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 friend invited me on vacation with her family. They are very wealthy compared to me. It was clear up front that lodging and meals were covered by them, but I was hazy on everything else. It stressed me out so bad.
Do I want to go with them to do some Expensive Activity? Of course, but am I paying for it? Can I afford it? Even if I can, do I want to spend my limited money on that? Do they see me as a freeloader? How are these other not-rich friends navigating this because no one ever seems to talk about money? Fortunately, my friend saw my stress and had a discrete conversation with me where we set some guidelines.
A few of us were invited out to dinner by our boss in my first corporate job. I ordered the cheapest sandwich on the menu because I had no idea if he was paying for me, and this wasn’t the sort of restaurant I could go to except for anniversaries. Everybody else got steaks and stuff, and the boss did pay. My chicken sandwich was good too, but I’ll never forget my anxiety looking at the prices on the menu!
I was dating a person who worked in the nonprofit space. They organized a gala focused on education for black students, and I was invited as their +1. It was a super fancy black tie event - something that is far outside of my norm or comfort zone. I met the creator of Abbott Elementary, and she was an amazing person. She even invited me to her birthday party (I didn’t go).
I worked at a financial company which had an office in London, I am an IT guy and was asked to go to the London office a few times.
Two of those times I got to stay at The Langham.
It is a far more luxurious hotel than I have ever stayed at before.
Same, but my company had apartments they owned in multiple cities for this purpose that employees could also use for vacations if you had enough seniority (and no one else was scheduled to use it for business). The London apartment was pretty nice but the New York office was a freaking penthouse. Crazy.
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.
