1. "A coworker asked me what bank I used for my safe deposit box. I said I didn't have a safe deposit box. She said, 'But then where do you keep your jewels?'"
"I said I didn't have any jewels and she just said 'huh' and changed the subject. I get the sentiment (if I owned anything expensive, I would probably also have a safe place for it), but something about it made her sound like a Disney villain."
2. "I was talking about how growing up, we couldn't pay the bills and had our water/electricity shut off multiple times. Someone said, 'How could your family accountant let that happen?'"
3. "While working for a valet parking service in the Santa Barbara area years ago, a woman hired us for a jewelry showing she was having at her giant house in Montecito, and while we were waiting for guests to arrive, my boss informed me that when the guests get in their cars to leave, that I needed to be sure to close their car doors or else they would just drive off with their doors open, as they're so used to people closing their car doors for them."
4. "I was told by a guy (who has not worked a day in his life and is living off of inherited money) that poor people are poor because they don't invest their money right."
5. "I needed a bicycle to get to a new job. I found someone online selling a really nice bike for cheap so I got in touch. I took two trains to their house to buy the bike and when I got there it was a mansion. The bike was in a garage full of supercars and classics. They asked me where my truck was to load the bike on, when I told them I was riding the bike home they laughed, and before I knew it everyone in the house had been called to the garage to hear how I was riding the bike three hours home in the dark. No one offered me a lift, they just acted blessed at how they didn't have to do such things."
6. "Living outside Jackson Hole, a friend's sister told me how hard it is to live there. You must fly in your help (cleaning, yard work) from Salt Lake. I had no words."
7. "My boss was trying to stop me from taking one or two days off at a time because their accountant was complaining about the extra work or whatever. I explained I was using the days to take a Saturday and Sunday off here and there to visit my family for birthdays. She responded, 'Wouldn't you rather take a whole week off so you can fly somewhere warm?' I just stared at her and said, 'I make minimum wage. How am I supposed to pay for that?' She had no answer."
8. "Back when I was in my early 20s, my beat-up old car broke down in my job's parking lot when I was about to drive home. I was getting paid $10 an hour as a pastry chef at a catering company. This was barely enough to cover my rent. I was obviously pretty distraught over my car dying. My boss (company owner) ended up saying to me, 'Why are you so upset? It's just a car! Just buy another one!'"
9. "During the pandemic, senior management held company-wide calls about mental health and wellbeing. One piece of advice always stuck with me. They suggested to stop the tedium of working in the same space, to move your desk to another room in your house. I had a choice between facing different walls."
10. "Once when I picked up a lamp for free, the woman asked me why I didn’t just buy it as it wasn’t expensive. Like what did she expect me to answer? Start sharing my whole story of how I just moved to a place on my own and don’t have parents who can help buy stuff for me? If someone spends time picking stuff up or buying used stuff without a car, it’s probably not for fun."
12. "My boss at the time made between 5-10x more than I did. We were talking about big purchases like a car or house and he said something along the lines of 'Well, you'll get a great deal since you'd be an all-cash purchaser.' I just kind of smiled and nodded knowing that, on my salary which he was aware of, I was not even an all-cash purchaser of groceries."
13. "I work for a startup based out of San Francisco. I'm a remote employee halfway across the country, and my direct peers who work in SF make at least double what I do. They went to Top 10 business schools and they 'summer' in Tahoe — that kind of thing. I was in the home office a few months ago for our annual kickoff meeting, and one of the speakers polled the room: 'Has anyone here worked at Amazon?' (nobody raised their hand). I said, 'Does warehouse count?' And the entire room erupted in laughter. Certainly, I'd just told a very enjoyable joke."
15. "The pre-teen son of one of my clients expressed confusion to me when I asked them where I could get more paper towels for the washroom of his parents' however-many-million-dollar yacht. He said something like, 'It's always there, what do you mean?' He was so disconnected from the process of cleaning and restocking that he just thought that stuff would always be there and never run out. The look of genuine confusion on his face was just something else. That's not the first time I've experienced that either — talking to the kids of extremely wealthy people is always a trip."
16. "I was an assistant making just over $50k a year and I heard someone on the board of directors say, 'Of course he [mayor of a city] stole the money. You can't live on $90k a year!'"
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Most Popular
Comments / 0