Money is what drives this society and it is something that most people actively strive for, and we're all familiar with the stereotype of people with extreme wealth. Whether it's the filthy rich guy in a designer suit pushing the Lamborgini or the high-class woman in the mink coat and lap dog riding idle in her Birkin bag, we've all imagined what it would be like to live a day in their shoes. But have we ever stopped to think about what it would be like to be at the beckoning call of these people?
High-end restaurant employees are ready to tell their story. Like anyone else, they went to the internet to air their grievances. When asked by Reddit to describe the most "rich thing" they've ever seen on the job, these servers did not hold back! They came with the good, the bad, and the ugly. All posts have been edited for clarity.
If Only People Had 1/10th The Heart Of This Guy
“I was a cook in the #1 restaurant in Vancouver, Wa. Many evening the grandson of a huge hotel chain rolls up in his Lambo. He always ordered about $10 of food and tipped $100. He sat at the cooks counter and me being a line cook we hit it off for our love for college football. One day he asked if I would come over to his house for a huge boxing match Mayweather vs De La Hoya and cook for him and his family. I get there and he has several Lambos, a huge house on the river, and lets me do whatever I want in the kitchen. I cook the meal for 4 people and he gives me half of his Filet Mignon and tells me to join them for the fight. I watched the fight and then cleaned and packed up and charged him $300 for the cost.
I get in my boss’ car (mine was broken down and I rode my bike everywhere.) I look at the check I got and it said $1700. The cost to fix my car was $1400 so this covered it completely. I drove home with tears in my eyes. I cried myself to sleep that night. Making a cooks wages is crippling. Fast forward to today, I no longer work in the service industry and this guy just opened a homeless women’s shelter a few months ago. I wish more people who came into money had 1/10th the heart of this guy.”
Case Of Dining While Rich And Entitled
“My uncle works at a very upscale restaurant on a very well-to-do and desirable vacation island in the Atlantic Ocean.
One of their regular customers is a billionaire oil guy. My uncle has told me:
-He arrives on a yacht that tows a smaller yacht. The smaller yacht is still big enough to have a helicopter.
-He demands to have his dogs seated at the table and feeds them foie gras and expensive water.
-When he takes humans to eat my uncle has never seen him with the same woman twice, and often it’s a table of women.
-If he really liked the meal he will go through the restaurant and, in front of everyone, peel off crisp 100s from a giant roll of money in his pocket and tip every service person whether they helped or not.
-One time the owner got a call from health inspectors saying they received a complaint that dogs were seen eating in the restaurant. All the owner did was utter the billionaires name and the health inspector said, ‘Oh okay, bye.'”
Did She Really Just Say That!?
“I worked at a pretty nice restaurant in a small city. It attracted all the ‘big fish in a little pond’ types. One lady, a successful real estate agent, always requested me. She always ordered the same thing and her requirements were so specific that if her meal wasn’t exactly to her specification she would send it back, over and over again. It got to the point where I would have to give all my other tables away and stand in the kitchen and watch/instruct/bark at the cooks so that they would get it right. So ridiculous.
Then she says to me one day, ‘You know, you probably look at us, living as we do, and ask yourself, ‘How can I have that? I want to live like that.’ This was her prefix to offering me a job at her firm. I was very gracious in turning her down, but she was puzzled, nonetheless.
What I had really wanted to tell her was that if I ended up living and acting like her I would consider myself a failure.”
Wait, She Can’t Do What By Herself?
“I used to work at an incredible restaurant in NYC, conveniently located across the street from a large block of very expensive apartments. One of the regulars was a well-respected costume designer, probably in her early or mid-sixties. It was not uncommon for her to eat every meal of her day there. Running gag that she’s crazy wealthy but can’t feed herself.
Cut to the night before a predicted Snowpocalypse. It’s not supposed to start until about 10, but it’s already flurrying by 8. Right around 8 30, as we’re scrambling to beat the rapidly worsening snowfall and inevitable, spontaneous MTA service changes, our friend starts knocking on the front door. I barely turn the key and she bursts through the door, ‘You’re not closed are you?!’ All I could say back was, ‘Snow.’ ‘Well, do you have bread left? Anything, really!’ ‘No, I’m sorry. There’s nothing left.’ She very over-dramatically exclaims ‘What’ll I do?! I’ll starve!’
After her panic, she then looks back at all of us and says, ‘Okay, thanks anyway. Stay safe!’ We thank her, she turns towards the door, notices the snow again and turns back with, ‘Oh this is looking bad, what are you all still doing here? Get home!’ She leaves, we have a hearty chuckle and finish everything up. 10, maybe 15 minutes later, we’re zipping our jackets to walk out the door and our friend is back. She heard that transit service would be bad (duh) and wanted to make sure we could all get to where we were going safely (aww).
We assured her we were all fine, and she started to go but not before leaving us with ‘Well if any of you get stuck, just give me a call. When my partner and I bought the top floor we figured the extra apartments could be workspaces, but now they’re just empty.’ Then off she went, leaving my four co-workers and I flabbergasted. I still can’t believe that this person, in one 20 minute span, went from begging us for scraps of bread, to offering not even just a spare room in her apartment, but an entire apartment on her floor. The lady owns more apartments than I do matching sock pairs, but can’t buy herself bread.”
Trying To Flaunt Her “Power”
“Back when I did waitering at a nice restaurant, there was a woman and her friends at one of my tables. The woman asked for a can of Coke (Coca-Cola, just so we’re clear).
When I brought their drinks and gave the woman her Coke, she looked at me, and, in that typical rich witch voice, said ‘Excuse me, honey? I asked for Fanta, not Coke.’ So I apologised, wrote it onto my notepad, and went back to get her a can of Fanta. Brought it to her, and again, she turned to me and said ‘I didn’t ask for Fanta, I asked for Cream Soda.’
By this time, I was getting a bit annoyed, but went back and got her a Cream Soda anyway. And surely, when I returned to her table, she did the same thing again. ‘I asked for Sprite. Should I call the manager?’
So, for the last time, I smiled and I went back to the kitchen and packed one can of each: Coke, Cream Soda, Fanta, Sprite, Pepsi and Sparberry Soda, into a small plastic box and took it all to her and said ‘Here you go, miss, take your pick.’
She looked offended and almost made a scene. She started lecturing me about how I’m incapable of getting the simplest order right and that she wants to talk to the restaurant’s manager. I told her that I can call him, and that I’ll show him all the soda types I wrote on my notepad that she asked for, and we can get his opinion on the matter.
She turned and took a Sprite out of the plastic box and said ‘Just leave it.’ Her friends were silent throughout the whole ordeal and none of them gave me any issues further on. I didn’t receive a tip, as expected, but I shrugged it off. Most customers were decent.”
Some Of Us Can Only Dream Of Spending That Kind Of Money!
“I worked for a resort in Seychelles for 4 years. I have hundreds of stories but one that stands out was a very wealthy Canadian family who stayed at one of the private residences for a couple of weeks.
They brought their own staff including two personal chefs but also asked for a hotel chef to assist their team with prep and local ingredient knowledge. A chef I was friendly with was selected to spend the two weeks with them.
One day, another member of their staff came down to one of the restaurants and purchased two bottles of vino for €11,000+ each. Now we had far more expensive bottles on the list but this was still a notable sale and later that night, I asked my mate what they had cooked to accompany the bottle.
Turns out they had poured both bottles into the pot while making a French dish of chicken called Coq au Vin.”
She Really Laid It On Thick
“I work in an Olive Oil store and we have this chocolate balsamic vinegar, and being in a suburban white town I usually get a lot of explicitly suggestive comments. Sometime before Christmas this lady came in and spent a really long time looking around. She was talking to me for a while how she left from NYC to come to this store. She has an apartment overlooking Central Park and she has another house in California. She wasn’t necessarily bragging but she was telling me her life story. From this, I figured she must be rich.
When all the other customers left it was just us and she started making some suggestive comments concerning the chocolate balsamic, but they were all subliminal. I just kinda laughed even though I felt really awkward. I’m 19 and she’s older than my grandma. Eventually, she just blurted out ‘How much for me to take you back to the city with me for a couple days?’ Then before I got the chance to respond, a customer walked in and she just left. I told my coworkers and she has come back twice when I wasn’t there asking if was working and when is the next time I’d be there. Honestly though, if she was willing to give big money, I might do what I gotta do.”
He Was A Hoarder With A Problem!
“This guy who’s a regular at our members-only restaurant has a vino locker, but he’s got so many expensive bottles (a lot of them really rare and hard to find, he buys everything straight from the vineyard, all that stuff) that it’s filled up the locker and is overflowing into several boxes stacked up in the cooler where we keep the red. And he’s got his own row on the bottom shelf in the cooler where we keep the white moscato.
He sat at the bar one day and told me he has a cellar in his home that is in the same condition, overflowing, so many boxes of expensive bottles that they won’t even fit in the cellar any more, plus he has a home in California with a cellar in the same condition. And every other time he comes in it seems like he brings two or three more bottles. The guy straight up has a hoarding problem and the money to support it.
On top of that, he told some musicians that were playing one night that he bought a new top of the line grand piano for his home and it’s never been played – it caused them physical pain just to hear that. And of course, his orders back to the kitchen are ridiculously over-complicated, asking for sauces and sides that aren’t on the menu. He’s nice about it and everything, so, the kitchen tries their best to accommodate, but sometimes they just have to say no. Like when he asks for a side of fries to be cooked in duck fat, it’s like, come on man can you just order the food that’s there.”
Generously Lavish Gifts
“I operated a premium chain restaurant in Canada. One day this Indian gentleman started coming in, at first by himself. On the first day, he spent $200 on one bottle of Malbec and tipped $1000. The next day he did the same again. When we saw him the third time I had servers fighting over him. Anyway, one evening he had a little too much to drink and Brad the busboy made the mistake of complimenting his watch. Mr. S takes off his Tag and gives it to Brad. The next morning Mr. S comes back to get his car and asks if Brad is there, I say yes and go get him. Brad knows what’s up and is removing the watch as he walks over to Mr. S. Mr. S says, ‘Brad, I’m really sorry I overdid it last night and gave you my watch.’ Brad is chuckling as he is removing the watch and says it’s no problem and he was just holding the watch until Mr. S returned. The next thing Mr. S. said, I could not believe: ‘Brad you don’t understand, I’m sorry because it was very rude of me to give you a used gift.’ And at that moment Mr. S pulled out a box with a brand new Tag Heuer inside and handed it to Brad.”
They Were Too Rich To Understand How Ridiculous Of A Request It Was
“I worked in a fancy schmancy lobster pound/restaurant on the water that had a lot of outdoor seating. These very wealthy people came to eat and demand a table outside for dinner. Now it’s just before sundown in the middle of the summer in Maine and we’re on the water so mosquitoes are definitely not scarce. These people sit down, order a $200 bottle of Pinot and a massive lobster each and some appetizers. They seem to enjoy the meal up until the sun sets and the bugs come out. These people were not happy and complaining and complaining about it and the ‘terrible restaurant not paying for mosquito spraying.’ The waitress gets a couple of candles to light and asks if they need anything else and those rich snobs asked her to stand next to them with a flyswatter. She laughed thinking they were joking and the man said, ‘Whatever happened to good service nowadays?’ They also left no tip on a $350 bill.”
He Left How Much??
“I was at a restaurant in Houston in 2004 during the MLB All-Star Game week. George Steinbrenner rented out a large area of the restaurant and brought players, coaches, and staff to eat brunch. We got there and were seated as all the MLB folks were leaving – I’m a huge baseball nut, so seeing all of the players was way cool. Anyhow, our waiter came to our table to welcome us and get our drink orders, and just had the happiest look on his face. I said, ‘Man, must be cool to be on schedule when these guys come in!’, and he proceeded to tell us that he and his wife were the two servers for the baseball group and that Mr. Steinbrenner left them a $50k tip. I’m not a Yankee fan, but I looked at Mr. Steinbrenner a little differently from then on.”
It Was A Moncler Mink Mixup
“I work at a ridiculously upscale steakhouse in Manhattan as a hostess and we have some of the most demanding and exclusive clients come in daily. Our guests range from Michael Cohen, Steve Madden, Anderson Cooper to lesser-known Real Housewives stars and just filthy rich businessmen and women.
Last winter while at work, we had 3 hostesses at the podium. 1 for seating people, 1 for checking in, 1 for checking coats. I was checking coats (tips are unbelievable, UNBELIEVABLE!!). It was around 7 pm, our busiest hour and we usually do around 300 covers per night and we have an entire bar apart from the restaurant side so it is always hectic. Well, a lady checks in with her husband and hands me her coat, I hand her the ticket number for her coat then proceed to hang it up and mark it with all of the other coats in the closet. In the closet was mainly mink coats during the winter (easily upwards of $15,000 and more) Moncler, Burberry, Gucci etc. Well her coat was a Moncler coat. It’s easy to remember at the moment who had what coat but after checking in 200 other coats I totally forgot what kind of coat this woman had and she was not a regular client so I didn’t make a special note. Well fast forward 2 hours later they’re leaving, she hands me her ticket and I go to get her coat and when I come back I hand it to her. She looks at me absurdly, glass in hand and goes ‘That’s not my coat.’ I go ‘Oh okay, are you positive? What did your coat look like by chance?’ She scoffed and said ‘Seriously? Isn’t it your job to know that?’ So, I asked her to come to the coat room with me so we could locate her jacket.
She berated me and degraded me in front of the manager and told him I need to be fired! Finally, SHE had enough and said well since you gave my coat to someone else give me the coat you initially gave me because I can’t go outside with no jacket. And at that point I was like forget it take someone else’s coat I don’t care at all anymore. So she takes the coat I initially gave her, puts it on and says ‘Wow it fits perfect!’ She reaches in the pockets and says ‘How did this coat happen to have my wallet and keys in it too?’ I looked up and literally had no words. I wasted about 2 hours now being belittled by the woman when I was right the whole time. The lady was like ‘I don’t know what to say’ and my manager said ‘You owe her [me] an apology.’ The lady handed me her empty glass and a $1 tip, no apology and left as if nothing happened!
I sat down on the closet floor and poured my eyes out. I had been awake since 5 am for school and was the closing host that night which meant I wouldn’t be leaving until 2 am ish and getting home around 3 am and waking back up at 5 for school! She wasted what little energy I had left and made me feel so worthless. My coworkers were awesome though, the bartender made me a drink and they all gave me a hug.”
He Was A Stand Up Guy Even During A Time Of Grief
“Kinda sad story. There was this hot 22ish-year-old guy who used to show up in this high-end restaurant/bar I worked in Southern California. Apparently, he’d let the valet joyride his cars (we’re talking Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini) as long as they got back in time. Anyway, people used to fight to serve him and I didn’t know why at first, but he leaves pretty huge tips. Usually $200. He used to come almost every week for like the first 7 months I worked there with his gorgeous girlfriend (who was also super nice but clearly not rich). And then he stopped coming for like 3 months.
On the first day he came back after a long time, he sat at the bar which was unusual for him and ordered us a bunch of EXPENSIVE drinks for the staff and sat at the bar. He told the bartender and a couple of waiters the story of how his girlfriend got T boned and died in a car accident and just poured his heart out which was depressing for all of us because we all somewhat knew him and her. But then he left a 10,000 dollar tip to be split amongst 12 servers!”
Waffle House Benji’s
“I’m loosely acquainted with someone who is obscenely rich. He dated my best friend for a while back when we were in college. As you can imagine, he bought her fancy things all the time, took her on expensive family vacations with his folks, etc. He was a stereotypical rich kid, but he was also kind and still very down to earth.
They dated about a year and in the spring we went spring breaking in his family’s condo at a famous spring break beach location and there was just me, my best friend, him and a couple of his friends. The group decided we wanted good old fashioned Waffle House breakfast after a night of revelry. After eating, I noticed he was lingering behind the group. He’d said he had to take a leak, but he stopped back by the table on his way out to the car. Curious, I ran back to the restrooms just so I could pass by the table to see what he’d done.
He left the waitress a small pile of Benjamins as a tip. Had to be 4 or 5 hundred dollars. I couldn’t quite tell because they were folded and rumpled from being in his wallet.
My mouth fell open when I saw it and I forgot I was even heading to the restroom. I looked out by the car and he was watching me through the glass windows, held up his finger to his lips mouthing, ‘shhhh,’ and beckoned me back out to the car.
I didn’t tell, but my eyes were glued to the table as we pulled away in his car. The waitress collapsed into the seat of the table when she saw it. Pretty sure she was crying.”
She Really Didn’t Know?
“I’m three years into Sous chef at a private resort in Upstate New York. Most of our guests are returning from generations before them. Wealthy. Very wealthy. We get some Congressmen and actors getting away from the daily mess. But mostly families that are crazy rich, and four generations deep into annual visits. Insane the number of requests. But – one that stands out; a 60 something-year-old woman crying as loud as she can because we didn’t have the cookies she wanted. Guys, you would’ve thought she was just told someone died. Made a huge scene in the dining room. Her husband has the backbone of a jellyfish and just sat there trying to console her. ‘It’s ok honey. I’ll get you cookies. Don’t cry’. The owner went out and bought store bought cookies because we do not have time for that mess. WE DID NOT TELL HER THEY WERE STORE BOUGHT. She was happy by the end of the night. Yay? Fast forward to dinner the next night. Same thing. ‘Where’re my cookies?’ We gave her the same store-bought cookies. Same package. ‘These aren’t the same. The Baker used too much butter this time.’ Next night? ‘Oh, these are much better’ LADY IT’S THE SAME PACKAGE!! She comes every year. We all know ahead what week the ‘cookie lady’ is going to be staying with us so we can get her terrible grocery store cookies.”
He Liked Flying Under The Radar
“I was eating at a nice restaurant in Wellfleet on Cape Cod a few summers ago (Mac’s Shack) and we were at the outdoor bar waiting on a table. My then-girlfriend strikes up small talk with an older (65ish) gentleman with sun-faded hair and a dark tan. He was wearing cargo shorts, a faded polo, a very nice watch (one of the older Patek ones) and expensive but worn Birkenstocks. This is often, not including the $30k watch, the summertime cape cod uniform for EXTREMELY RICH.
He tells us about how he just sold his company because the challenge was gone and it wasn’t fun anymore. He was traveling and writing a novel. My girlfriend asked what company and he just said ‘you’ve heard of it. Fortune 500.’ Only introduced himself by his first name, I think it was John. He really got a kick out of just being some dude at a bar in the beach. Said it was nice to be around people who didn’t suck up to him.
He bought all our drinks and sushi, and when the check came, we actually got a ‘the gentleman settled your bill before he went back to his yacht’ from the house manager.”