Recently, we asked employees of the rich and powerful in the BuzzFeed Community to share the shady things their bosses did — here are some of the most messed up.
1. "Do you know how in Succession the Roy family has...their staff give away money after negative interactions with the public? Well, that 100% happened ALL THE TIME with my boss. ... This guy once stabbed a slow walker from behind with his umbrella. I gave $300 as apology."
"The final breaking point of me quitting was when an elderly woman in a wheelchair got on the elevator in our building. ... She was having trouble remembering what floor she needed to get off on, so my boss pushed me over and hit 2 and when the door quickly opened (we all got on the elevator on the first floor) he pushed her out extremely roughly and said, 'Figure it out before you get back on, you old ratty hag!' She got $4,000 and agreed to not press charges since I made up a fake story on the spot about how my boss's best friend died and he wasn't in his right mind."
—Anonymous
2. "My ex-boss is a French 'count' even though we don’t have aristocracy anymore. [He] literally has his Uber Eats delivered to “the Count __.” He’s constantly on holiday, refuses to do any work yet posts photo after photo of him pretending to be at the office, and steals 5,000 euros a month from the company to pay for his luxury apartment that he writes off as an office. But he couldn’t afford to pay me more than minimum wage?"
3. "When the COVID vaccine first came out in December 2020 and was initially meant for only nursing home patients and front line staff, the army reserve team and department of health came to administer the first doses at the nursing home I worked at. The owner brought all his yacht club friends and flew in family from out of state to get the vaccine. They stood at the front of the line before old, sick people and nurses to get the shot. I was disgusted."
—Anonymous
4. "[I] nannied for a summer to an extremely wealthy couple: [a] heart surgeon and neurologist. ... [The] dad had women come to the servants' house for affairs while [the] mom was on call."
5. "[My] boss asked me to change rooms at a conference with him. He had arranged for two connecting rooms on our company, so he and his girlfriend (they were both married to other people) could hook up, and if their spouses called the hotel, could answer the phone in the appropriate room."
—Anonymous
6. "I used to work in a very, very fancy hotel doing housekeeping. The guests ranged from insanely wealthy to A-list famous to extremely powerful politicians and more. ... One extremely well-known actor with a wife and kids at home hired sex workers to live out his scat fetish fantasy — that was fun to clean up."
7. "I worked in the home of a multimillionaire for over two years, and I saw everything from toilets that aren’t flushed and left completely disgusting for the housekeeper, the teenage kid leaving his liquor in the McDonald’s cup and hiding his pills behind the toilet, and the wife continually taking off for [a] 'girl’s weekend' in a nearby county — but the girlfriend she says she’s with I see at the jewelry store that Saturday."
"I went to the town, found her Range Rover by going to the highest-cost hotel, put on a hat and sunglasses… Sure enough, she was with another man."
—Anonymous
8. "I was a nanny for the two children of a mega-rich couple in Kensington. The husband often went away on business weekends. One weekend, a group of friends and I had booked a fancy five-star London hotel for the night after a theater show (lastminute.com bargain deal), and who should I see in the lobby but my boss snogging a lady who most definitely wasn’t his wife."
"We made awkward eye contact and then he hurried off. Got a text the next morning offering me money to keep quiet, but I quit instead. ... Have seen on Facebook since that they’ve divorced, so I imagine it must have come out eventually!"
9. "Company I worked for briefly... The boss decided to cut pay for all the managers. I was not affected, but it was seriously suspicious that two months later, all the big wigs went on a company retreat and were gifted hundreds of dollars worth of shit, like really expensive bourbon, leather chairs, golf clubs and bags, etc."
10. "She was the former president of the board at a cosmetics brand I work for. ... She would guilt trip us for not donating money to her church (that her husband and father-in-law ran). I make 42,000 a year. I barely have enough for rent and car payments. Yet she is worth millions. I suspected, and was subsequently right, that her family used the church to funnel money and/or use as tax breaks (various charities and scholarships)."
—Anonymous
11. "Paying off the family suing his son for sexual assault and misconduct against their daughter. The owners son was 23, and the girl was allegedly 16. I don't know the exact amount, but it had to be a couple million to make them drop it. Rumor around the office was that this wasn't the first incident, and that [the] owner was bailing his son out of a likely prison sentence for years."
—Anonymous
12. "[I] worked for a business brokerage owner (think realtors, but for businesses). When he was ready to semi-retire, he cooked the books to make the firm look MUCH more profitable than it was. It worked, and the new partner/owner was VERY confused when the business wasn’t doing...well."
"The worst part was that the new owner left a super-cushy job for this business, and eventually he and his wife had to go back to work full time to supplement their income since the business didn’t perform as they’d been led to believe. Shortly after that, I quit because of the shadiness, and my boss (the original owner) legitimately offered to buy me whatever brand-new car I wanted to stay since I knew all his dirty secrets. I refused."
—Anonymous
13. "I worked for a mortgage company in Arizona, and my boss, [redacted], would offer us lunch but then would make us pay for it. Then we overheard him and his wife telling the assistant to include everyone’s lunch in their expense report so they would get reimbursed for the full thing."
"[He] never offered us a fully paid lunch but then wanted to steal from us and the company. He also would do super-illegal stuff in the mortgage world like let unlicensed people quote borrowers rates and do applications. I caught on to his other slimy ways and tried reporting him to HR, and they didn’t do anything, so I just quit."
—Anonymous
14. "[They] used the private company jet to go visit their house in another state dozens of times but charged employees to use that same jet when they were forced to evacuate during a hurricane."
—Anonymous
15. "We all had to take a 25% pay cut during the start of the pandemic so the company could stay in business. For perspective, that 25% was how much my rent is. After a couple months, [my boss] phoned the office to tell us about the $80,000 jet he chartered so he didn’t have to fly back to Canada from Mexico on a commercial flight. The company paid for the jet."
"Needless to say, I quit soon after."
—Anonymous
16. "I worked for...a private country club for skiing in Vail, Colorado. ... We got a radio call that one of our members was being brought down by ski patrol in a toboggan and to get ready to receive the injured woman. ... She gets out of the toboggan, the ski valets grab her gear, and I assist her to the clubhouse with her arm over my shoulder…until we’re out of view of ski patrol, and she says to me, 'Oh, I’m fine. I was just tired and didn’t want to ski down.' Then proceeds to ask me what wines we currently have in the bar."
—Anonymous
17. "I was working for this former senator who was also a prestigious academic and national award recipient. One day at his home office, he was at his computer and asked if I knew how to change the settings. ... When I came in front of his computer, he held my waist and tried to lower me on his lap, saying I could sit on his lap while I tried."
"I jumped up from there and never agreed to come to his home office again. He got the message. Within days, he had resigned from his position and wrote a long letter about resigning due to politics or some other thing."
—Anonymous
18. "Worst thing my boss ever asked me to do: be racist."
"I had been onsite hiring...for a new store opening. ... I was told I needed to be 'more diverse in my hiring, even if they weren't super experienced.' They kept asking if I understood — oh, I understood just fine. I hired on two criteria: personality and experience. Just so happened that the best candidates were mostly BIPOC. They wanted a more white workforce out front where the public could see them."
19. "I was in charge of the video production team. ... For one project, I was doing a video with the CEO of the company... The board had just made the decision to bring on a private equity firm...for an infusion of cash in anticipation of taking the company public. The CEO and the other partners got a HUGE bonus when the equity firm came on. We're talking millions of dollars."
"The purpose of this video with the CEO was to tell that staff that everyone was going to need to 'tighten their belts' and understand that things were going to be lean for awhile. Benefits were going to be cut. The sick leave and time off policies were going to change, etc. During a break in shooting, the member of the CEO's staff that was coordinating the shoot asked the CEO, 'How's your Bentley treating you?' The CEO went on a rant about how his Bentley was in the shop again, he hated the car and he had so many problems with it, and it was always having little issues. When he finally finished his rant, the guy asked the CEO, 'So what did you drive to work today?' The CEO answered, 'Oh, my other Bentley.' He was doing a video about the rank and file staff needing to tighten their belts; meanwhile he had half a million dollars in cars."
—Anonymous
20. And finally, "I worked as a nanny on the infamous Park Avenue for years. During the first summer of the pandemic the super wealthy still wanted their kids to socialize. A small group of parents hired coaches and counselors themselves and took turns hosting camp at each other's lavish estates. They called it mansion camp."
—Anonymous
What wild and immoral stuff have you caught the rich people in your life doing? Let us know in the comments.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.