1. “Had a wealthy ex-girlfriend try to convince me that her parents giving her $5,000–$10,000 every month for ‘fun money’ was the same as a parent buying their kid a Coke because ‘all parents want to help their kids, they just have different amounts of help they can give.’ Talk about delusional. We didn’t last long.”
2. “My last boss…owned FOUR homes — outright, no mortgages. He drove a brand new Tesla. He had the nerve to ask someone at the company who made $10 an hour part time to pay for his lunch because ‘there’s only a few $100s in my wallet now.'”
3. “Once heard my ex boss say, ‘People just don’t want to work anymore.’ Staff did ALL her work, her dad owned the business, she was in the office maybe 18 hours a week, actually worked maybe an hour a day, and complained constantly that she needed a vacation and she was overworked.”
“Best part? Her dad decided to retire about three weeks after I quit, and she closed the business because she knew she couldn’t do the job. She would cry to my coworkers that she couldn’t run the place on her own. No shit, princess. Did you think he was going to work forever?”
4. “I worked with a guy that got a living stipend from his dad that covered all his bills every month. The money he earned working went toward partying mostly. He once told me that his success (lived in a nice condo in a super desirable area, drove a new car, etc.) was due to his money management skills. ‘I only get the money once a month so I have to be disciplined enough to only spend it on necessities. Other people would blow the entire amount in the first week. That’s why they don’t live in (insert name of well-known fancy building here).'”
5. “My college girlfriend’s freshman roommate threw a fit that her daddy didn’t buy her a bunch of Thanksgiving presents, including some $2,000 flat screen TV (and this was 2007). Who the fuck gets a Thanksgiving present?”
6. “When I worked at a daycare center, I had a teacher clock out for the day, and she was sitting in the lobby, waiting for her ride. She was checking something on her phone and started crying. Right then, the owner of the center pulled up in his Corvette, waltzed in, and asked ‘What’s wrong? Why are you crying?’ and she told him that they were about to turn off her electricity because they could not afford to pay the bill. He responded with a shit-eating grin and said: ‘Well, I got $2 million in the bank, so I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.’ He was paying us $10/hr, btw.”
7. “’I’d rather stop eating than fly commercial.’ Some rich ass dude with a private plane told some of us that while having a conversation.”
—Anonymous
8. “I went to a private high school full of rich, privileged kids. I remember this one girl in my ethics class arguing that ‘being super rich is just as bad as being super poor because you’re judged just as much.’ She was 100% serious.”
—Anonymous
9. “Had a boss once tell me that $250k ‘isn’t a lot of money.’ He owned the company. He signed my checks. He knew I made 10% of that, pre-tax. I just stared at him in shock until he walked away.”
10. “‘It’s ok to pay the staff late, don’t they have savings?’ Actual rich person talking about paying the household staff.”
“I was managing the staff, and handing out pay checks. The workers were personal care attendants. It was real hard for me emotionally, but harder for people with no savings. I didn’t have enough money to cover their pay.”
“I worked for a guy who only flew in his private jet. He moved staff payday to the 3rd and 16th to save himself a few bucks. Staff literally evicted after three months for failure to pay late fees on rent.”
11. “I was friends with a multi-millionaire for a while. The sheer amount of times he told me he was ‘going broke,’ that he was poor, etc. etc., TO MY FACE, as I was struggling to pay for rent/groceries…is astounding. I would call him out on it, and he never took it seriously. It drove me wild.”
12. “I did some work on a multimillion dollar house once, and the wife was making small talk by complaining about gas prices and how that extra $12 per tank really adds up. She didn’t work and drove a BMW. Her husband ‘worked’ from home and drove a Porsche. Pretty sure they both A) could afford gas, and B) absolutely didn’t need to drive any of the places that they went during the day.”
13. “I have two. ‘Is it even a vacation if there isn’t a beach?’ When I haven’t taken a vacation in years. Beach, PLEASE. Or ‘Thanks for (insert FAVOR). I just need you to (insert extremely entitled request that disproportionately benefits you while screwing me over). That shouldn’t be a problem, right?’ Yes. Yes it is. Other people do not exist to serve you and your whims.”
—Anonymous
14. “I had a manager who was constantly complaining about how he and his wife couldn’t afford their house with both their incomes. He made six figures himself, they both owned property that they rented out, they inherited the house they lived in so didn’t pay nearly as much for it as it was worth, and traveled overseas multiple times a year…meanwhile, I’m living paycheck to paycheck and was living with my parents at the time because I couldn’t afford to move out yet. Alright, bro.”
15. “I have a boss who makes seven to eight figures a year, owns a home, and is in the process of building himself a new six-bedroom, six-bathroom home. He complains all the time to us employees about how stressful it is picking out tile for the bathroom or deciding on kitchen backsplash, even though his wife doesn’t even work, and that’s literally all she has to do all day.”
“He complains about the moving guys getting a little scratch on the floor that will soon be covered by carpet anyway. He even complained about staying in a hotel while the houses are renovated, saying his shower pressure is low. And most of all, he complains that building your own home is sooooo expensive, as if someone is forcing him to do it. Meanwhile, I had to force him to bring my wage up to market rate for the job, and I work two jobs now. I have been sick at work for a few weeks now, and desperately need time off, but I have to fight with him and justify to him in order to get it.”
16. “My favorite is the UK government at the start of the pandemic stating people should isolate in their homes away from the rest of their household and use a separate bathroom. Apparently, they didn’t realize some homes don’t have more than one bathroom, let alone a whole separate wing to isolate in.”
17. “Our insurance premiums were rising along with our deductibles at a job I was working; during a meeting to discuss how it was going to affect our paychecks, one of administrators suggested, if we just paid it all out of one check we would be good for the whole year.”
—Anonymous
18. “I once sat next to a woman on a plane who justified renting her freshman daughter her own two-bedroom, water-view apartment because, ‘She’s a good girl, not a party girl, so she didn’t want to do the share-house thing.’ Like the rest of us split the rent for the sheer thrill of it…”
19. “My now-wife had a roommate years ago when we were first dating. Her roommate was 25 and had one of her dad’s credit cards and could do whatever she wanted with it. She would order shoes/clothes literally every day online and then complain about having to split utilities/food. She easily dropped $5k/month on designer bullshit.”
20. “A very rich coworker (she was working in nonprofits more as a hobby, she did not need the money) once complained how hard it was because her housekeeper had the week off and she had to run errands herself all week. As nice as she was to me, I could never take her seriously after that day.”
21. “A few years ago, I had a shitty car that kept breaking down, and my paychecks would almost be depleted the day after payday between bills/car repairs. My boss was SO offended when my car broke down (as if I could help it) before I’d come into work she’d leave Craigslist car ads on my desk, and they were all $5k+. Eventually, I asked her to stop as I didn’t have money lying around to drop a lump sum like that on a Craigslist car, and she looked at me like I had three heads. I was 22 and making $11/hr.”
22. “A girl I went to college with came into class late one day absolutely fuming. She had been pulled over on the way in because her tax and insurance had expired on her car that her dad had bought her for her birthday last year. She was genuinely asking everyone if they knew that you had to tax and insure a car.”
23. “I knew a trust fundie who went irate in a group chat one day saying he worked hard in life and deserves things. It was bizarre. We all know he’s a third-generation business owner. Bro jokes about people with student debt. He didn’t even have a job in college. Mfer talking bout ‘working hard’ to laborers he grew up with. Shit was hilarious.”
24. “My husband came home from his factory job where they had had their annual pre-Christmas meeting. In front of over 150 workers, the CEO of the company stated they had a year that was their highest sales volume ever. Not more than 15 minutes later, he had the balls to tell all the employees that they would not be receiving a Christmas bonus that year because the company couldn’t afford it. Why they didn’t all walk out is beyond me. The real kicker is the CEO rarely showed up, leaving the factory in the hands of his general manager who was a very mean and arrogant person. He eventually was fired when it was found the manager was getting BJ’s from the girls on the line.”
—Anonymous
25. “I had a rich friend who was acting like she was ‘slumming it’ because she worked part time with me, and her parents lived in a different state. She had a car already, but they bought themselves another new car and gave her their ‘old’ one. She literally said, multiple times to different people at our work, ‘It’s nice of them, but honestly, they just cursed me with more of a payment because now I have to get insurance for it, so it’s not really a gift because I have to use my own money on it.'”
26. “I worked for a couple of dermatologists. Over dinner, they were discussing their own salary take-home, and how many years of pay they missed out on with schooling, etc. compared to their housekeeper who was paid at a rate of $30/hour with no school ‘time off’ and how she was really making out better… Oh my gosh, the audacity. In front of ME, the NANNY to their three kids…who was getting $17/hr. Lesson learned. I couldn’t quit fast enough.”
27. “Bill Gates once said, ‘If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it’s your mistake.'”
28. “One day my sister’s boss came out of his office holding a newspaper (this was a few years ago). He was complaining because a potential tax break on capital gains wasn’t going to go through the legislature.”
“My sister, who was working as the receptionist making 1/5 of what he did, couldn’t stop herself. She said very loudly, ‘Why in the world do you need an extra tax break? So you could keep your yacht at the club for a few extra weeks? If there are tax breaks, give them to single parents making minimum wage. They need the help. You don’t.’
He turned around and went back in his office. At the shocked expressions of the rest of the office, my sister said, ‘Well, I’m right.’ I love her.”
29. And finally… “How did you raise five kids without a nanny?!”
—Anonymous
What’s the most out-of-touch thing a rich person has said to you? Let us know in the comments!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
