We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community, "What's the most shocking thing that's ever happened to you while working for the rich?"
Welp, they revealed some truly wild stories (like...these wealthy people are beyond out of touch with reality! It's bananas!).
So, here are some over-the-top things rich people have done to their employees:
Disclaimer: We can't confirm 100% of these stories, but these people are supposedly speaking from their own experiences working for the rich.
1. "As an assistant I was asked to find the plane wherever it was routed to in Europe after they had disembarked. They later realized they’d left something important on board — I was to have it grounded so they could retrieve the bag of charging cables they’d left behind. They thought it was a completely legitimate request instead of just buying more."
2. "I’m an RVT (licensed veterinary nurse), and I used to work at this animal hospital that had incredibly affluent clientele. Many pet owners had multiple homes in other countries or drove expensive cars. I remember this one owner who specifically bought a car for EACH of her dogs. Whenever one of her dogs would come in for an appointment, her assistant would drive them in the car that belonged to the dog that was visiting us. Some people need their wallets taken away."
—Anonymous
3. "I worked as a real estate stager for a high-end staging company ($10 million+ homes), and once I staged a $20 million Southampton mansion in early February. When we inquired with our client (the homeowner) as to the location of the thermostats on move-in day, he told us we had to 'pay his utility bills' if we wanted heat. The clincher was when he said, 'As long as you and your team keep moving and don’t stop working, you’ll stay warm.' We ended up informing him that legally he needed to provide us with heat after citing state guidelines (which he begrudgingly did). He was also suuuuuuuper creepy to all of the women on our team (the tiniest 'dick energy' I’ve experienced in my thirty-something years)."
—Anonymous
4. "I work in a reputable ski resort in the French Alps during the winter, and we often have worldwide celebrities coming on vacation here. Last year a famous singer rented a hotel complex for his wife and kids, and one evening, he asked the reception to send a technician to his room to fix a light fixture. That technician (a 25-year-old friend of mine) found the singer alone in his room with dimmed lights, lying on the bed with his legs spread while wearing only bright red underwear. There was no light to fix. The man apparently thought his coded request for a sex worker was clear enough (it definitively wasn't — my poor friend can tell you that)."
—Anonymous
5. "I worked for a very famous reality TV family, and I was expected to come as if I were appearing on TV (to keep the 'vibe' on-point, although I would never be shown). I was also asked several times to do their kids’ hair or braid their hair if a stylist was caught in traffic or late because they couldn't braid their mixed kids' hair."
6. "I did a private Scotch tasting for an Oscar-nominated actor and their entourage just before the pandemic. I was given $50,000 in cash to go and buy products for this one-evening event. No receipts were asked for, so I spent some to go to Las Vegas and get some nice stuff. I spent the rest on clearing off a credit card. At the event though, there were a bunch of A-list stars listening to this Oscar-nominated actor give a Scotch lesson, all very attentive. An actress there was hitting on me, and everyone was throwing Benjamins at me for a tip while I'm wondering if my girlfriend would understand if I strayed this one time. I turned her down, and went to my guest room at this guy's Malibu mansion."
"At about 1 a.m. an assistant knocked on my door to sign an NDA. Why? Because this actress (and another actress, who I later learned was becoming a star) wanted to show me 'what I was missing.' So, I signed it and watched this acrobatic show while nursing what was left in a bottle of 47-year-old Mortlach Single Malt."
—Anonymous
7. "I was a personal assistant to a very wealthy man in Newport Beach for seven years, and my good friend was his wife’s personal assistant. One day my friend was driving their car to the mechanic and got into an accident. She was injured and ended up needing months of physical therapy. The wife and I were discussing the accident, and she laughed and said, 'She did us a favor — we have waaaaay too many BMWs.' Oh, and the guy I worked for had a habit of peeing in the plants in the board room during meetings. Classy."
—Anonymous
8. "I had a wealthy client with two young children — they built a huge custom house with a pool and pool house on the river. They moved in and the kids wanted to swim. The wife complained that she had to sit outside with the children the whole time because she couldn’t see the pool from the kitchen. So, her husband bought the house next door (which was also a huge custom home not on the market). He tore it down, tore the original pool house down, put in a new (even bigger) pool, and built a new pool house in full view of the kitchen."
—Anonymous
9. "I worked at a law firm while I was in college (the partners drove Maseratis, wore custom suits, etc.). My best exposure was a random weeknight working late for an upcoming trial (I was just an office assistant). One of the attorneys I liked walked by seeing me work past closing, and came back a few minutes later with a glass of wine for me to enjoy. I asked which wine it was and he showed me the bottle (he took it from our wine display that was front and center for our clients to see). I Googled it later that night when I got home and it was a $400 bottle. Definitely the most expensive thing I've ever had to drink."
10. "I once worked for a wealthy, married, famous New Yorker with a mistress who went to jail. He would ask me to go shopping for her, deliver the items to her in jail, and also shop for her son from another relationship."
—Anonymous
11. "I worked in a restaurant that was owned by a trust fund baby whose daddy bought it for her as a tax shelter (it never made a profit). She wanted the most expensive everything all the time and had no head for business. She also treated us like we were her personal domestic staff. Once she told me I shouldn't talk to her husband after he sat at my bar and we chatted while he had lunch. Apparently that's 'inappropriate.'"
"By total coincidence, my partner was an exec in the company her daddy owned. My partner's boss (a VP) came for dinner one night and I was chatting with him and making a specific cocktail I knew he liked. The owner was shocked that I knew him, she knew my partner worked for her dad, but I'm pretty sure she assumed he was a nobody in the company.
She joined the VP for dinner, then made me stay until 3 a.m. (five hours past closing) to continue making cocktails for him while they drank and chatted. Best part? She told him everything was on her, then didn't tip. Not even a 'thank you.'"
12. "This one woman I worked for always sticks in my head. The judge ordered her ex to pay her $55,000 per month (tax free) PER. MONTH. while the divorce was still pending. She yelled at her attorney and said, 'How am I supposed to live on $55,000 a month?! I’ll walk past Bergdorf Goodman's and won’t even be able to go in!'"
—Anonymous
13. "My mom worked as a nanny for a rich couple. One year, she gave PLENTY of notice that we would be going on vacation to Disney so they could get help for their two young children (they were about one and three). So there we are in Disney World (we lived in PA), and I go, 'Mom, that looks like (names of children she watches).' She goes, 'Don't be silly, they're all the way back home in...oh, son of a bitch.' Yep, instead of asking their parents who lived nearby or dropping them off at daycare, the rich couple flew down to Disney hoping my mom would continue to watch her kids in the park. My mom firmly put her foot down refusing, and instead said since they were already there, they should take the time to actually bond with their own kids. They had a one in four chance in picking the park we were at and even then, Magic Kingdom is pretty big. So the fact we even stumbled across each other was good luck on their part."
—Anonymous
14. "35 years ago I worked at a fancy hotel in Virginia Beach. A local (who was a very famous evangelical media mogul who has since passed on) was hosting a lunch for his friends at our hotel. The morning of the function the host had a walk through with us and expressed his last minute desire to have fresh New Orleans-style crawfish served. He was dismayed to find that the only crawfish we could source locally would be pre-frozen. After a quick phone, the host said, 'Good news: I spoke with a friend in Louisiana (who happened to be a famous TV chef) and he can have some ready in a few hours. I’ll have the company jet fly down to pick them up if you can arrange the transportation from the airport.'"
"Four hours later I was at the airport watching a huge 747 plane land and unloaded two 50 gallon trash cans filled with steaming crawdads!
The best part? The lunch was canceled, so the staff got to eat them. To this day it's best damn crawfish I’ve ever had!"
15. "The family I worked for in San Francisco was at their Cabo home (I had an office at their company office as well as in their home). I received a delivery from the pharmacy that needed to be dropped off at the house — I was told by a member of the household staff I could come by, but everyone would be gone for the day. I walked up three flights of stairs and when I turned the corner into my office in their home, I saw the wife bent over my desk with her skirt hiked up having sex with the male nanny. She barked, 'What the fuck are you doing here?!' to which I responded, 'What are YOU doing here?!'"
"The wife and the male nanny had flown back to San Francisco early while the husband and children stayed in Cabo. I left the prescription and as I started to walk out of my office, the wife said, 'You better keep your mouth shut — you better not say anything!' to which I told her she was in no position to demand anything from me. As soon as I got home I quit then got four months severance."
16. "My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant for a famous journalist/author working on a story and book about 9/11. The attacks had just taken place (as in, my first day on the job was a week after the attacks). I had never heard of this person before, but after checking with my college guidance counselor, she assured me no matter how belligerent they were it would be good for my career and resume. Anyway, they were belligerent to just about everyone, but here's one of the worst things I experienced. I got mono over the holidays and they wanted me to come into work. When I nearly choked on my own saliva telling them I had mono (my glands were so swollen), they told me, 'Everyone gets colds' and hung up. I got an email a few days later from my replacement asking me for help with something (and no I did not respond)."
—Anonymous
17. "Worked for a wealthy man who embezzled from his company for decades, paying employees who did not exist. He cashed payroll checks in the names of fake people with a bank where the bank manager got a kickback — it took 23 years for any tax agency to question the guy. He used the money from the paychecks of fake people to give to his secret wife and kids. He lived in one of the richest zip codes in the country, and his second wife lived in a trailer park and believed he was a sales person who traveled for business. The real shocker came when the man passed away and a third wife was discovered."
—Anonymous
18. And finally, "My mother was a live-in nanny for a wealthy family in the '90s who paid her pretty crappy money to take care of their four kids. It during one of those big snow blizzards, and the woman realized there wasn't a lot of work for mom to do inside with the kids. So, she ordered my mom to clean the windows during the blizzard so her kids could see the snow fall outside. Every time the snow stuck to the windows, she would ask mom to go back and clean it (that went on for most of the afternoon)."
"I remember my mom crying when she told us, as she didn’t have the proper attire to be in the weather. She had to soak her hands and feet in hot water to defrost them. She didn’t wear pants for religious reasons, but wore the two heavy shoe stockings she had (we didn't have good shoes and winter clothes — layering was the norm).
Every time I think of this lady’s cruel ways, I pray she lives to see when karma visits. That’s life. Period."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.