People Are Sharing The Disgustingly Cheap Habits Of The Rich People In Their Lives, And I'm Starting To See Why People Say "Eat The Rich"
Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us all the times they witnessed the rich people in their lives (bosses, exes, etc.) being super cheap — and now we're back with even more examples!
Fox
Here are 22 infuriating times rich people were really cheap:
1."When I worked as a medical assistant in a surgery clinic, my boss (high-earning surgical specialty) reprimanded me for miscalculating my time sheet. I used an online program and apparently it rounded up. The difference? 32 cents. This man cleared nearly a million a year and had his office manager triple check all my time sheets…over 32 cents."
2."I used to work for a Fortune 500 company. The manager would refuse to purchase knives and forks for the break room and told people to go get them from McDonald’s instead."
"They would also refuse to purchase black pens for the copy room because they cost more than blue pens."
Lifetime
3."The company I used to work for didn't have the amount of employees to 'have' to pay bereavement days. My sister died and they didn't give me a dime for the time off for everything."
"My coworkers pooled together money for my family and myself and to them I'm forever grateful. I was honestly offended when the company sent flowers to my family."
—Amanda Lee Anne Brown, Facebook
4."Being an accountant, I know how much profit a company makes. One year, they canceled [our] Christmas party because ‘we had not met profit quotas’ for the year. I got the email as I was processing over $100k in bonuses for the execs. It had been one of our best years to date."
—Mary Lee Maniord Fowler, Facebook
5."I worked at a bagel cafe after school when I was 15–18. This extremely wealthy attorney would come in and hold out his hand and say 'put this in your pocket' like he was giving me some super generous tip. It was a quarter every time."
CBS
6."My cousin and his wife pull in over $500k per year. His mother-in-law (who works in retail) met them at brunch to drop off something he left at her house. She ordered a $4 soda. He made her Venmo him for it."
7."My ex's parents are wealthy, and the dad used to yell at the kids about using too much toilet paper. ... And by yelling at them about using too much toilet paper, I mean that he had a theory that one should never need more than one sheet for pee and five sheets for poo. Dead serious, he'd remove the toilet paper from the bathrooms if he felt they were using too much."
Fox
8."I used to be a travel agent long ago. One millionaire client regular bought a trip to Hawaii for his son [for his] honeymoon. It was from some ad in the paper. It was such a horrible place, we wouldn’t sell it to anyone. He argued he would go somewhere else to buy it. He wouldn’t even pay an additional $20 total (not per night) for the couple to have a queen bed — it was going to be two twin beds."
"We booked it, called the son and told him he had a $1,000 credit paid toward whatever he wanted to book. We just couldn’t in good faith send a couple to honeymoon in a cockroach-infested, twin-bedded two-star hotel in Waikiki."
—Camille Urueta, Facebook
9."My former boss made about a million a year in salary and much more from investments, but was the cheapest person I have ever met. He would aggressively negotiate every little thing and would go full on Karen if someone wouldn’t give in. I once had to sit there while he yelled at his wife on the phone because she forgot to get the $40 discount from their car mechanic that he had negotiated."
"She hung up on him and so he decided to lecture me about how $40 is a lot of money. Okay, whatever you say, but enough to justify treating your wife like that?"
CBC
10."I had a boss who was a partner in an executive search firm and made a lot of money on commissions. I knew this because I billed the clients and knew that during the previous year he had made between $5–7 MILLION. ... When January rolled around and I had not been given my usual end of year bonus from him ... I tactfully inquired as to why I hadn't received it, and he apologized and said that it was sitting at home and he'd definitely remember to bring it in."
"Several more weeks went by and I again brought up the subject of my bonus, but this time he told me that I wouldn't be getting one this year because I had to realize his financial situation this past year. He stated that with his going through a divorce, he was now paying the mortgage/rent on three homes...the one he was living in, the one his wife and kids resided at, and the vacation home in Florida that he had purchased the year before. He truly had the nerve to tell me this with a straight face and totally believing that I should understand his so-called financial predicament."
—Hal Panchansky, Facebook
11."I worked in several positions for a hospitality company in a relatively small but affluent tourist town. ... A customer complained that the restaurant charged him $1 for bread. The bread was sourced from a local bakery, as advertised on the menu along with the cost. You spent $45 on wine alone, but drew the line at paying for bread, Jean Valjean?"
Universal Pictures
12."When we were kids and had to sell (cool artsy) stamps for a school charity, I hated going into the richest neighborhoods of our village. They'd give two guilders and asked you for a receipt so they could claim it for tax purposes. A receipt...for two guilders...from a 9-year-old."
—Tjitske de Vries, Facebook
13."The billionaire who owned the company I used to work for enacted a company-wide 30% pay cut during the pandemic even though our revenues soared. The company collected millions in PPP stimulus, ostensibly to pay salaries, but that money ended up in the billionaire's pocket."
—Steve Shattil, Facebook
Bravo
14."I used to deliver pizzas in the late '90s as a second job while I was doing a trade and earning peanuts. Delivering to the 'nicer/richer' areas, you would think you would get decent tips. But I still remember one lady in this massive mansion waited for $0.05. I didn’t have five cents in my bag, and had to run back to my car, in the rain, and run back to her to give her change."
"[I also] went to some other housing commission areas, and they wouldn’t hesitate in giving 20–30% in tips."
—Wayne Barber, Facebook
15."I worked at a popular restaurant at a very busy street corner in the town where I live. Where I live, you can return pop bottles for five cents. There were lots of unhoused people digging through the street garbage cans for pop bottles. I drink probably seven or eight bottles of pop a day. ... I would step outside and put the pop bottles on the top of the garbage cans so they can be collected by whoever needed them.
"The owner came in one day for something, illegally parked his Porsche, and started berating me in front of a room full of customers to put the pop bottles downstairs in the storage room because they return them. He drove there in a Porsche, he was wearing $600 jeans, and he expected me to deny a starving man a nickel."
—Sara Thivierge, Facebook
16."Super-wealthy family member doesn't have trash service. They live alone and say they make such little trash they can't justify paying for it. Any time we visit, we are sent home with their trash to throw away for them. Drives me nuts."
ABC
17."I was in college and worked at a party supply store. The local top evening newscaster came in and argued over 50 cents for a card that she thought costed .49 cents but actually was $1. It was in the wrong spot. Imagine that? A card out of place in a CARD STORE. And I mean she was MAD. So mad she threw the card on the counter and left. Left with her designer outfit and her designer bag to go get in her Mercedes Benz."
—Elizabeth Anne, Facebook
18."My dad used to be a postal carrier whose district included one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Hawaii and a regular working class neighborhood. At Christmas, the working class folks would leave him cards with a small amount of cash and/or homemade cookies and gifts as a thank-you for his service (he'd been their carrier for years); the more affluent neighborhood: NOTHING. Very rarely did they even acknowledge him at all; he was a 'public servant' and that was it."
19."I once worked with a guy who would not buy a $5 raffle ticket supporting a college basketball team that he made thousands of dollars from by broadcasting their games."
—Jim Inak, Facebook
CTV
20."Husband just got a call from a couple who bought a million-dollar second lake home. Wanted pricing estimates 'now if not sooner' on carpets and vent cleaning — which had been done already as part of the sale. He drives 40 miles to this empty house they won’t be at until April, which hasn’t been properly plowed out, spends an hour writing up an estimate to clean already clean carpets and vents, and she calls him to hire him…as long as he drops the quote by $300."
"He says ‘nice knowing you’ because good luck finding anyone else with any time in our area to do your work for too little money. She realizes that she can’t find anyone else, so calls him back to sweet talk him into taking them on as clients by having him 'only drop his price by $250 instead.' She just bought a million dollar second lake home and she’s trying to cheap out on cleaning."
21."A person I work with who is very wealthy (oceanfront property; they work for fun) and whose wage is $10 per hour more than mine gave me a $1 store item and a card for Christmas. Needs two batteries; not included. It struck me as weird. Why give anything at all?"
—Marion Goriak, Facebook
Lionsgate
22.And finally..."I worked at a job where the pay was on the low side for the industry standard and they kept cutting back on benefits. During my 10 years there, they cut our 401ks to no matching, health insurance was incredibly expensive and was a bad plan (paying 75% out of pocket for procedures, if you had to go the E.R. you had to pay the first $1,500 and then 75% of remaining costs, etc.), and continuing education got cut to watching company-made online classes on a website. We were told repeatedly that this was the economy, that's why we repeatedly did not get raises or got very small raises (my third year I got a raise of 25 cents)."
"Our city newspaper did a story about the owner of the company buying an island and restoring 'the estate' (the grounds and the castle)."
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
