Jobs of the job-bereft future

Olivia Ferney, who is 25, is a "luxury-travel specialist." She doesn't have any particular background in mondo deluxe. Her parents were school teachers. 

But a couple of years ago, she was in a club in Miami where she met Troy Arnold, the founder of Top Tier Travel, an agency that specializes in luxury travel. She was job hunting, he was hiring, and, as it turned out, it was a marriage made in heaven. (Well, it's not a marriage yet, but the couple's engaged.)

Turns out, Top Tier was doing just fine, working with billionaires who wanted someone else to make sure they could "go places and eat things,"* without having to rub shoulders with any of the hoi or the polloi. But the business wasn't really taking off. 

Prior to the arrival of Ferney on the scene, Top Tier had gotten its business based on "word of mouth and discretion." Turns out that Ferney was pretty darned good at social media and began posting videos of the over-the-top trips and events she was planning. She now has 2 million followers who gobble up her videos. 

Of course, those 2 million followers aren't buying what Top Tier is selling. They're gawkers. But all those gawkers have been good for building Ferney's brand, and that of Top Tier. 

Ferney is on Time's list of this year's "top 100 digital influencers."

And Fifth Season, the production company behind “Severance” and “Killing Eve,” has signed a deal with Ferney and her business partner and fiancé, Troy Arnold, for a scripted series based on their agency, Top Tier Travel. (Source: NY Times)

Clients pay through the nose for the privilege of having Ferney and the Top Tier team cater to their every whim. 

Each client of Top Tier Travel must fork over an annual fee of $100,000 and agree to book $1 million in yearly travel. 

Make that travel or whim execution. And while $1 million may seem like a lot to devote to ultra-non-discretionary spending in any given year, it all adds up if you're a billionaire who wants Ferney to fly to Paris to pick up the largest croissant that the City of Light has to offer because your daughter wants one. Or you're willing to shell out $2.25 million for a week's rental of a yacht so you can cruise around the Côte d'Azur,

Then there was the med-tech entrepreneur who wanted to make a big splash to celebrate closing a mega business deal. 

That big splash involved uncorking $226K worth of champagne - 125 bottles of Perrier Jouet Grand Brut, 50 bottles of Dom Pérignon Brut Luminus and five bottles of Dos Hombres Blanco tequila - and setting the Guinness world record for "largest champagne presentation."

“No one is really even going to drink the champagne,” Ferney said, noting that her plan called for scores of servers to blast the partygoers with bubbly.

...They hoisted bottles of Dom Pérignon above their heads. At a signal from Diplo [celebrity DJ], corks popped. Some servers began hosing down a dancer ensconced in a prop Martini glass, while others sprayed champagne at the crowd, thus achieving a Guinness-worthy feat that was the equivalent, in terms of pointless excess, to scaling Mt. Everest.

It almost goes without saying that this happened in Vegas, demonstrating yet again that there's plenty that happens in Vegas that doesn't stay in Vegas. (Although the party animal entrepreneur paying for this spray spree wanted to remain anonymous.)

Re all this excess, Arnold says:

"Basically, we have normalized what’s insane.”

That seems to be happening a lot lately. (C.f., Washington DC.) 

Ferney's take: 

“Our job is to execute, not judge.” 

She also says that, when it comes to the wealthy, there's "at least one misconception:"

“People think the superrich are unhappy,” she said. “They’re not.”

Good to know. Damn!

Anyway, I was thinking what an inane job Freny has, what a foolish use of someone's energy, brains, and creativity - talents that could be put to something a bit more for the good. (Unlike Top Tier, Pink Slip's unpaid job is to both execute and judge.)

And then I got to thinking, and my thinking is the Ferney is really onto something. Once AI ingests all the jobs out there, the only jobs in the job-bereft future may well be those that cater to the ultra-wealthy, the only folks who'll be able to afford to hire actual humans. For the rest of us, the kids will be taught by AI. Robots will provide our healthcare. ChatGPT will be our shrink. 

How often am I going to have to write "O brave new world?"

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*This is a nod to the Three Stooges. Like most women, I was not a huge fan. Like most men, my husband was. There's a classic line from one of their movies - a line my husband often quoted when we were heading out to dinner - in which one of the Stooges' dates gets in the car and says "Let's go places and eat things." Now you know. 

Image Source: Vector Stock