us with his Amex card for the points rewards. Instead of just wiring us six figures he would call my assistant and read out his credit card to get rewards points.

Their monthly fresh flowers budget was $3,000. Every week there would be floral arrangements dropped off by the florist to be placed around the home, this wasn’t even their primary home as she preferred her home in the UK and would only come to her North America for business that could not be conducted remotely.

My boss’s wife went to Africa on vacation & I told her I had always wanted to go but the long flight scared me off. She said, “you know, I actually find the flight to Africa better than Europe because it’s soooo long, you just lie down & go to sleep.” Then realized the look on my face & followed up with, “wait, you’re not flying first class, nevermind, the flight to Africa would be awful.” She’s a very nice person & laughed at herself for the assumption but it was a bit wild to be at the income level where you forget people fly coach.

One of my friends was a caregiver for an elderly couple. Their house was like an art museum. They had bought a stack of paintings while they were on vacation that were not yet in frames, and they were bored with them already and about to throw them away. My friend was allowed to take the paintings, but she didn’t have a plan to do something with them. She just didn’t want them put in the trash.

And that’s how I ended up with ten original paintings of sites around Greece and Italy. I gave away five to my family members and I still have five left.

My friends dad was worth a few hundred million or maybe a billion. He was super kind. I remember once going to a store and he was like “get anything you want” me being really modest picked out one outfit. My friend was like “come on you gotta get more” I got like 2 more shirts. In hindsight I should have filled a cart! lol they were the most down to earth super rich people you could imagine.

Didn’t work for them, but my now ex stepdad (he and my mom just separated) built this beautiful kitchen in one of his houses. I’m talking custom everything and top of the line appliances. Basically anyone who has somewhat of an interest in cooking would probably say it’s a dream kitchen. To put it in perspective, they spent $30k on the countertops alone.

That kitchen has been cooked in once, for scrambled eggs that I made for myself one morning. They order out every meal and don’t feel the need to cook. In fact, when I made the eggs he gave me a weird look as if I was insane for using the kitchen for anything other than to look at.

I'm in finance and have worked with a hand full of people with a NW over $50M. But personally I've only known one family that brings in over $50M a year. Berkley CA. The wife is an MD but stays home with the kids. They moved to Africa for 16mo to adopt one of their children. They have a mountain house that is gorgeous but uninhabited. They let us use it pretty much whenever and its stocked with everything you need including mountain bikes, kayaks, ATVs etc. The property is hundreds of acres of ponds, trails, rock walls and has various smaller cabins and yurts that are very unique throughout the property. I'm guessing 8-10 total dwellings fully furnished on the property. Great people, very generous and genuinely kind.

A friend helped look after some properties for a VERY famous individual. Dozens of employees, massive upkeep for houses nobody was ever in. Then one day they came in and found this famous person asleep on the couch. The famous person left a couple hours later. $20 million house used for a nap once.

I dated a girl who’s grandfather is very wealthy. He purchased the penthouse above his and converted into a terrarium type of environment for his cactuses

Edit: Both cacti and cactuses work actually and are proper. If I were using it in a scientific/research/academic way I'd had written "cacti" (latin derived plural), but conversationally cactuses(standard English plural) works fine for me.

A buddy of mine owns a high end house painting business. So he does a lot of these insane houses that overlook the Pacific Ocean in southern California. Last week he was telling me about one of his clients that lost the keys to a Ferrari. So it has just sat in the garage basically as a paperweight for two years. Cause the guy can't be bothered to get a new set of keys.... For his Ferrari.

Friends wife used to work for a very wealthy Saudi oil family. Her job was to live in a very expensive Mayfair apartment and basically make sure it was ready to receive the family at all times.

Fresh flowers in every room every few days and very expensive fresh food and fruit juice delivered weekly. They had someone come and drive the 3 cars kept in the underground garage weekly and make sure they were spotless and running well.

At the end of each week she'd throw away all the flowers and use whatever food up before that got thrown away too.

Average time the family actually spent at the Mayfair apartment per year was 1 week. 2 at the most.

The other 50 weeks worth of fresh flowers and food were for nothing. All it did was saved them a few phone calls to order in stuff when they actually knew they were coming over.

She got paid very well for it too.

I do some jobs for a multi billionaire and he’s fairly down to earth most of the time because hes first generation rich. But sometimes we’ll be shooting the s**t and he’ll go “if you have the time to sail the baltics, i think youd love it.”

Bro, i cut your trees. You know what i get paid.

We spent probably $400k building a custom vehicle for the wife to have a mobile office. Satellite tv, internet for video calls, streaming tv or movies, armor, custom interior, lots of flights to So Cal during the building of it, etc.

We have it two weeks and the husband decides to go mountain biking. Throws dirty mountain bikes in the fully custom leather and wood interior made up like a Rolls Royce living room. Leather ripped, wood scratched, carpets with axle grease in them….disaster.

I was about to be pissed that he could be so careless but if I had his money why would I care? The minions would emerge and fix it with no financial worry to him at all.

They don't like to hear helicopters, even if the helicopter is bringing sick kids to a children's hospital close by. So they try use their wealth and influence to limit the amount of life saving flights to a children's hospital that existed long before they moved in. (Google Laurelhurst and Seattle Children's Hospital).