Absurdity
Billionaire Explains $100M Yacht Is Actually Creating Jobs for Yacht Cleaners
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
NEWPORT BEACH, CA. Dallas-based billionaire Harlan Bryce held a press conference Thursday aboard his newly delivered 280-foot superyacht, the Meridian Principle, to clarify that the $100 million vessel is, at its core, a jobs program.
"People see a yacht and they see excess," Bryce told reporters from a teak sun deck roughly the size of a Whole Foods. "What I see is opportunity. Eleven families. Eleven sets of bills getting paid because Harlan Bryce had the vision to need somewhere to store his jet skis."
The Meridian Principle, which sleeps fourteen guests and one rotating sommelier, currently employs a crew of thirty-one, including four dedicated hull cleaning specialists, a provisions coordinator, a man whose entire job title is Director of Towel Logistics, and, as of last quarter, a licensed HR generalist named Todd.
Todd, who asked that his last name not be used because he is still technically on probation from his previous HR position at a mid-sized insurance company, confirmed that the yacht's employee handbook runs to sixty-two pages and includes a formal grievance procedure, a section on appropriate communication with Mr. Bryce's children, and a paragraph prohibiting staff from making eye contact during the owner's morning gratitude walk.
"We have a really healthy culture here," Todd said. "Harlan is very focused on psychological safety, as long as it doesn't affect turnaround time on the linen."
Bryce's remarks come amid a broader public conversation about wealth inequality, a conversation Bryce described as "mostly driven by people who have never had to maintain a vessel this size" and "frankly a little unfair to the marine economy."
His publicist, Gwendolyn Park, distributed a one-page fact sheet to journalists listing the yacht's economic contributions, which include $14,000 per month in specialty cleaning products, a $3,200 quarterly contract with a company that restores the brass fittings, and what the sheet describes as "meaningful indirect support" for a small cafe in the marina where crew members sometimes buy coffee before their shifts.
Park noted that the cafe has not been informed of its role in the billionaire's economic ecosystem.
"When you zoom out," Bryce said, straightening in his captain's chair, which is not a chair he is licensed to sit in because he does not have a captain's license, "this yacht is basically infrastructure."
The four hull cleaning specialists, reached separately near the stern while buffing oxidation from a section of fiberglass roughly at knee height, offered a more granular account of the opportunity Bryce had described.
One of them, a man named Crispin who has worked in marine maintenance for nine years, said the Meridian Principle is the finest vessel he has ever cleaned and that he cleans it every three days whether it has been used or not, because Mr. Bryce's charter guests sometimes apply sunscreen near the waterline.
"The dental," Crispin said, "is not included."
Bryce said he is already in discussions with his financial advisors about a second yacht, which he expects to support an additional eight to twelve positions and which he has provisionally named the Trickle.
Congressional Republicans have asked him to testify.
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