We all can imagine rich people are strange, but these stories show us just how bizarre rich people act when they think no one is looking, or they don't care about being seen at least. Content has been edited for clarity.
This Kid Gets Weirder And Weirder
“I’ve only babysat one time, and it was for a friend of my grandparents. All I really had to do was hang out with their eight year old grandson for a night. Overall, it was a pretty cool night. All we did was play video games all night, so it wasn’t too bad. But anyway, this family wasn’t like billionaire wealthy, but they were wealthy enough. They actually left me an envelope with $500 in it and told me that I could keep whatever I didn’t spend on food. They were wealthy enough to have sped off in a Maserati for the dinner they were at. They were wealthy enough to have a pool, jacuzzi, and nice BBQ built into their backyard out back. You get the idea, they were just an old couple with some money. The night I was babysitting, they were taking their grandson’s parents out for dinner. Left with $500, I thought that I could splurge for like thirty or forty bucks on meals for me and the grandson, and I could pocket all the rest. I was like seventeen or eighteen at the time, so this was a pretty big amount of money for me. I took the kid outside to my car across the street, which at the time was my older brother’s 2005 Toyota Corolla. He gets in, takes a look around, and goes, ‘Where’s the button that moves the roof back?’
Sorry kid, no convertible here. He tells me that his parents only have convertible cars, and how he’s only been in one other car that isn’t a convertible, and that, ‘He isn’t my friend anymore.’
I thought that was pretty weird. Throughout the night, he did also make some interesting ‘rich kid’ comments, such as asking if we could go to a restaurant that had steak on the menu. He revealed an interesting bit about his parents, saying that they keep talking about bringing him a sister when ‘the time is right’. Apparently, the kid asked the dad when the right time was, and he said, ‘When Mommy stops being afraid.’
I then learned that the kid’s mom and dad divorced about a year later. I felt pretty bad. He was a cool kid, who thankfully didn’t really have that nasty spoiled vibe. It was more like an innocent, curious, steered wrong by his parents sort of vibe.”
What Was Wrong With That Girl?
“The most bizarre was this newly rich young family in Vienna. The bed time routine for the kids (aged three and seven) included basically a spa treatment for both. I haven’t seen that amount of products in a child’s bathroom (they each had their own) in my life. The poor seven year old girl had next to no hair on her head, but I was required to slather her in the most expensive adult shampoo, conditioner, hair mask, hair oil, and some other things I didn’t recognize every night. The children only had one tiny box of toys, and they were only allowed play time for thirty minutes after they had brushed their teeth. Dinner for them was normally a bland fish fillet and a ton of salad. Not a grain of sugar anywhere in the house! Hot cocoa was made with skim milk and pure high quality cocoa, so no sweetness to it whatsoever. It tasted awful.
They had time to explain EVERYTHING to me the first time I was there, and I received an inch thick file with lists and procedures to follow. What they didn’t mention was that the older girl was still wearing diapers at night. It made for a very awkward conversation with the child, and I only hope I was sensitive enough to not cause her any future trauma. The whole thing was very, very weird.”
The Poor Dog Was Just The Start Of His Troubles
“I work as a mobile dog groomer. I went to this older rock star’s house to groom his dog. HE was never home, but his wife was always there. Always. She had such specific requests when it came to my services. She wanted me to wear boot gloves in the house, use the family’s shampoo on the dog, use their hair dryer (strictly on low), use the human brushes and combs, and wash the dog in her sink. Keep in mind, I had a mobile fan with tons of equipment specific to pets!
She would randomly go through the house with her house keeper, cleaning a house that was already clean and reorganizing the same ten book shelves. She would randomly sneak behind me and watch me groom her dog. I wasn’t allowed to touch the dog’s toys. If he brought me one, I was to ignore it. The dog was being over-washed, and they were using a shampoo that was making it much worse. The family blamed allergies and replaced their backyard grass with fake grass. Then when I was finished, I would wipe everything down and wait at the door. She would write me a check for $40, no tip, and then try and talk to me about whatever for an hour.
The best day ever with her was she was going to the airport and told me, ‘Just ask the maid for permission to go when you’re done,’ and then she left for the airport. The maid wandered in ten minutes later and was like, ‘That witch is gone for a month, so I’m going home. Lock the door after yourself. Bye!’
So I took the dog to my van, actually got it groomed in about twenty minutes, returned it, and then wandered around their house. I saw the original art for some of the husband’s albums. I used his toilet and then looked through his medicine cabinet. It turns out he had a stroke judging by his meds, which would explain a lot. Otherwise, it was kinda empty and sad. There were a few family photos, but nothing exciting.
I tried to fire her as a client, but the owners of the grooming company were so start struck that they got to groom thisdog (even though it was me). When I quit, the owners and the rock star’s wife had a big blow up. She wrote them a check in advance for the dog’s next two months of grooming, and she told them not to cash it till a certain date, but she cancelled it before they could cash it. She was obviously mentally ill and needed help, but years of money and fame and no one telling her ‘no’ have ruined any chances of that. I mostly felt bad for that dog. They over-washed it, and that’s what was causing 90% of the problems.”
This Grown Toddler Can’t Handle The Tiniest Problems
“I’m an assistant to a rich guy, and I help him run his business and personal affairs. Most of the wealthy people I have encountered are extremely entitled, and they don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no’. I have genuinely no idea how some of these people got rich. I watched my boss have a full blown temper tantrum because a customer called him about something forty minutes before he was going to leave for vacation. This full-blown meltdown wasn’t justified though. This guy barely does anything and goes on vacation at least once a month. He doesn’t even care about his customers and routinely messes with them. One day he requested a burger from his personal chef, and the chef used a sesame seed bun. This guy didn’t like sesame seed buns, so he threw the burger at the cook and completely lost his mind. This rich nightmare would always complain about how terrible his life was, even though he could buy literally anything and travel wherever he wanted to. It is difficult to explain unless you see if for yourself, but money and greed can really transform people into such monsters. Once he gets back from summering in L.A., I am looking for a new job. I just can’t handle this man anymore!”
The Secret Hoarding Problem
“Oh gosh, where do I start? The wife of the family I was working for was driving through the home improvement part of the city and saw a sale on bathtubs. So she popped into the store and bought three. As she was leaving, she saw another tub she liked and simply had to get that one too. She wasn’t even renovating a house at the time. They refuse to throw away food. Used by and best before dates were completely ignored, to the point where I found a tin of seafood marinara which was fifteen years out of date. They have a holiday home in the south pacific and have a housekeeper clean it three times a week, yet they only visit three to four times a year. When they’re not visiting, no one lives there.
When the family goes out for dinner, the father will happily pay for the expensive meals, but not the drinks. The kids (who are all teens or older) have to pay him back for the drinks, and he will send reminder messages about the amount. Yet when any of the kids offer to pay for the meal, he won’t accept.
The wife is a hoarder and will often take way more samples than any normal person. She always makes sure to take all the shampoo and soap from hotel rooms, and if she passes the housekeeping trolley, she will grab as many as she can from there too. The thing is that she never uses them. They have a whole bathroom cupboard dedicated to samples!”
He Kept Some Weird Stuff In That Meat Cooler
“I was a live in grounds keeper for a wealthy eccentric for a while. He had three cars from old movies in his garage. One was from a Bond film. They were covered in layers of dust and trash. One of them was a convertible that had the top caved in by the trash. They were awesome cars that were just totally neglected and forgotten. He also had a favorite dog he kept frozen in a meat cooler, surrounded by decade old frozen food items. I know about this stuff because the garage is where my equipment was. I only saw inside the proper house once, as I lived in the keepers housing. It was full of all this crystal, pewter, and silver tableware and decorative stuff. There were easily hundreds of thousands of dollars in items, just laying around in piles, like a pirate movie come to life.
He was rarely there anyway. Once every three months, he would swing by to pay bills and take care of other stuff, and then go back to France where he lived with his wife.
A lesser man than I could have made out like a bandit just taking things here and there. The guy wouldn’t have even noticed. I just did my job though. I even improved his property, because the guy before me was a lazy stoner. I was a stoner too, but I was the busy body kind.”
Definitely Worth The Craziness
“I worked for a billionaire family. The Mrs. could no longer have children biologically and had used donor eggs for her youngest. She cornered me one day and said, ‘I’ve always wanted Eurasian children. I think they’re the most beautiful people.’
She goes on and on about wanting them and thinking about finding an egg donor. I’m Asian American. She has a staff of over twenty people at her house. Why did she feel the need to corner me to tell me this? It was one of the most uncomfortable fifteen minutes of my life, and I think she was trying to get me involved as an egg donor.
In her spare time (which was all the time), she studied many subjects. One of them was gemology. One day, while on a trip to a poor country (which was rich in gems and minerals), she decided she to go shopping for gems. The pricing for these gems would have been a fraction of the retail price. The Mr. gave her a budget of $50K. Immediately, she tells him that she did NOT go to gemology school for just $50K. Immediately, he upped her budget to $120K.
She once spent $8,000 on ONE single solid white playtime t-shirt for one of her toddlers. I was beyond shocked. That being said, they compensated their staff quite well. I received a decent salary, medical, vision, and dental insurance, a 401K, and a clothing allowance, in case I needed anything for work.”
Bizarre Backyard Sights
“During the summer while I was on vacation from college, I helped my mom at her first landscaping/greenhouse job. We went to this particular lady’s house in the rich part of town, a big Antebellum home. This woman was a very wealthy realtor, and we nicknamed her ‘Dragon Lady’, because she looked like a wrinkly old dragon, and she hoarded the most ridiculous jewelry. She would even wear it with her pajamas!
We were taking a job to fix up her back yard, replacing some nice shrubs and flowers that the lady was tired of. She was a terrible excuse of a human. We encountered nasty, snide comments, exactly what you would imagine. But she had an inordinate amount of fresh young men always in and out of her house. Like the entire time we were there. Quite the variety. And if we ran into one, she always introduced them as her ‘cousins’. We were pretty skeptical about that entire process. She would flounce around in sheer robes with little to cover anything underneath. The guys followed her around the house like they were on a leash, it was like she WANTED us to see her, because she was always in her sun room being doted on by her ‘cousins’. They would constantly be putting lotion on her reptilian skin and bringing her drinks or food. When she was finally done with them, a nice, slick Mercedes would pick up the men. We only witness this car a couple of times, but man was it weird! And also pretty gross. This woman is probably a fossil by now, since she was a relic back then, and that was only seven years ago!”
Their Priorities Made No Sense
“Well I’ve worked in a couple really rich peoples houses who have had massive house fires. One household belonged to a semi famous boxer, who received two world championship belts, which he had sitting on his kitchen table. The weird part was how he had pictures of himself hanging all over the house. he was never photographed with his kids or his wife, mind you. They were all just of him. It was weird.
There was another couple who full on screamed at their kid because he allowed smoke to get into his trombone case. I’m not sure how he was supposed to prevent that, but whatever. They also lost their minds because the insurance company wouldn’t pay to get them brand new ‘handmade cabinets imported from Italy’.
One family lived in the middle of nowhere. They had a huge house, which included a hot tub room, and every bedroom had a walk in closet and a bathroom suite. It was so crazy. But this guy absolutely loved his four wheeler. He told me he paid to add an attached garage specifically for his four wheeler. And the four wheeler was the only thing allowed in the garage.”
This Person Has Seen It All
“When you have the opportunity to be in people’s homes, behind the scenes or before they have been cleaned, you learn things about them. If you have a house keeper, he or she will see all your stuff. They will pretend they don’t, or that seeing it or dealing with it is totally ‘usual’. But often times, it definitely is not! Sometimes people are truly messed up and you get to see what their friends and family don’t see. These people I once cleaned for had a spa bath that had actual physical and visible mushrooms growing in from the grouting. They were about fifteen centimeters tall, and nothing had been done to remove them. Fascinating! I have had to clean around smoking paraphernalia, weapons, adult toys, unflushed toilets, and real exotic pets that were just hanging out. I have cleaned up around leopard skins, coral, taxidermy eagles, shark jaws, tortoise and turtle shells, and a stuff bear. That one was very odd to witness directly.
One time, I was cleaning for a couple who took out the innards from their various smoke alarms and installed hidden camera in them instead. They had hidden cameras throughout the entire house. The one thing that seriously ticks me off to this day was the rich guy who yelled at me in his undies over his cactus plants. The cacti sat in the full sun in a beach front house. This guy was annoyed that the plants weren’t thriving and was convinced that it was because I wasn’t watering them enough. In fact, I watered them too much under his supervision, which was definitely the cause of their wilting. But this guy couldn’t be convinced otherwise. I guess you can’t win them all!”
The Police Searched The Mansion Twice
“I worked as a live-in nanny for a young couple and their two kids. The father was 28 and owned his own record label for Mexican artists. He easily made $3-4 million per year. The mother was 26 and was famous on social media for flaunting their lavish lifestyle. They lived in a huge house in the middle of the desert, probably thirty minutes outside of the city they designed themselves, and it was honestly ridiculous. Each bedroom was so big it echoed, and it had it’s own private walk-in closet and ensuite bathroom, as well as access to a wrap-around balcony overlooking the courtyard. This place had glass elevators, an indoor koi pond in the entryway, and in the courtyard, they literally had a stage for the live musicians to perform when they had parties. There was also a covered sitting area big enough to accomodate thirty tables. Their kitchen had a walk-in refrigerator and enough ovens and stoves to run a busy restaurant. On the roof, they had a helipad, and the guy owned like four helicopters. He had a Maserati, two Ferraris (one for his wife and one for him), and a rose-gold Range Rover.
They had parties every weekend. And not just cute cozy dinner parties, I’m talking ‘hundreds of people getting completely wasted’ type of parties. There were lives bands who played so loudly that you couldn’t hear yourself think. There was one party where the father decided to challenge three of his guests to a race behind his house in the desert with his Ferrari. It flipped, but he was fine and was just upset his car was damaged. There was another party where people started jumping from the second story balcony to the pool in the middle of the courtyard, and a guy broke his foot. I always had to attend these parties to watch the kids, get them juice when they said they were thirsty, supervise when they played with other kids, and tuck them into bed when it got late. The adults were getting too wild for the kids to see. Every single weekend, the mother and father would fight and get into screaming matches. Usually the mother was mad he was making stupid decisions while under the influence (she was usually correct), and he would insist he was fine and that she needed to stop trying to control him. She would go to bed mad, he would stay up until six in the morning, and finally crash then. The next day, they would be fine, like nothing happened.
The mother was a very beautiful, mostly sweet, though kind of an air-headed girl who had gotten with the father in high school and loved to talk about how she went through such highs and lows with him, even when they lived with his parents. She had an affinity for drama, and if there was a problem, she was all up in it. She pretended to hate the constant parties, but she also seemed to love the drama that came with them. She was absurdly glamorous and a had a private makeup artist who did her makeup everyday for Instagram. She took him with her on vacations and everything. She had a ridiculous amount of clothes and shoes, and would spend easily over $5k about every two weeks on shopping. She was SUPER attached to her mom, and her mom visited everyday, along with her six sisters. In fact, both the husband and wife were attached to their families. The father also had his brother, sister, mother, and all of his cousins he grew up with at the house daily. They practically lived there. Overall, she was a very ditzy but well-meaning person. The father? Not so much. Apparently he was a monster before the money, but it only got worse afterwards. He loves partying, loves showing off materialistic things, doing dangerous things (i.e. drag racing), and he had no real regard for the well-being of his wife or kids, because he assumed they would be fine with his antics, as long as he flung money at them.
The guy wasted an excess amount of money fully staffing his house, so he wouldn’t have to do anything himself. He claimed it was because he was very busy with work running his label. He’d relax for two weeks straight, fly out to Mexico for two days, then repeat. Not a very demanding schedule. His staff included two cooks, three housekeepers, an assistant for the mother and an assistant for him, a nanny (that was me), a planner (the lady that makes their parties happen and plans their vacations and other stuff), and four security guards to watch his house. Seriously, he was super paranoid somebody was going to attack his house. He had a full-on security system with intricate locks to every door leading to the outside. There were security cameras and beefy, burly armed guards walking back and forth around his property.
I worked for them for around two and a half years. It was an easy enough job taking care of the kids, as they were both under the age of six and were actually pretty well-behaved, despite the environment they were growing up in. Watching all the antics unfold was pretty entertaining, it was like having a front row seat to a real life soap opera. But in the end, it turned out the security guards were there for good reason, because the house ended up getting raided by the police twice! They arrived based on suspicion the husband was dealing illegal substances, but they never found any evidence, and some men tried breaking into the house and sent death threats. I really don’t think he himself was a dealer, since he made so much money from his legal business that he didn’t need to, and he was probably too much of a wuss to do that anyway. This guy definitely causally hung out with some actual dealers, and I’m positive they were guests at his parties, and mixing up with that just brings problems. I quit after the death threats fiasco because I feared for my own safety. I feel bad for the kids.”