(New York Post)
Workers employed by ultra-wealthy households describe the bizarre, out-of-touch habits of their employers. The accounts reveal a class of people so insulated from reality they’ve lost all contact with how normal life operates.
I am not surprised by any of this. Not one word.
The ultra-wealthy are completely untethered from planet Earth and their own employees are out here documenting it like wildlife researchers in the Serengeti. Absolutely befuddled, the article says. BEFUDDLED. That’s the word a butler uses when he can’t say what he actually means in print.
Here’s the thing about having that kind of money. At some point you stop knowing what anything costs. Not approximately. Not roughly. Completely. Zero. You hand someone a hundred dollar bill to tip a valet and genuinely cannot process whether that’s too much or embarrassingly low. The circuitry just melts.
And the staff has to stand there. Nodding. Saying “of course.” While internally filing away the story they’re going to tell for the rest of their lives.
I’ve met exactly zero people worth nine figures, but I have watched enough Arrested Developer to understand the mechanism. These people didn’t get weird because they got rich. They got rich because they were already the kind of person who could do this without blinking.
The befuddlement runs both directions, is the thing. The staff can’t believe what they’re seeing. The boss can’t believe someone would be confused by it.
Neither of them is wrong.
