We know the rich are getting richer in the United States. And, as it turns out, people are well aware of how rich people are flaunting their growing wealth.
One Reddit [ht: sm] thread last week (which, last time I looked, had over 19 thousand comments) started with the question, “What’s the most obscene display of private wealth you’ve ever witnessed?”
Here are some of my favorites:
I used to be a nanny to celebrities and high profile New York financial families. . .The CEO and his model wife of a famous athletic wear company paid for an entire wardrobe for me to keep at their home because they didn’t want “outside clothes” contaminating their house or infant. I was to take my street clothes into the bathroom near the entrance, take them off, change into my “house” clothing, and then only change back after I was finished with the baby for the day and was getting ready to leave. They also had a safe of cash that I was to use exclusively for my meals, drinks and take out food, and then leave the receipts in the safe.
I work for a luxury home builder. Very big, very expensive houses. We are building a home for this guy & he calls freaking out at me because AT&T would only provide him with 9 DVRs when he needs 11. They would provide him with more, but he would need to open a second account to do so. I don’t know why, I guess they had some kind of weird limit at the time. I’m the CTO of the homebuilder, so he expected me to get AT&T to change this policy so he could have a TV with DVR in every bathroom as well as the normal TV-viewing rooms. I obviously couldn’t do this, so he cancelled his contract with us thru his lawyer & never spoke to us again. His deposit was non-refundable, in fact we had already spent most of the money on the initial part of the build. So he walked away from over $100,000 we wouldn’t give him back without ever saying a word to us. It was no biggie to him I guess. It also made NO SENSE.
I was driving for Uber in a college town and picked up a group from one of the richer frat houses to take them to a club. The girls were discussing how one of their friends was upset and went on a huge shoe shopping spree where each pair cost roughly $2,000 except for one. This one pair costed $7,000. One of the girls casually expresses that “$7,000 is really not a bad price to pay for shoes, they should’ve just been a little bit prettier. I would’ve paid $5,000 for them.” Why they called an Uber instead of a limo, I don’t know.
My boss owns a 15+ million dollar cottage. He likes to “entertain” and throws some pretty wild parties. His wealthy neighbours down the lake complained about the noise and frequently called police. One day they saw him on the street and told him smugly that they had a generous offer on their cottage and they were moving. I know, said my boss, I bought it.
A party at the CEO’s house for Halloween. Insanity. I thought I was going to get kicked out of the neighborhood because I was only driving a 30k car, not a 300k car. Anything you can think of, he had at this party – staff with signature cocktails at the door, a fully staffed bar for liquor, a fully staffed bar for wine, an entire table made of ice with ice shot glasses and ten different vodkas. He was wearing a costume made of leather that his wife commissioned for him, handmade in France. The 400 yard bridge to his private lake was strung up with extra lights, and the dock had a separate bar for those who wanted to sit on the lake.
My mother owned a small home-based business doing a whole bunch of different shit, including silk floral arrangements and other artificial plants. Occasionally, she would be hired to do the floral component of some big interior decorating job.
One time, she was hired by a local home builder to do just such an interior decorating gig at his mansion.
He did have a private helicopter pad in his backyard, but someone elsewhere in this thread has already mentioned another one of those.
The conservatory flooring was walnut parquet tile. It was lovely, except that the mogul’s wife had recently had a party where, of course, many of her guests were wearing stiletto heels. These heels made a kajillion tiny divots in the walnut parquet tile, ruining it. Mrs. Homebuilder was unconcerned; she was simply going to replace it.
I think, though, what stands out to me the most was the foyer, mainly its Corinthian columns gilded in 24 karat gold. Who the fuck does that?
Building a house for some rather wealthy people. While they “rough it” in their $1.5M barn waiting for us to finish. The horses they own have their individual quarters being completely cleaned around the clock. There is fresh new hay brought in by the truckload which is then sorted through in front of a fan where the dirt is blown out leaving only clean hay. The floors in each stall are constantly being covered with a bed of imported wood chips/shavings from somewhere in Northern California (we’re in central TX). The chips and hay are brought in by the truckload every week. Each horse is fed a Snickers Bar before bed. They live in a climate controlled area of the “barn” where they are fed filtered water. Hot water during the winter and ice water in the summer. None of these horses are pure-bred or rare/special other than the fact that they were chosen. One day while working we saw one of the barn workers hauling ass through the field so naturally we waited and watched to see what he was doing. He was running to our portopotty. We didn’t think much of it at first. Then we got a phonecall. “Have you guys seen one of the mexicans over there? He asked to use the bathroom and has been gone gone for 7 minites when he’s only allotted a five minute break.” She then proceeded to ask if we’d find him and send him back before he goes pilfering through the construction supplies and tools. These people made a ~45 yr old grown ass man, with kids and shit, haul ass across a field, about 300 yards, in the dead of summer in TX to take a shit…while they timed him. This lady once asked some hispanic concrete workers to move from under the shade of her giant oak tree because they may kill the root system with their boots. When we told her they were just eating luch and that it was hot her reasoning was that “mexicans don’t feel heat anyways”. Money makes people weird. I could go on for hours.
Well, you get the idea. There are plenty of other stories—about neighbors, roommates, and so on. The ones I’ve chosen (and there are many more) are all from or about people who have worked for the tiny group at the top.