My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
A girl I dated was friends with the daughter of one of Microsoft’s founders and we got invited to their house to watch Seafair. I think it’s be safe to call in a small mansion right on the water with a dock. The kitchen was as big as my whole apartment. The technology was a bit dated but must’ve been state of the art when it was built. Switches for automated everything. On the water we had front row seats to the Blue Angels. They are incredibly loud up close.
The guy was super down to earth. Had a good conversation where he showed genuine interest in me and what I did. 9.9/10, the hot tub was broken
No helicopter food delivery? She was definitely holding back on the super foods. She must have liked you, to not spook you away with the show of wealth.
Bill Gates definitely hit the late burger and roast beef joints in Cambridge and Boston back in the day.
Paul Allen had no kids so you could just say one of Bill Gates’ daughters.
Bill Gates seems like a chill dude to talk too. Maybe one of these days.
Though I wouldn’t suggest bringing up open source software around him. Unless it’s to bitch about people doing things for free when you want to charge lots of money for it.
“Oh yeah I contribute to Linux branches every once in a while”
“…You what?”
I was an active duty surgical tech in the US military; promoted fairly quickly and ranked up to Staff Sergeant at about 3 years. Shortly after taking that rank, we had a perfect storm of deployments, a retirement, a medical separation, etc that left me as the highest ranking enlisted in the surgery unit, which made me (a still-kinda-newby-surgical-tech) taking the responsibilities of basically a charge nurse. Chief among these was attending morning morning briefs with the top dogs of the hospital (high ranking officers) and giving report. Fortunately I knew where to access the OR’s metrics, so my report was always just a summary of our case load, average times, etc.
This lasted only about a week until we got a new Master Sergeant and Tech Sergeant. Apparently I got some pretty high praise from those top dogs for stepping up (not like I had a choice) and doing a decent job – but that was PURE luck lol. I only did well because things went relatively smoothly on their own. If there was an emergency or something I would have had no fucking clue what to do; and all the junior enlisted seemed to just know that I wouldn’t have been able to do shit for them during that time, so everyone kept the smaller fires to themselves during that time.
It was a weird time.
Similar. Two cases. First was taking charge of the entire Bases secure network upgrade because I was the only one who knew how the new devices worked. I ended up having to attend a meeting with a General and his staff and had to be chaperoned by an E5 because I was only an E3 at the time.
The second was my entire time working in White House Comms. Can’t talk much about it but I’m sure you can imagine how out of place it would feel.
One time I went to the restaurant DAMON BAEHREL. I was informed afterwards that it had a 10-year waiting list and only seated 100 people a month. Despite having regularly commuted between the Midwest and the East Coast, getting there felt like the longest road trip I’ve ever taken since I had to go with my mother-in-law and some of it is on a gravel road.
I had to Google DAMON BAEHREL to spell it and I’m not going to bother retyping it.
It was far and away the most pretentious, absurd, cartoonishly fancy experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve dressed up in antique ceremonial Moroccan robes for a banquet at the art museum in the city I grew up in. At the art museum I sat next to the mayor’s mother in a room of 200 people conversely, about 30 people total could fit into DAMON BAEHREL.
I thought the art museum banquet was fancy, but when I was little I thought Boston Market and IBC root beer were fancy.
DAMON BAEHREL was the kind of place that serves a dozen ‘courses’ but each one is like one cracker one sliver of cheese and one spritz of condiment with maybe a sliver of sausage made from some bespoke farm animal. He insisted that the water we were drinking was actually unreduced tree sap. Everything was served on various slabs of wood some with the bark still on it. The slabs were so much larger than the food It looked like putting a coin on a serving platter for each course.
I just felt embarrassed every time I looked at the Damon and his staff. They had clearly heard his bullshit so many times that it was hard for them to feign credulity anymore.
Anyway, that shit was way too fancy for me. Clearly it was just wasted on me.
Yeah, but how was that food?
I just tried a fine dining restaurant for the first time this past weekend.
I was just curious after watching a bunch of cooking competitions on Netflix about how good that kind of food could be so decided to find a Michelin star restaurant and give it a try.
While the portions were small, the food was on another level. Even the “worst” of it was only that because it wasn’t amazing, but still really good.
The food was so good that when I got home and snacked that night, it was hard to enjoy any of my usual favorite snacks because it all felt so basic after that.
It was fancy in other regards, too. Like when my buddy went to the bathroom, someone came over and folded his cloth napkin rather than leave it bunched up on the table.
Plus, even though the portions were tiny and we joked about whether we’d need to stop for fast-food afterwards, by the end of the 9 or so courses, I felt completely satisfied. Even the snacking I mentioned was more due to the munchies than actual hunger.
It was expensive though. Two taster menu plus two drinks each came to about 500 CAD plus tip. And it was one of the cheaper options. There was a two Michelin star sushi place that advertised seats starting at 800 and I’m not even sure that includes any food, though I think it gets the “chef cooks what he wants” menu, which tbf would probably be way better than what I’d want anyways.
This place only needed to be booked like a month in advance, so the place you’re talking about sounds like it’s on another level itself. Though I’m curious how much that other level translates to better food.
Fine dining is one thing but the ultra exclusive, incredibly pretentious, top of the range place like DAMON BAEHREL is on another level entirely and has ceased, long ago, to be about making something a person wants to eat.
It’s about the art in just about the worst way possible. Fair play to the people who are into this but it’s complete bullshit, relies on borderline slave labour to produce and actively dislikes it’s audience.
I wanted to learn more and found this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/damon-baehrel-the-most-exclusive-restaurant-in-america
Sounds like the ten year wait list might be made up and who knows where he gets his meats, but the whole thing just sounds fascinating. From his website, the current price is $550 USD a head, though it’s subject to change several times per week.
He sounds like one of those guys that has a whole bunch of little projects going on at any time and over the years accumulated enough results from those to host some volume of dinner parties. And possibly exaggerates or lies about some of them (though hard to say if he treats his cooking similarly to how he treats his legend/myth).
I’m convinced that Damon Baehrel is a semi-fake restaurant. Like, it’s real, but doesn’t actually take reservations or serve real guests, and the owner/chef lies about everything in order to seem more mysterious.
This article from 2016 lays out the case.
So I don’t think it’s a particularly good example of fine dining, as it’s doing a lot of things different from a normal restaurant that is open to members of the public.
My aunt did hostile takeovers and her husband was even more rich. Their kitchen was bigger than my entire house. And that was their vacation house. I couldn’t appreciate most of it, I was just a kid. But I remember my cousin had a pool in his room.
pool in his room
Come on. You’re making this up, don’t you? Or are there really people who have a pool in their kids room?
Come on, that’s too wild.
Having seen how my buddy lives with his family being in the ~$100M net worth range and them overall being quite modest people, I’d 100% believe someone well above that and/or wanting to flaunt their wealth in a stupidly ostentatious manner would put a pool in their kid’s room.
I can’t imagine doing it as a parent. My kids drowning is a pretty big, realistic fear. Maybe for a teenager? Even then though…
I grew up very poor, but my mom’s childhood friend was well off and had rich friends. I would stay with him a lot so his kid and I were like family to each other. A rich “daddy’s girl” friend of his, who I had only met once or twice before, apparently had a crush on me and sent me a formal invite to her quinceañera (sorry if misspelled) with all expenses paid. On the weekend of the party they had a black car pick me up from school (Friday after last bell). It drove me to a shop where I was fitted for a suit, then a stylist for a haircut and my first manicure, then taken back home. The next morning (Saturday) I was picked up from home and taken to the local airport where a private jet was waiting for me and the new suit was already in its coat closet. I was flown to Miami and put up in what seemed like a really nice hotel. The party was glitz. Everyone, including myself, was wearing something that cost thousands of dollars. Definitely no rented suits there. The next day, I was flown and driven back home. After going through all of that, I spent literally five seconds with the birthday girl during the party before she was whisked away and I didn’t see her again.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯It was a surreal experience.
EDIT: As an adult I have had many situations that qualify for this post, but I never felt as out of place as I did that one time.
I went with a friend to Vegas. He was going to one of those super-posh conferences for his line of work, and just casually wanted to split the hotel bill (because he’s cheap; the dude could afford to live in one of those hotels year round). At the end of the conference, all of his colleagues were throwing some party at the top of one of the hotels on the strip. He helped me through the security screen and we left the elevator. We went from a world of bright lights and gaudiness to dark passion and sultry beats where each seat at their reclined cushion alcoves was worth thousands of dollars. Prostitution may be illegal in Vegas, technically, but escorts that looked like world-famous supermodels (male and female, to be clear) were writhing across every lap at those recessed tables.
My friend got me to the balcony, where I got a picture of the entire strip at night. Then my friend casually mentioned that getting a drink would be about $1200 and we went back down to the normal floors for the free booze and $2 blackjack.
I got invited to some sort of literary award ceremony at the French embassy a few years back. I, uh, severely underdressed for the occasion. I got the invite for participating in the Albertine book store’s bookclub, and for whatever reason, my brain went, “I can show up to this like I would dress for a bookclub session, it’s the same people.” Spoiler, it was not, and I really should have been at least in a button up and slacks, rather than my hoodie and jeans. As luck would have it, the gentleman who won the award, Emmanuel Dongala, was sat next to me during the speeches. I can still remember the look of “What the classless, American fuck is this guy doing?” as he took his seat next to me.
On the other hand, I went to my first opera at the NY Metropolitan Opera last year basically dressed the same way, and it was surprisingly entirely fine. Turns out, very few people want to be sat for hours in formal attire when hardly anyone can see you in the dark, anyway.
Which opera did you see? I am an opera lover and I’ve seen people wearing tuxedos with flip-flops, and a dog wearing a rhinestone necklace.
I went and saw Nabucco. Was pretty enjoyable, and I got to sit in the orchestra section with one of the cheaper tickets they release the day of the performance. Would go back for another if I could avail myself of the program again.
I had also deliberately picked one of the shorter operas they put on that season, wasn’t trying to commit to some 5 hour monstrosity straight out the gate.
I got very randomly bumped up to first class on a transatlantic flight for business. I do not travel much for business, especially internationally. So, I definitely should not have had priority over more regular accounts. I have to assume I just got lucky, and that flight happened to have no frequent flyers.
It was an eye opening experience. I got to hang out in a secret lounge. When my flight was ready to board, multiple staff escorted us to the gate. When we landed, we took a private van to a secret side entrance, which had its own first class only passport check. We were brought to another secret first class lounge through hidden back hallways to wait for our connections. The lounge looked down over the terminal, and the exit was a nondescript door you’d assume was a maintenance entrance.
Being around that level of service and the other people in first class, it’s clear the wealthy live in another world. I looked up how much that ticket normally goes for after, and full price is for many people a yearly salary. It was nice, but it seems like a crazy way to divide resources.
Honestly, where I live now.
I rent a bare-bones townhouse. Two rooms, and a basement with an old washer and dryer, and a small garage.
I have always lived in apartments, sometimes with fewer rooms than people. Having an entire place of my own (that’s not a studio apartment) is sometimes unbelievable to me. A washer and dryer downstairs? No quarters? I don’t have to look for a spot, I have a garage? I don’t have to cram my entire life in one room, I have an “office!?” This will likely be the closest to “home owner” I’ll get and it still feels unreal after almost two years here. It’s certainly not going into anyone’s Pinterest board, and there are issues, but I always feel “bougie” when I open the garage 🤣
I felt like that when we rented the townhouse. It was also pretty bare bones, but it was nice to have a house. Sadly the landlord evicted us so his kid could have his place, so I ended up in an apartment again, and now my rent is so much more as we lived in the townhouse for so long. I do have a washer and dryer and dishwasher though so at least that is nice and it’s beautifully renovated but it still sucks. We had this incredible patio garden.
I was tier one help desk, overnight, in a children’s hospital.
I had a doctor call me, who expressly made it clear he didn’t want a run around, while manually palpating a child’s heart to keep it in rhythm and thus, the child alive.
I told him there are back ups upon back ups that can be implemented, and I am happy to talk about his computer problem when the patient is SAFE. Not a little, “we got this,” safe, but SAFE.
Tier one help desk, overnight, no support, and I had to tell a person who turned out to be a board member that he could go fuck himself on his computer problem until the child patient was safe.
My first job was customer service, and I’ve been in IT for a dozen years. Its still customer service. You just have to realize who the customer is - in the case of a children’s hospital, it is always the child.
That’s wild. Was there even a good reason for him to call you? Like, was the IT thingie he needed for one of the machines they were using? And was there any followup to you telling the board member / doc that he should be focusing on other things?
I worked in intensive care for a short period - the amount of discussions about breakfast and what to order for lunch during reanimations was hilarious. There even was gossiping about docs and personnel while fighting death.
Professionals.
There’s a hard line drawn between those who can disassociate in emergency situations and function and those who can’t. I only use it for first aid and safety situations but I’ll never begrudge medical professionals for chatting while doing compressions unless the chatting starts hindering the compressions.
Spent a night at the Iceland Blue Lagoon Retreat hotel for a special occasion. It’s like $1800 USD per night so it was a huge splurge. We saw Rebel Wilson staying at the hotel too. It was fancy AF.
Absolutely wasted if you only spend one day, but we couldn’t afford 2.
I sometimes take the ICE from Arnhem to Utrecht. It’s special, because it’s an international train with sleeping cabins and sometimes even on-board catering. You usually have to pay an extra supplement, but not if you only ride it nationally. This kind of train only stops on three stations in the Netherlands (Armhem, Utrecht, Amsterdam), which makes it more special.
As a German the ICE is nothing special, at least when riding in 2nd class.
Sure, it’s nicer than riding regional trains, but it’s nothing very posh.
Yes it’s not much, but it feels special because it’s an international train for which you usually have to pay a supplement.
You usually have to pay an extra supplement, but not if you only ride it nationally.
really?
Only if you have a subscription though. Like a businessman, a student card or a “traject vrij abonnement”. It doesn’t count for individual sold tickets, I guess that also means prepaid ov cards.
I have been picked up by a private airplane once. And I don’t mean an private jet like a bombardier global (which are still beyond cool), I mean like a full size long range airliner. The conference room alone was larger than my apartment at the time. Who especially was send my our customer to pick up my colleague and me. Even crazier: As it was somewhat urgent the customer “called” someone in his countries air traffic control and even though we arrived through rush hour at this airport we landed priority - which meant around 12 large airliners had to wait.
(To make that clear: I am not a prostitute, especially as I am a ugly ass overweight dude, but I work in healthcare and did a fair share of VVIP jobs over the last two decades)
What kind of healthcare you working in with the kind of commute? I’m good at my job nursing but I can’t imagine that’s someething people get flown in for.
Used to work in asromedical retrieval for a company that has very strong presence in the Gulf region and a somewhat established presence in central Asia.
Someone’s gotta give that sheik’s new chick a nice pair of tiddies.
Actually no, I refuse to be associated with cosmetic/fashion style plastic surgery completely for personal reasons. I even don’t work on the anaesthesia side of these cases.
I wasn’t entirely sincere in my comment.
One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).
What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.
Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.
There was very nice, expensive catering.
Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.
Funnily enough, a similar thing. When I was 20 I had a small business, but registered to the business register just like any other. I got invited by email to attend the opening of the new lodge in the stadium (because they were trying to sell me private seats passes I definitely couldn’t afford). Shook hands with the players and everything.
