These guys who "earn" a million a year, or maybe a lot more, who have accumulated mega millions or even billions. You ever talk to them? I do. Some of them are my clients.

I usually get the happy friendly greeting, the "I'm going to speak to you as if you were my equal" greeting. "Hey, Guy". "Hey, Lennie". When someone you don't really know is being a little too friendly, it's one of those tipoffs that he's obscenely wealthy, and what's more, he wants something out of you.

And then they get so insulted and surprised when you treat them as if they were just like everyone else. I had this scene just last week. One of these mega wealthies hadn't paid our bill, back to April. Yet he was pressing for some new work to be done, not that there was really any reason to be in a hurry for it. By the way, that's another tipoff that you're dealing with one of these mega wealthies. They put a rush on their own stuff, for no reason, wanting it to go before everyone else's.

Two of the higher ups in my office were discussing the matter. They wanted this guy's work to be given top priority, moved ahead of everyone else's, knowing that there was no reason to do so except to keep this prick happy, but then they noticed the unpaid bill from April so they said hold it, we think this guy may be ripping us off, we have to collect this money before we do more for him. But neither one of them had the nerve to tell him so. They were fishing for a way around it, and then I volunteered to just call him up and tell him so. They thought "Good ole Lennie".

So I called the guy up. I just busted right out with it. What the hell do I care about this rich prick? I said that our office manager informed us that there is an unpaid bill, so we can't do the new work until it is paid. The guy didn't want to hear that. He said "If there was an unpaid bill, why didn't you guys call me about it? That bill was all the way back in April."

And there, he was caught, the asshole. Because I hadn't told him the bill went back to April. He volunteered that. Who the hell remembers when a bill arrived? Nobody. But he did, because he knew damn well he hadn't paid it. Weird dude. It was small too.

Another characteristic of really ultra rich guys. They don't like to pay their bills, and they whine and moan about it. They ask for discounts. They get all friendly about it. It is the common reaction to excuse them by saying "That's how they got so rich." But that is not true. More accurately, you could say that someone who will devote his life to becoming so rich, or someone who inherited that many millions from mommy and daddy, is also very likely to be a fucking miser who belongs in a Charles Dickens novel.

My call resulted in him paying the bill immediately. I wasn't cutting the guy any slack. I'm not impressed by his millions. So right away, this week, he called me, all friendly again, asking about his work. I told him I was working on it, and that a few questions arose that needed to be answered, and he cuts me off with "Put in in an email." A little brusqueness there. I could read right through him. He's transparent. He was putting on his friendly act, and then he decided to put on his busy important man act, and he was disturbed that I had the nerve last week to make him obey my company's rules.

Then there was this other guy, much richer than this one. The other guy is truly one of the nation's wealthiest men. Multi billionnaire. Real estate. Strip malls. One of his people, the guy who sells him life insurance, told me that this rich guy is so cheap that if he goes out to eat with you and orders a tuna sandwich, his arms get really short when it's time to pay for it, and somebody else has to come up with the five dollars, like clockwork.

Friggin freaks.