Yahoo Lifestyle 27 Cases Of "Rich Kid Syndrome" That Are So Absolutely Out There I Can't Believe People Raise Their Kids Like This
Whether it's because it's fascinating to see how the other half lives or because we all have a story of our own, we all love hearing "rich kid" stories. So, when I saw that Reddit user u/deleted had posted to the popular "Ask Reddit" page to ask, "What's the worst case of 'rich kid syndrome' you've seen?" you know I had to delve in and share people's stories. Here are some of the absolute wildest:
1."I've posted this before, and I need to say first off the bat that this is about my best friend and she is the best person I know; ie not normally 'rich kid' or anything."
HBO
"I was complaining about how I was short on money one month (just couldn't go out to eat) because I had to pay rent and pay for tag renewal all in the same paycheck. She looked at me, super seriously, and was like, 'Don't worry, they send you those in the mail for free!'
After a long discussion she learned that, in fact, her mom had been paying for her new tags every year."
2."I worked as a bouncer at a high-end night club. One day the biggest boner of a rich kid, straight out of Malibu’s Most Wanted, gets a VIP booth and bottle service. Racks up a massive bill trying to act like a baller. His credit card gets denied and he has to call his dad to come down at 1:30 a.m. because he can’t order any more bottles."
"His dad comes down in his pajamas, obviously ashamed and furious at this douche of a kid, and ends up embarrassing the shit out of his kid in front of his whole group of friends.
He takes the kid's keys and is about to leave when his kid makes some shitty comment and goes back into the club. The dad's about to walk away after he apologizes for his son... that's when we offer to drag him out the rough way. He smiles and accepts. That kid hit every door and step on the way out.
Not the best story, but was one of the most satisfying experiences working at that club."
3."Dunno if it qualifies as 'rich kid syndrome,' but when I got out of the Navy I decided to use my GI Bill at one of the Penn State satellites. I was sitting in the cafeteria drinking coffee and typing up a paper when a girl sat down across from me and opened her backpack. She pulled out a sandwich bag and looked at it in disgust, then looked me dead in the eye and said, 'I don't even know why I bother, my mother never cuts off the crust.'"
"I let out one of those high-pitched short laughs, like is this girl for real? Oblivious to the tone of it she said, 'I know, right?' then asked me if I wanted it. I looked around thinking I was getting pranked or something, 'cause this shit was too stereotypical to be real and I just assumed I was being filmed.
She shook it at me and gave me a 'Well?' look. So I said fuck it and took the sandwich. She then pulled out her student ID card and bought a crap ton of french fries.
That sandwich was awesome, I think the bread was homemade and it was stacked like a Dagwood. It had all kinds of expensive-looking meats and Dijon mustard, serious gourmet shit. I know this girl's mother will never see this but I just wanna say someone appreciated that sandwich."
4."This case isn't too bad, and it's a bit funny. I became friends with a kid whose family was really well-off. He was a really nice bloke, but a bit sheltered, and university was the first time he really had any independence."
NBC
"He had very little sense of what the value of a dollar really was since his folks got him what he usually wanted, compared to what normal people would spend.
There was one particular time he wanted us to eat at a restaurant, and he assured us it was 'really good!' so we all rocked up to this place and the price for main courses started at $40 to $60. As poor uni students, we couldn't afford it, but when he realized this, he was so embarrassed he got his folks to pay for it.
He's finally wised up a few years later once he got more independence away from his family and made his own money, and remains one of the best blokes I know."
5."A 12-year-old family friend got an iPhone XS for his birthday, then deliberately shattered his iPhone 8."
"I saw a woman's 7-year-old daughter with an iPhone XS with a Dior ostrich skin cover. The cover was more expensive than the phone. Mommy got it for her birthday."
6."In high school, a kid was bragging that he got in his third fender bender in his 'old' car (three years old)—that his parents gave him, but he hated—so his parents were buying him an entirely new (current year) car to incentivize him to drive better."
7."My mom's friend used to buy new clothes each season and throw out the old ones. She had to be taught by her husband to save them for the next year."
"This happened way back in the '50s. Her family was very rich, and he was just a normal guy."
8."I worked with this kid who was a good kid, but completely disconnected from the financial realities of most people. He’d just moved out west from another state and was trying to get on like a 'normal' adult."
"He ordered a bottle of wine at a restaurant and the sommelier said, 'Certainly, sir.' Then the sommelier whispered, 'Just for your knowledge, sir, the bottle is $700.'
He looked straight at him and asked, 'Is that a lot?'
The sommelier honestly didn’t know how to answer.
Once, he went to buy a new car and was shocked that they couldn’t just bill his dad for it, since they didn’t know him. Once he casually told his mom he needed some help with bills and she deposited $20,000 into his account.
Good kid, and he got a lot better, but he just didn’t know."
9."I worked at a Starbucks and we hired a new guy, who I was training. At one point, I had to show him how to clean the restrooms. I grabbed the bleach and handed him a pair of gloves and he looked at me in disgust and said, 'We don't have a maid to clean the bathrooms?!'"
"He quit the next day."
10."Went to a destination wedding at a Mexico resort. Rich kids rented a golf cart, tore through the streets, and flipped the cart (injuring people and causing a huge commotion and traffic jam)."
"A Mexican lady came out and began to scold them for their behavior. 'You wouldn't act this way at home!'
Rich kid responds, 'I promise you, we do!'
It was the earnestness of his reply that got me. He really believed he was placating her with that response. There's gotta be a German word for something being funny because the other party is aloof to their own behavior."
11."A rich friend of mine got a $20K Rolex for her birthday. She also gets $3000+ each year on Thanksgiving for a shopping spree. She doesn’t really know what she wants to do for her career, but she had a week where she wanted to be coffee brewer, and her dad got her a $600 espresso machine (which she only used once) and offered to buy a coffee shop for her to manage."
"Oh and for her grad gift, her dad got her a new car. Back when I graduated, my parents got me a $5 pack of decorative sea shells from the Job Lot - which are lovely by the way, it was still a sweet gesture!"
12."I once had an intern who said, 'I just don't believe there are really that many poor people. I've, like, literally never met a single one.'"
13."I knew a girl whose allowance was $90 a day. She got into trouble so they cut it to $90 a week."
14."I work for a dentist and her son is a spoiled brat. He was at the office one day because she had to bring him to an appointment later that day. (He was 17 at the time.) He got bored and went out wandering around some of the local shops, came back a little while later, and without any preamble walked up to her and said, 'Give me $80.'"
"She asked him what it was for and he just repeated himself and she gave it to him.
15."My fiance's cousin. He managed to crash four cars while still in high school because his father would replace them. When he moved on to college, he got kicked out of several apartments for owning a dog when they weren't permitted."
"He told me he didn't care though, since his father also funded his continuous stream of new housing. From what I last heard, his father is now paying for his long-standing cocaine habit."
16."I nanny rich kids... Mine think that anyone who catches the bus is dangerous and poor and will kidnap them. They mocked a girl who got a scholarship to their expensive school so badly that she transferred back to a public school."
"The mother has me sit in the house doing nothing for up to eight hours when they have tradespeople in because she's convinced they will steal.
The mother also 'declutters' their old crap by dumping it on their cleaning lady because 'she knows all the refugees in the city, and there are people who will really enjoy this stuff.'
It's a nice idea, but we're talking about old underwear with no elastic, soft toys with giant stains and missing limbs, school bags that are so old the plastic material has hardened and cracked off, and felt pens with no lids that dried out years ago. She just has no concept of what real people's lives are actually like, to think that they might want this garbage."
17."So my best friend's wife teaches at a ritzy 40k per year private school. As in, $40,000 a year for elementary and middle school (I think the high school is like 50k+). Well, she teaches 7th or 8th grade, I can't remember, and she said she always goes around the class after the summer break and ask them what they did over the summer."
"She particularly remembers one kid complaining about how much his summer sucked because he was stuck on his parent's yacht all summer and they didn't even take it anywhere cool, just Italy."
18."I saw this Aussie guy in a Thai pub on Koh Samui who wanted to show bar girls that he's rich. He lit up his cigarette using a burning 1,000 baht bill. He probably did not know how much Thais love their King, and that the King had just recently died, and his face is on the bill."
"The rich kid got his butt kicked so hard."
19."An ex of mine who was also a coworker: well, I filled in her shift one day, and she thought that she should still be the one to get paid for it, since it was 'her shift.' I still don't understand how that made the slightest bit of sense."
20."There was a guy I used to work with who at 30 hadn't outgrown his rich kid phase. [Once] I told him that I'd just had the most expensive meal of my life, which was $90. He looked at me as if he was offended, and said, 'That's it?'"
21."I come from a low-middle income family. I was friends with someone who received a red envelope (Chinese tradition) with easily over a thousand dollars inside, and he still complained about not being able to afford things. I'd be lucky to even have a proper meal every day consistently.."
"Giving large amounts of money in red envelopes is basically a contest to Chinese people now. All the cousins like to compete with each other so they compete in giving the most amount of money. Source: I’m Chinese."
"What the heck, my red envelopes have $20 in them, maybe $50 max."
22."A girl I worked with once only had to show her parents she could keep a job for six months and then they’d pay for her apartment, bills, and vacations until she completed her master's degree. As far as her Instagram says, she’s someplace in Central America."
23."I was tossing the football in my friend's place and we almost hit his expensive TV. His response was 'Don’t worry, my dad will just buy me another one.'"
24."I work in a 5-star hotel so I've seen quite a lot, but this is the one that stuck with me. It was about 8:30 a.m. and this mother and her son, no more than 4 years old, walked into the lobby bar. The kid was holding a can of Sprite and chugging away at it [as] they approached the ice cream display."
"Mom asked for one scoop of chocolate for the brat.
'Not one, four!' screamed the kid.
The mother didn't even blink. 'Four scoops,' she says. I sighed and scooped out four for him.
Not more than five minutes later the kid was back and asked me for a coke; I asked the mom if it was okay and she rudely replied that of course it was.
Not even 9 in the morning and this kid has had two sodas and four scoops of ice cream."
25."I work at a country club and on the 4th of July (while I was working), a little girl asked why we were closing at 7 instead of staying open all night. I told her I wanted to get to do sparklers and fireworks with my family too!"
"She thought about it, looked back at me, and said, 'But... but y’all aren’t real people?'
I just had to laugh and inform her I was indeed real and all my coworkers weren’t just the slaves of the country club. Wild, man."
"I work with kids and one of them asked me why I had food and a drink on my desk. I told her, 'That's my lunch, I'm gonna eat it soon.'Sshe looked at me so weird and was like, 'You eat?'
I told her 'Yeah, did you think I was a robot or something?' Apparently that's what she thought. Lol."
26."The rich guy I worked for homeschooled his little brats. I worked at his home office so would frequently do work in the residence portion. I walked into the schoolroom to do some kind of repair one day."
"His 6-year-old kid looked at me, turned away, and said in disgust, 'I’m tired of all these workers coming in and disturbing me.'
Kind of funny but also a little alarming at the same time."
27.And finally: "In elementary school, my friend really wanted a little brother named Josh for Christmas. Ridiculous, right? Her parents literally bought a baby, named it Josh, and fucking introduced them on Christmas. Imagine being some rich kid's Christmas present."
Let me know what you think in the comments below. If you have any "rich kid" stories of your own to share, feel free to do so! Or, if you want to write in but prefer to stay anonymous, you can check out this anonymous Google form. Who knows — your story may end up in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
