Inside the Secret Lives of the Ultra-Rich: Shocking Tales from Luxury Hotels and Restaurants Revealed
My SO hotel building is owned by a billionaire. Forbes rich list. Lovely unassuming Singaporean man. This man was in town visiting his property. The hotel isn’t 6 stars. It’s 200-300 a night. But he stayed there.
Him and his business group had bookings at the top restaurants every night. 400 dollars a plate venues. They then come back to the hotel and drink insanely expensive wine. Anything they didn’t finish as sent to the staff as a treat. Every staff he saw in uniform received a crisp 50 dollar note as a tip and a firm handshake. The staff who brought him wine or made bookings received a crisp 100.
Just a kindly middle aged billionaire checking out one of his many many properties.
Not stereotypical, but 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 looked at Mr. Steinbrenner a little differently from then on.
I don’t know if this counts, but I used to work at a high roller casino as a cage cashier.
There was a lady at the marker bank (a marker bank is kind of like getting a loan to gamble more money), and where the marker bank was situated was almost directly behind me. I had no idea she was standing behind me since it was a busy night, so when the person working the marker bank came back to the counter she was irate. She demanded my name from him, which he told her, because in a high roller casino you basically have to kiss a*s of people who spend A LOT of money. Suddenly, not knowing what was going on from behind me, I hear a gruff and irritated voice yelling my name while I’m helping a guest. I had to leave the guest at the counter to see what this privileged high roller needed, and the first thing that came out of her mouth was that she “had a bone to pick with me”. She went off on me for what felt like a good five minutes, saying she spent way too much money to be ignored, to which I tried to explain I couldn’t see her from behind me, and she fired back that I have peripheral vision and I should use it (she was definitely far out of my peripheral vision).
What REALLY took me back was when she said I was “helping a bunch of nobodies” before her. I never encountered someone so entitled in my life, to the point where they honestly think other people matter less because of the money they have. I was in genuine disbelief to actually hear something so arrogant like that come from someone’s mouth.
Post Comment