Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent (5 page)

6. NEVER MIND THE NANNIES, DRIVERS ARE THE NEW DADS

LIVING ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE
, one gets accustomed to seeing ridiculous things, from $300 plates of truffle pasta to couture dog collars. But this one was a first. The other evening, I was walking off the leaden canapés after another deadly fund-raiser in someone’s “aerie.” As I was passing a venerable Park Avenue residential building, a black SUV came to a halt.

A Dwayne Johnson–proportioned driver got out, lifted a supine teenager from the backseat like a bag of golf clubs, and lugged him to the door. “I’ve taken away your cell phone,” he said. “You’ll get it back when your parents return.” He then deposited the drunken youth in the lobby. “Sleep next to a garbage can,” he cautioned before leaving his charge in the custody of the doormen.

The
New York Post
recently wrote about parents who were passing off their classroom volunteer duties to nannies, much to the dismay of their private schools, or rather, of the other moms, who didn’t fancy selling snickerdoodles alongside hired help at bake sales. The story ricocheted around the Upper East Side, a neighborhood whose privileged parents stand accused of outsourcing every child-rearing task, from cooking to etiquette training.

As someone who lives and raises kids there, I’m here to tell you that these charges are all pretty much true. (It’s actually worse.) But now drivers are stepping in as parents as well? That was something I hadn’t heard.

I don’t want to be seen as a hypocrite here; we use car services during the week and occasionally a driver on the weekend as needed. But let me be clear that these are people who merely transport our family—nothing more—and there’s always another adult in the vehicle. As my kids get older, will I be calling upon these men to mete out punishments to my children? Ground them? Attend parent-teacher conferences in my stead? Drop them off at college someday?

I’m sure it’s been done before.

The next day, I was having drinks at the kind of private club that still insists on ties, no jeans, and no technology (a port in the storm when you are surrounded by private equity guys), when I relayed the incident to a friend with older children. He explained that to a growing degree, drivers are the eyes and ears of Uptown parents: protecting, chaperoning, disciplining, and dragging teens out of clubs when they are wasted.

Crucial to these drivers’ job success is being able to finesse the tension between parents who hire them to spy on their children and teenagers who try to ditch their captors at every turn. “Ex-cops and detectives make the best drivers,” my friend said. “They are good at picking up clues, and they get right in there and pull the kids out of clubs when they’re shitfaced. Must be a Staten Island thing.”

“Aren’t the parents supposed to do that?” I asked, sipping the kind of martini that only a gentile club could make.

“Of course.” He munched on an olive. “When they’re back from St. Barths.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it was either a driver or boarding school,” said a friend the next night. My wife, Dana, and I were out with another couple who are big in real estate banking. Their kids are five years older than our own, and their driver’s job duties are as limitless as their kids’ run of the city.

“If you think I’m going to police my children after midnight, you have another thing coming. Until I got Vince, I was missing spin at seven thirty,” she said. “It was starting to affect my looks.”

This is a mom who started letting her kid drink in front of her at age fifteen. “They were coming home drunk … so now I let them have wine or beer in front of me,” she said, knocking back a vodka and cranberry.

“At fifteen?” Dana asked.

“You’ll see when your kids get to be our kids’ ages,” she said. “Younger wives are always so idealistic until the moment comes. And then you’ll fold like the rest of us.”

The more I asked, the more the stories began to pile up, many of them of a cat-and-mouse nature. Parents hiring ex-Mossad agents with spy cams and installing tracking devices in their kids’ phones (until the kids were smart enough to disable them). Children running out the back door of a club to party down the street while the driver slept out front.

A golfing partner revealed that his family’s driver, an ex-cop, carries a Glock. “I’d rather have a driver that my kids know and like than have them take cabs from someone right off the boat. Who knows if they’re safe?” he said, swinging his sand wedge in the trap. “It’s accountability. And that matters to me.” (Also, if there’s a traffic altercation, having an ex-cop call the cops can’t be the worst thing.)

A college-age man I know—who still speaks twice a month to the driver his family hired for him when he was in high school—said that having a driver had its advantages when it came to high school romance. Except when he was dating a girl whose family had one as well.

“Her father would send her driver to follow us to see what was going on. Of course, we tried to lose the tail.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes, but he was good. He always managed to track us down.”

Last year, when my son wanted to take a cab with a friend to a Downtown party at nine p.m., I vetoed it, thinking twelve was a little on the young side. The other child went. I’m still surprised by other parents’ willingness to give their teenagers the run of the city and leave the drivers in charge. When it comes to going out unsupervised to parties and clubs, thirteen is the new eighteen. Why not keep it simple and put the kids on a shorter leash?

As it turns out, there is no single answer. There are the “me time” parents, who complain that family time or chaperoning their kids puts a dent in their own social lives. Then there are the divorced couples, who rely on drivers as neutral shuttle services between both homes, with the driver deployed as communicator and mediator. In my observation, divorces often breed permissiveness, because the parties can’t agree on a uniform parenting style.

The last subset—perhaps the chief offenders—is a group whose own deficiencies as teenagers fuel their kids’ social lives. They’re the formerly uncool high school students who want desperately to live vicariously through their children. The men tend to be Napoleonic, and, having conquered the world of finance, they often have unlimited cash and credit to dispense to their progeny. They populate New York campuses with incredibly indulged and well-dressed children and believe that money and power are the keys to popularity. For them, drivers are less chaperones than enablers: helping kids gain club access, bottle service, fake IDs, and, yes, romantic partners.

Of course, all this late-night surveillance comes at a cost. I was at a charity gala in the Met’s Egyptian wing when I ran into one of the Upper East Side Queens of Consumerism, noted for her outsize diamonds as well as her outsize handbag collection. “Weekend drivers all want premium pay after eight,” she lamented, clicking a crystal minaudière in the shape of a farm animal. “And pizza’s not good enough. They want spicy tuna rolls and black cod with miso takeout.” She touched up her lips and floated off like a chiffon-and-diamond nimbus cloud.

And why shouldn’t drivers want Nobu? All the better to nourish them for long nights babysitting the misbehaving offspring of the city’s elite.

Some may argue that there is a moral lapse in letting the driver take on parenting duties. My kids are still too young, so I leave it to others to judge. But would a little help with algebra be out of the question?

7. NEED AN INTERN WITH A STRONG SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT AND BAD MANNERS? HIRE A RICH KID

VERY FEW PEOPLE KNOW
how to throw a good party, let alone ever host one. Or even know
how
to entertain.

I learned the basics when I was my fraternity’s social chairman in college and came to understand how much hard work and planning go into a memorable evening.

Social Powerhouse’s
Playboy
-themed party in the Hamptons was among the summer’s best.

Perhaps it was the half-naked PYTs frolicking in the custom grotto, the myriad of bunnies on high-wire trapeze-style swings, the muscled shirtless models in bow ties, the famous ’80s singer, or the convincing bathrobed Hefner look-alike. It was
Gatsby
style and a rarity.

I was standing under a festooned big top, conversing with Big Brother (the famous adman/TV host), with whom I have a close, long-standing relationship, when the twentysomething son of an acquaintance interrupted our conversation, as if we were peers.

“How do you two …” He made the hand motion indicating knowing each other.

“I used to work for him when I first entered the business, before starting my first firm,” I said.

“No, we worked together,” Big Brother said graciously.

“No, I worked for you, but that’s kind.” I laughed. “And before that I was a receptionist.”

The young person looked at me in wide-eyed horror.

He trailed me to the bar. “Richard, why do you let people know that you were a receptionist?”

“Working your way up is respectable,” I said. “The most successful people in Hollywood worked their way up in the CAA mailroom, as an example.”

“Maybe,” the be-Rolexed millennial said. “But I’d rather work my way up from the top.”

There is a rampant disease today that goes beyond borders. Entitlement is a contagious, insidious state of mind that has infected a whole generation of young people who feel they deserve things based on who they think they are or who their parents are. Or who they’ve been told they are.

Entitlement also afflicts adults, who feel they should have or get things based on their friends having them or just feeling worthy. It’s hard to pinpoint the derivation of where and when the disease started, but it’s an epidemic.

“Mr. Kirchenbaum, I am very disappointed that you do not have a position for me,” proclaimed the e-mail from a friend-of-a-friend’s daughter, whom I did the favor of meeting for an informational interview. Besides misspelling my name, she wrote she found it
discouraging
that I let her know trying to secure an internship or job is best done in December, not two weeks before college graduation … that most internships had been filled six months earlier (as was ours) and that, since masses of graduating college seniors would be seeking jobs, it was not exactly the most ideal or opportune time. She picked up her Balenciaga bag at the news and left in a huff.

The next day the imperious e-mail arrived, my friend cc’d as if to apply further pressure.

Poor, long-suffering Carol, my assistant, has put up with years of rude and demanding behavior from “the children of” … with calls like “I’m in town and can meet him this week at three,” or parents who call about an internship status grilling, “Does Richard KNOW that Bettina has not heard back yet?” “Don’t they KNOW who SHE IS?” or “who WE ARE?”

I do like helping and encouraging young people. There is often a jewel who redeems the process, along with some well-raised and respectful children. That said, the majority do not send thank-you notes, even upon securing a coveted internship or job per my recommendation.

“The parents of,” who can solve their children’s every problem, desire, and whim with a black card, often do not know that entry-level jobs are a rarity and internship programs at large agencies have been cut for budgetary reasons.

I have Carol send each parent who asks this favor a
WSJ
article titled “Where Did All the Entry Level Jobs Go?” to give them a sense of reality and a preliminary education.

Unless of course the parents buy an internship at a school or charity auction. I often see the progeny of the rich nonchalantly rattle off working for the world’s most famous movie producers and couturiers like they went to Friendly’s for a Fribble.

“Yeah”—the high school junior cracks his gum—“last summer I was an assistant director for [world-famous Academy Award–winning director].” I have seen and heard it all. I particularly enjoy it when the interns flee their posts early for Saint-Tropez, thus bailing on their final presentations.

“I have, therefore I am owed,” BFF therapist revealed over dinner at the Palm. This childhood bestie and I bemoan the sad state of affairs over creamed spinach and hash brown potatoes.

“Money and privilege are often a catalyst for this sprouting,” she noted.

“How so?” I asked, eyeing the delectable fried onion rings.

“Take the whole trophy culture,” she said. “The programs we send our children to are so expensive they all get a trophy just for being there. Kids expect ongoing trophy treatment, trophy lives.” She sliced the strip steak.

“Not to mention trophy wives. Is it an issue in your practice?” I cut the glistening chicken Milanese.

“Yes, it’s just another social ill like bullying or stealing.”

“The root?”

“It’s often a mask for insecurity, anxiety, uncertainty. It may be a Band-Aid for hopelessness, loss of control, or just a temporary elixir for fleeting happiness. The source differs from person to person but can be borne out of a parent’s need to please.
No
is not a part of the vernacular. This may be a result of newfound wealth or parents who resolved never to say no to their children. The idea being that the more one says yes, the better the parent is.”

“And what happens?”

“The outcome can be disastrous … Those whose needs are not met can become depressed, rageful, and often turn to substances.”

“Or one can turn to food. Do you think our needs would be met if we ordered the Lyonnaise potatoes?”

“It starts as early as nursery school,” L’actrice confided at the Watermill beach soiree. “The money and favors just to get into a school—it gets worse with each grade.” A bikini-clad waitress hovered, presenting a tray of charcoal-fired lamb chops, which my companion politely declined.

I was seated on a white leather couch on the beach (what constitutes a Hamptons picnic) conversing with the Silver Fox’s paramour, L’actrice. A formidable woman, she has raised substantial children and has been through the entire New York City private school process.

“You’re dealing with crazy behavior. Five-thousand-dollar bottle service tables in the tenth grade.” She shrugged.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit old nowadays, to start with bottle service?” I joked.

“When you don’t give your children limits and there are no boundaries, they will either end up in jail for white-collar crime or in rehab. My friend’s child is in rehab for the fourth time. When they have unlimited credit cards and access to everything, there is a reckoning.” A waiter in only a bathing suit walked over offering Caribbean shrimp, which we waved away.

I spied a married woman in a metallic bikini chatting it up with the model/actor/surfer/bartender behind the bar. “You can’t make your children’s lives perfect and clean up every mess. If you hand your children a life they haven’t earned, they think the rules don’t apply to them.”

“Salmon on the bar-b?” the waitress offered.

“Filet mignon skewers? Sliders with remoulade?” another cater waiter asked.

We both shook our heads no as my friend reached into her Dior for her BluePrintCleanse.

“There are people who want to give their children everything they didn’t have … to be their children’s friend or buy them popularity. Or they’re not around enough and bribe them with money.”

“Hot dogs? Lobster roll?”

“Sometimes you just have to say no.”

“The new money prefers to live in splendid isolation.” Jonny Van der Klump, who hails from a Midwest fortune, swept the blond lock off his forehead at the club his great-grandfather helped found.

“In my great-grandfather’s day, great wealth was largely commodity and manufacturing based. Because the workers and the tasks were physical there was interaction. I remember when I went to the company Christmas parties as a child. I saw how many people my family was responsible for. I was taught to have a middle-class perspective, which is why I’m so frugal.”

“Is that different today?” I tickled my martini’s green olive with the swizzle stick.

“Great fortunes are being created through technology and finance, and there is little or no contact with workers, customers. One isn’t held accountable for bad behavior. Many wealthy exist in a cosseted ether. They live protected lives in luxury and don’t have to come in contact with the average person, adding up to a sense of unreality, the idea that the world exists for them and owes them what they want when they want it.”

“And your children?”

“They have good manners. It starts with how one treats the waitress.”

“Or taking an ill-behaved child out of the restaurant.”

“Some parents have no control over the basics.”

“Did you feel entitled growing up?”

“I felt I had a responsibility to serve. Not to be served,” he said, thanking the waiter profusely.

“When someone under the age of eleven asks you if you are flying private or commercial, you know things are out of hand.”

“That cannot be true.” I coughed.

I was at Sant Ambroeus with Jannsen (not his real name), an art dealer who resides in Europe.

“But it is.” He sipped his Negroni. “It was a client’s son. He wanted to know how I was getting to Miami Art Basel. When I told him that I was on Delta, he said, ‘Catch a ride with us.’ I was floored. I am not used to being invited on a G-4 by someone who comes up to my belt loop. What’s next? Lighting up a Cuban in his Volcom hoodie? Very inappropriate.”

“Did you say that?” I asked him.

“Richard, these people are my clients. My parents brought us up to be seen and not heard. In those days, money had rules. One didn’t flash it around. Today it’s all about competitive cash. Anyone with a few dollars expects all the accoutrements because they can throw a few Benjies on the table. It’s total money anarchy.”

“And how many of these people are your clients?”

“Ninety percent,” he said wistfully. “But don’t print that unless you disguise me.”

I battled the traffic on 27 to make it on time to the fund-raiser in Southampton. A dear friend was being honored at one of the turn-of-the-century estates. I respect his work ethic, big heart, good nature, and philanthropy and wanted to show up on time. I found him surrounded by his loving family and myriad others praising him on the honor.

As I gave him a hug and congratulated him, he mentioned his hardscrabble roots and how lucky he was to be able to give back.

“It’s due to your hard work, your vision, and your business ethic. And your amazing wife,” I offered.

“Thank you,” he mused. “So what’s your next article on, Richard?”

“I’m doing a piece on entitlement. Thoughts?”

“Yes,” he offered immediately. “I always say I wish I had my children’s upbringing, and I wish they had mine,” he said as he was called to the stage.

I couldn’t have agreed more as I thought of my own family. With that, the chocolate mousse was served.