Everyone has their own standard for what they consider to be 'stupidly rich'. Some might set their aspirations at more simple things - such as possessing the means to provide three hearty and nutritious meals for their family a day, while others will consider themselves to be bordering on penury if they cannot afford to maintain a well-staffed pleasure yacht for each of their 13 concubines.
Personally, an episode of MTV's early-noughties voyeurathon, Cribs, cemented in my mind a benchmark for wealth which I would spend the rest of my childhood yearning for. The episode in question featured a musician, who's name is lost to the fog of memory - specifically my memory, I'm sure anyone with the inclination could quite easily find this episode. While this musician was ferrying the camera-crew through their sprawling mansion, which invariably featured a despairingly imbalanced ratio of flat-screen televisions to inhabitants, they arrived in their bedroom and proudly declared in front of their wardrobe, "I wear a brand new pair of clean, white socks each day. I never wear the same pair twice. After they're worn, they're out."
For a long time this, to me, represented the height of affluence. I spent a significant portion of the noughties pining for a future where I might possess enough disposable income that I could employ a similarly decadent approach to sock ownership.
As soon as I entered my twenties however, gainful employment and the proliferation of fast fashion, meant that this came to be a possibility at a far lower income threshold than I would've previously envisaged. Thankfully however, due to a greater awareness of environmental concerns, societal tolerance toward such reckless extravagance declined. I can only hope that the attitudes of the musician in question have remained in step with the shifting mores of society. Perhaps he has even established some sort of trust to begin to fund the safe disposal of the thousands of once-worn socks that occupy some vast landfill in a developing country. We can but hope.
All that is to say that there are realms of wealth out there which remain a near alien concept to the majority of us. These two jobs, alluded to in the title, reside within the orbit of such wealth. They are in the service of a family who are, apparently so wealthy that they are described - on the website advertising these jobs - in a parlance that I have never before encountered. They are apparently an 'UHNW family'. Some swift Googling informed me that this means, 'Ultra High Net Worth' and is used to describe people who have over $30 million in liquid assets. In short, they are offensively rich.
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Offensively rich and, potentially, your next employer. They are looking to hire two people to act as - let's not dress this up too much - servants to the family. They are seeking two people to become attendants to the family who will be happy to live with them in New York and Switzerland. They say that they will roughly spend six months of the year living in Manhattan, three in Switzerland and the other three traveling around the family's 'various properties'.
While living in Manhattan, the two successful applicants will be provided with their own mid-town apartment, while in Switzerland they will have a private en-suite bedroom in the family's chalet. I'm sure this sounds like a suitably bizarre opportunity for you and a friend to consider applying.
Aside from the traveling and accommodation, you will be paid roughly €70,000 per annum, but this could vary depending on experience. To see the full list of what they're looking for in terms of proficiency and experience, take a gander at the advertisement on the obscenely grandiosely named 'Silver Swan Recruitment'.
