I Don’t Think She Knows The Meaning Of “Homeless”
“I grew up with a rich girl who never had a realistic view of the world. Her wedding gift from her parents was a $500,000 house built to her specifications. The house took a year (maybe two) to build, and during that time, she and her husband lived at her parents’ mansion. They had an entire floor to themselves. It was about 2,000 square feet, and it consisted of a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a recreation area.
Did she realize how good she had it? Of course not. She spent the entire time lamenting on Facebook about how ‘hard’ it was to be ‘homeless.’
That was a few years ago. She still posts ‘as someone who used to be homeless’ comments while sitting in her fancy, custom-built house.
The only reason I haven’t unfollowed her yet is because she’s like a train wreck that’s impossible to look away from.”
This Parent’s Entitlement Was Hurting Their Child
“I was a special education teacher (in a very affluent neighborhood) at an individualized education program meeting for one of my students.
When we started talking about goals, his parents asked if our occupational therapist could teach the kid to wipe his butt. The kid was 9 years old and had no physical disabilities that would make wiping his butt difficult. He just didn’t like doing it, and his parents didn’t want to deal with it at home so they asked us to do it instead (he has autism).
Our occupational therapist told the parents that she wouldn’t do it because our goals all require data collection, and there was no way she was going to take data on proper wiping technique. Apparently, these parents had private, in-home therapists and consultants for the kid 4 times a week who were doing it for him.”
Hopefully She Ordered The Right Kind Of Pizza The Next Time
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“One time in elementary school, my friend had a party for all the kids in the class, and his mom ordered like 10 pizzas. When they arrived, they were square cut.
The kid threw a fit because he wanted triangles, so his mom threw the pizzas away and reordered new pizza.”
What’s More Important – Family Or Prom?
“My mom had cervical cancer a few years ago and had a full hysterectomy. She was out of work for a while, and my brother and I had to work more hours and help out with the majority of the bills and groceries.
My girlfriend at the time couldn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a tux and other prom stuff. She proceeded to ask me every day if we were going until I finally yelled at her and told her sarcastically that I was sorry my mom had cancer and surgery to remove all of it and that I was sorry I had to help out with paying bills.
She finally shut up about it and cried to her friends, literally cried, at the school she went to but told them I just didn’t want to go. She totally left out the cancer part. I only learned that when one of the people she cried to got hired at my job and told me what she did.
We later broke up because she cheated on me and she told everyone I hit her. I’ve never been in a fight in my life and I’m afraid to hit anyone.
I guess prom overrules helping my mom who had cancer.”
Could You Tell The Difference?
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“Growing up, my parents were never poor or even close to being considered poor by any standards.
I had a friend in middle school whose family was insanely rich, and her mom was convinced we were dirt poor. She would always make comments about how sorry she was for me, and how hungry I must be.
But I was never poor, she was just absurdly rich. One day, she called my friend and me to the kitchen. She had two bowls of tortilla chips. She told me to try one chip from both bowls. I did. I told her something like ‘Well, those are tortilla chips.’ And her mom turned to my friend/her daughter and said, ‘See, that’s why you don’t want to end up like her parents, she can’t taste the difference between brand name and generic!’
Imagine thinking you were too good for generic tortilla chips.”
He’ll Think Twice Before He Complains In The Future
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“I had a friend ‘Don’ who had two kids a year apart in age. When his son turned 16, Don was ready to give him his PRISTINE Volkswagen. Don babied his cars, so this Jetta, though about seven years old, was truly in like-new condition, a car that most normal 16-year-olds would be thrilled to have. I would have been thrilled to have it myself!
So Don told his son the plan and his son said, ‘Dad, I’m not driving THAT car. It’s a seven-year-old Jetta. I need a new pickup truck.’ After taking a deep breath so he didn’t throttle his son, Don simply said, ‘Well, then, I’ll drive the Jetta for one more year and then give it to your sister when she’s 16. If you want a new pickup truck then you’ll either have to ask your mother or buy one yourself.’
Now Don and his kids’ mother had been divorced for years and, through a series of bad choices, his ex-wife had barely two dimes to rub together. Don had gotten remarried to a woman who was a successful and wealthy business owner. So his son (very mistakenly) thought that Don and his current wife would foot the bill for whatever the son wanted; how wrong he was…
Fast forward a year, his daughter is happily driving the Jetta. Don bought himself a brand new Mazda. His son has access to neither of them. In desperation, his son bought himself a crappy $800 beater just to get himself to and from work. Lesson learned, I hope.
I applaud Don for standing his ground and teaching his kid not to be an entitled jerk at an early age.”
Okay, I’ll Drop Everything Just For You
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“I worked in a decently large bookstore back in the day. One day, this foreign lady came in looking for a book. She had this unbelievably arrogant air about her like she was some kind of aristocrat or something.
The computer said we had one copy, but it wasn’t on the shelf where it should be. I explained to her that this happens; customers don’t always put books back in the right location after they’re finished browsing through them, and also that shoplifting unfortunately occurs. If the book was even still in the store, it could be anywhere.
I offered to order another copy (this was before everyone shopped at Amazon.) No. She wanted us all to stop what we were doing and search the entire store book by book for the book she wanted, and she was serious. It was obvious she was accustomed to people doing this sort of thing for her. I subtly laughed her out of the store.”
Life Must Be Hard For This One
“I went to an expensive private school. Personally, I had a lot of scholarships going into it where I wouldn’t have to pay the $52,000 a year they were humorously asking for. At the time, they had very lax acceptance policy but was considered a great school, which had the interesting result of attracting very rich kids who weren’t interested in the school for its academics but more for its parties/nightlife of the town/city it was in. In my dorm freshman year, there was a girl who supposedly is a descendant of the Versace family of some sort. After seeing the money she’d blow nonchalantly, I was inclined to believe it.
Almost every weekend there’d be a knock on our door as she ran through the halls asking who was coming with her on her trip this weekend. She didn’t mean her trip to the grocery store or even a trip home. She meant whatever trip she was planning around the world that weekend. Sometimes it was Paris, other times it was Australia, Bali, wherever her little heart desired. She’d fly out to these exotic places for WEEKENDS, not three-day weekends, not holiday breaks, just your average Friday/Saturday/Sunday. And she would be gobsmacked and sometimes insulted when after a moment of stunned silence, you tell her that you couldn’t possibly go with her to Paris for three days let alone afford a last minute ticket to Paris. She couldn’t comprehend that normal people couldn’t afford those things.
She also ‘lived in the dorms’ because she was a freshman and you couldn’t live off campus as a freshman… but she really lived off campus in what I would later find out to be a $4,000 a month apartment by herself with a house cleaner who’d come every day.
She was the most detached-from-reality person I’ve ever met. And of course, she was drop dead gorgeous. She’ll probably never experience a ‘hard time’ in her entire life, or have to work a single day.”
No Right To Complain
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“I went to high school with a girl whose dad was one of the top 10 highest paid trial lawyers in the country. Every year, she would invite a handful of friends to go with her on a spring break trip to The Atlantis in the Bahamas. This was an all expenses paid trip, including flying to and from the resort on her family’s private jet. Still, she was always lowkey and surprisingly grounded given her wealth and privilege. Her friends? Not so much.
Our junior or senior year, two of the girls she invited on the trip came back afterward and immediately started complaining about how the trip was lame because the resort’s nicest suite was booked up that year so they had to slum it in one of their lesser, though still ridiculously luxurious private suites. That’s right, these basics had the obscene entitlement to complain about their accommodations after being taken on a free, week-long vacation where their friend’s family was shelling out upwards of a quarter of a million dollars per person on a Spring Break trip.”
You’d Expect A Child To Act This Way… Not An Adult
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“I used to work at a relatively upscale theater. Two middle-aged couples came together a few minutes after the show in the main stage began. We told them to wait until a certain time in order to enter the theater. They obliged, waiting around for a bit, hit up the bar, and chatted with us. They seemed like relatively normal middle-aged people.
The house manager came out and informed them that, at the request of the production company, we actually couldn’t seat them in their normal seats because they were in like the second or third row. She offered them seats in the balcony. One of the men freaked out, got in a shouting match, swearing and threatening loudly that ‘they were going to go to their seats whether you like it or not!’ He had a temper tantrum, and it wasn’t even our fault; it was the production company.
The man threatened to enter the theater, but we prevented him, so instead, he declared that he was going to talk with the box office. We let him. They refused to give him a refund, which was our policy. The whole party left, with the man yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘This theater sucks’ before he stormed out of the building, his wife and friends in tow.
Never have I seen a grown adult suddenly resort to having a hissy fit and acting like a 5-year-old. It was like a transformation. I felt bad for his wife and the other couple – they seemed embarrassed. Funny thing is, they could’ve seen the show and only missed like 10 minutes of it if they had just taken the balcony seats. Instead, they didn’t see the show and ended up wasting four tickets that were about $60 a pop. I mean, I could understand if he had paid more for those close seats, but all the tickets were the same price, whether balcony and main floor. It was at the production company’s/lead performer’s request that they not be seated in the first three rows so as to not distract the lead performer. He was blaming us for not being able to sit in their seats, but we just had to abide by the production company’s request, as we explained to him.”
“Do You Even Use Your Tennis Court?”
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“Back in high school, this kid turned to me and said, ‘Do you even use your tennis court? We’ve never used ours, it’s a waste of space.’
I had to explain to him that I didn’t have a tennis court. Most people don’t have a tennis court. He only had one because he was rich.
He was surprised.
I’m straining my memory now, but I think when I told him I didn’t have a tennis court he said something like, ‘Oh, is your pool too big to fit a tennis court?’ I was like, ‘Oh, buddy, no.’
Our relationship after that was actually amusing. He was fascinated with what common people do. I was fascinated by how out of touch he was, so we got along well. I always knew he wasn’t being a jerk, it was just obvious that he’d never spent any time with people that weren’t as rich as his family.”