Getting Conned Into Working For Free
Brooksie Burdick and Kenneth Angel hired me as a personal assistant to help out while they were in Paris for their wedding. I had a few weeks off work, and I’ve done this for tons of other people, so I accepted. I worked for them December 28-31st. December 31, 2017 was their wedding. It was at the Shangri La Hotel. She begged me to find people to attend because she didn’t have people to go to the wedding. She even said I’ll pay for each person you get to come. That’s how desperate she was.
I felt really bad for her so I contacted everyone I knew. But Paris during New Years? No one is in town. Luckily a friend of mine ended up coming to Paris for the holiday. He was with a group, celebrating his honeymoon, so that was 12 people, and I had a further two more come. In total we were 15. This group alone was more than half of the people in attendance.
For the ceremony I looked after their son, and then two of my girlfriends ended up watching him while a friend tried to help me with their daughter. This was not an easy task because these children were up well past midnight. The daughter was already a handful who didn't listen or understand "no", and cranky children who aren’t allowed to sleep and weren’t given any food from 3:00-10:00pm? It took a whole village to try to calm and entertain them.
At one point, while trying to get the little girl to go to sleep, she laid down and threw up. I don’t even know how because she didn’t eat anything. I know this because I’m the one who was trying to feed her, but she wouldn’t eat any of the food. The dad came and just took her out of her dress and left her alone again. She was made to walk around in nothing but her panties. No diaper bag was provided. No snacks. No change of clothes. No diapers. Nothing. Who lets their kid walk around naked in a five star hotel?
Before the wedding I was told that the children wouldn’t be needed for much of the night and a room would be provided with a tv that they could go to. Nothing was provided. I had to ask the hotel to give me blankets, and a bed and when they did provide a foldout bed, it was placed in the middle of the salon where people were coming and going, and the music could be heard.
My group and I ended up leaving the wedding after the bride and groom left. We went back to their flat. They then begin to tell me that the bride was trash talking me to them, and told people in the group they weren’t going to pay me.
FYI, besides getting paid, there was no reason to have gone to this wedding. I didn’t know them from a fucking hole in the wall. The friends that I had invited rented a giant 800€ a night flat right on the Eiffel to ring in the new year. The group even ended up pulling together and buying this couple (who they did not know) a gift, and giving them 200€ in cash as a wedding present because they felt bad that they had no one to attend their wedding.
Long story sightly less long, I was not paid for the work I did that day. I was not paid for bringing over half her wedding. And when I texted her, she straight up ignored me.
I not only helped her the pervious days, but I went around Paris looking for weave glue for her, and dropped it off two hours before I was to meet her because she said she needed it right away, and I will go out of my way to try to help someone. I was not compensated for that either. I have better things to do then go around Paris looking for weave glue. She had someone with her there to do her hair and makeup, that person should have been going around looking for products for the hair that she was supposed to be styling.
For her to have the audacity to not pay me for my time when I could have been elsewhere (because who wants to go to a wedding, much less the wedding of someone they do not know?) pissed me off to no end. Pissed me off so much, I’m putting their ass on blast because that is just straight up trifling.
Instead of getting to countdown the New Year, I was inside making sure no one disturbed their son. Instead of having fun with everyone, I was sitting in a lobby trying to get their daughter to go to bed, and asking the hotel for beds, and linen, and diapers, and changing diapers, and trying to get their daughter to eat, and giving their son my phone the whole night so he could be distracted and not crying.
I hope karma comes back to bite them in the ass. Hard. And if anyone meets them or gets asked to work for them (they’re from the Florida Keys by the way), know that you are dealing with some grimey people.
*Update*
After making a report with the website where we met, she finally texted me and made up so many lies I thought I must have been in the Twilight Zone. She really tried to gaslight me.
She accused me of being drunk. FYI I don’t drink. That night, over the 9 hour period, I had two glasses of champagne. I don’t like to drink because I don’t like the way it makes me feel after, and I never get drunk in public in France because I find it terribly gauche, and third, if I’m working, it’s not in my nature to be unprofessional. She said that I was so drunk that the hotel staff threatened me and told me they were going to kick me out.
The only time I talked to any staff was to get blankets, and a bed, and diapers, and apologize and offer to help clean after their daughter threw up all over the hotel’s couch. I even asked my friends later what she could have been talking about but they said "you weren't drunk" and we barely saw you because you were with their children all night. So lie number 1.
She also told me that their Airbnb host was there. Where? There were only 23 people there, and 15 of them were the people I had brought. Apparently the Airbnb host had threatened to have me reported for child neglect. First off, if we want to talk about child neglect I can provide video I took of the Airbnb, where they were staying, where trash was thrown everywhere, dishes were piled in the sink, orange juice was spilled and stuck to the floor, the children had marked up the couch with markers, they drew on the walls, there was no food in the house for the children, the place looked like a trap house. It gives me anxiety to be in places like that. I start cleaning because filth literally makes my skin crawl.
Anyhow I happen to work with two French Senators, the CEO of an investment firm, two executives for Deutsche and BNP, and a couple who play for the Paris Philharmonic, I can provide references from pretty important people that can attest to my capabilities. Not to mention for the month of October I had worked for (in the same role I was providing for them) an American couple; a lawyer and a renowned surgeon, who could also verify this. But by all means “arrest me for child neglect”, the people who couldn’t put food in their house, had a dog they forgot about, people who put their kids in a 5m2 bedroom for hours so they could do nude photoshoots in the living room, people who hit their daughter with a belt, yes, report me to the French police.
Next lie, she said that she had asked me to take her children home but I had yelled that I wanted to stay and party with my friends. Girl stop lying. I’m a homebody, and the whole night I was at this shitshow I kept thinking ‘when can I finally get out of here’, ‘what’s an appropriate amount of time to stay before I can make my exit’. Believe me I would have happily left that wedding. I didn’t want to be there in the first place! It’s weird! Going to a wedding, for people I don’t know, surrounded by people who are only there because they’re getting paid to be there. They had no friends, no family, no one was there but people they were paying. The whole thing was bizarre, and all I could think about was how I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
She then said I wasn’t “a guest”, I was there to work. I agree with her on that. But I have emails and messages showing that she told me “you can party, and drink, and have a good time” and me replying back that I find that very uncomfortable and I would rather not.
She then said that her husband had tried to pay me 5 times. Wrong. Her husband finally came up to me when they were leaving. He said “how much do I owe you?”, I said "I’m not sure" because I hadn’t calculated how many hours I had worked and I was going to have to take a taxi home, so I said "I will get it from you tomorrow". A friend was standing next to me during this exchange, she can also verify this.
Then she said I was supposed to show up at 8am the next day and I failed to do that. No time was ever given. After the ceremony I didn’t even talk to Brooksie because she was too busy in her own little world and I was taking care of her daughter. What usually happened was she would text me, letting me know what time I was needed. She never texted. And why would she? She told the group of people I brought that she had no intention of paying me. When I heard about that (later, after the wedding) I knew I was never going to hear from her again. I can smell trash, and after seeing the way they were, how they lived, how they dressed, I had a gut feeling that these people were all about pretending they were something they weren’t.
At this point all I can do is make a report at the prefecture so I can report them on the site I found them on, and submit a claim to Texas Small Claims Court. She claims to have video evidence but when I asked for this "video" she didn't send it.
What really pushed me over the edge was the slander and the false accusations. I am not someone who gets white girl wasted and acts like a fool. I live in France, you don’t do that here. It’s trashy and classless. That might be okay in the sticks of Florida where they’re from, but I wasn’t raised white trash like them.
At the end of the day I have the receipts. I have the screenshots, the emails, the eyewitnesses who can back me up. I just had to tell this story because you really couldn't make this up. The gas lighting, the friendless/family-less wedding, the absurdity of it all. It's too much.