24 Rich People Who Were Disgustingly Cheap For Literally No Reason
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. Here's what they had to say!
1."I used to work as an MSA for an older surgeon. He was close to retirement and a grumpy old turd (I'd also do the submissions for his surgeries so I knew this guy rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year). We had a coworker who was out for quite some time because she suffered a terrible accident and broke her back. All of us chipped in money to help her pay for groceries and things like that while she was out of work. This doctor contributed $5. His reasoning was, 'Ehh, I don't know her that well.' She worked for the practice for 16 years."
VH1
2."When I was younger, I worked as a summer student in a power plant. I ordered pizza/lunch for the crew, split it up, then sent a second email saying I forgot to factor in tip for the totals, so please add on $2 each to the first total (it was something like $10-12 after tip each). One guy came in and actually yelled at me about adding tip. This guy made above $50 an hour, with double time for any hours above 40 a week, which happens a lot in the trades. Yet he couldn't be bothered to pay an extra $2 for the pizzeria staff."
"His logic was that 'he works for his money and it's not his fault they chose to work in service.' ... He continued to go on a whole rant about it. I eventually just turned my chair around and ignored him."
3."My mom’s worked in a gas station for over five years and has seen that the richest people with the nicest cars actually TAKE money out of the tip jar, while people in blue collar jobs leave so much in tips."
Fox
4."My aunt's former boss was very wealthy — she owned a horse farm as a hobby and left $100 million to her daughters when she passed away. She got top-quality vet care for her horses, but basically refused basic vet appointments for her cats and dogs. If a cat or dog got sick, my aunt would have to argue with her to take them to the vet to get medicine. It made me so angry."
5."I worked in retail. ... A customer was returning an item that she bought in a different store, in a different city where the sales tax was different. She got all mad that she wasn't given her 'full' refund. The difference was, like, 12 cents."
Freeform
6."I had a friend in high school that received a large inheritance from her aunt. ... If we went to a restaurant, she would purposely show up late after we ordered, then would ask everyone to share with her. She wouldn't pitch in any money because we were going to order it anyway."
"My breaking point was we went to a concert and her mom bought the tickets. I gave her the money for the tickets and we went and had a great time. A few weeks later I'm picking her up and her mom comes out yelling at me about the ticket money. She kept the money to buy merchandise and told her mom I never paid her."
7."I was a nanny for a very rich family. The mom was having a few cosmetic surgeries and wanted me to stay overnight with the kids for a week while she recovered. She only offered to pay me the same rate per day that I would have gotten for my normal nine hour work day."
"I told her I would need my usual hourly rate for every hour that the kids would be awake, plus a little extra for the evenings/nights that I wouldn't get to spend at home. She came back and offered me a reduced hourly rate ($5/hr less than I usually get) and a $10 'per diem' for meals. This woman was willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for cosmetic surgery but tried to cheap out on childcare."
8."I worked at a restaurant near a luxury resort in Costa Rica for a while. Employees made roughly $1.50 an hour and there is a 10% gratuity automatically added to the bill that doesn't just go to that server. Most visitors tipped their server on top of that automatically added gratuity. The rich people didn't tip on top of it and often complained that that was there at all."
FX
9."I worked as a receptionist at a dental office on Park Avenue, Upper East Side Manhattan — so uber wealthy clientele. I can’t tell you how many people would complain and fight with me, not wanting to pay what insurance wouldn’t cover. And I’m talking relatively low payments especially for this clientele ($50 max). My boss would write off a lot of these to avoid the hassle of arguing."
10."I work with some very, very rich foreign students. Once someone came back from a weekend shopping trip dripping with designer labels, but refused to pay back ￡15 to the (less well off) friend who'd paid for his train ticket."
Fox
11."Working for a wealthy man once, I used a compliment slip to write a phone message on. We made ￡10 million a year and one bit of paper blew up into a whole thing."
12."I work for a high end steak house that has multiple investors that receive discounts when they dine with us. One particular investor who owns an RV company likes to have his assistant call and dispute the charges regularly. Like, okay, sir, you are a multi-millionaire who could afford the bill without a discount, but you still want to dispute the $3 you were charged for a soda."
13."I am a speech pathologist and work with kids. I used to work in an affluent area. The parents who 'just can't afford therapy' for their child with a communication delay, yet pull out their BMW/Audi/etc. keys from their brand name bag, put on their expensive sunnies and then head home to their multi-million dollar waterfront house, astounds me."
"If you are asset rich but cash poor and your child NEEDS therapy, downgrade something (or heaven forbid, forgo that unnecessary weekly purchase) and help them. They are losing out on their future for your lifestyle."
DreamWorks Pictures
14."At Whole Foods, a couple was walking in as I was walking out, and they had taken the entire stack of disposable masks and shoved them in their bags/packets…rich people are truly the cheapest. They’re shopping at Whole Foods for Christ's sake; they can afford masks."
15."Someone I know is very well off. For their wedding, they booked an overnight camp in New York. Rather than have everyone pay for the cabins to the camp directly, everyone had to send the money to the groom. The cabins cost $35 per night according to the camp website. The groom charged everyone $200 per night and told everyone there was a two-night minimum (there was no such thing according to the camp). This douche charged his own friends and family six times the amount the camp cost just for the honor of attending their wedding."
"They made and sold T-shirts for the weekend as well, just to make even more. My friends and I refer to them as 'the princess and the thief' now."
16."I worked at a cafe in a building with lots of medical offices, so we had lots of doctors as customers. This one doc in his seventies would come in every morning for tea. The total was $1.99 after tax and every single goddamn time he would sit there and wait for his penny in change."
"One day he even said to me (unprompted), 'A lot of people would say ahh, forget it, keep the penny, but not me! I WANT THAT PENNY!' He thought that was hilarious and left. And naturally, never threw so much as THAT PENNY in the tip jar."
17."When I was a kid, my rich family friends took me on a vacation with them. Every time before I showered, I’d have to hold out my hand and the mom would squirt some shampoo on it. She wouldn’t let me take the actual bottle into the bathroom because I might use too much."
MTV
18."My boss ... saves paper towels for later. People have been 'talked to' about using too many paper towels when drying their hands."
19."I worked for a non-profit that regularly got donations from a few very wealthy people, and at least two of them would invite high-level people from our organization out to meals and then skip out on the bill."
"One at least said they had to run to some other appointment, but one just 'went to the bathroom' and disappeared. They still donated large amounts, so it wasn't that they had some issue with us but we had to allocate part of their donations to super expensive salads and wine instead of our work or functional desk chairs."
NBC
20."I worked for a super rich family in the early 2000s. ... The menus every day showed that anyone working at the house would be served lunch — which was great, but the 'lady of the house' insisted that the family ate a different luncheon meal each day from the staff. The cook would make them roast beef sandwiches or turkey sandwiches and very clearly serve the staff tuna sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."
"It was like the workers got a 'child menu' with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the family got a normal, American lunch of a turkey sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a salad and a roll. ... It was a strange, punitive difference. The cook often grumbled that it was a pain to make two distinct menus every lunchtime for such a nominal cost difference."
—Anonymous
21."I work for a very rich HOA in Southern California. The homeowners have multimillion dollar luxury estates ... and yet they can't ... donate $35/year to a staff fund so that their HOA staff, almost all of whom make below poverty wages for our area and the majority of whom work multiple jobs, can receive an extra (taxed) $500 bonus at the end of the year."
"The same homeowners fight every single charge, rule, and CC&R — but, of course, will also scream at you for ~seemingly~ not enforcing the same against their neighbors."
22."I worked for a billionaire in Silicon Valley. We were moving to a new office and I was packing the moving boxes with his stuff. I wrote directly on the box what the contents were instead of writing on a label and sticking it to the box. I did not know this but if you write on a box directly it is $5 a box. He saw my work and screamed profanities at me and fired me for $20 worth of boxes I wrote on."
"He was a billionaire with his own private jets and his own villa. [But] $20 pushed him over the edge. It was wild!"
—Anonymous
Universal Pictures
23."[I] worked for the daughter-in-law of a man that owns a sports team in New England. Her husband was president of the team. ... [It's] very well known how wealthy they are and a lot of people look up to them as being really great, charitable people because they do a lot (which is mostly motivated by PR and tax write offs, not their hearts). They 'couldn't afford' health insurance for her four employees because it was a small business."
24."Not me, but someone who worked for me many years ago. She had just graduated from high school and told me she was offered a job at 'double her current dollar value' from ... a wealthy couple."
"Turns out she was paid with a grocery bag full of retail coupons: 30 cents off a box of mac and cheese mix; $1 off a case of motor oil and so forth. When you added the value of all the coupons, it equaled the 'double dollar value' that she was previously paid. You can only imagine how many coupons were in that bag."
—Anonymous
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.