With all the money in the world, the first thing Mackenzie Bezos should acquire is a man who doesn’t always put himself (and his plan for world domination) first
What kind of weirdo tells the world he is getting divorced from his loyal wife on Twitter? Claiming, ‘if we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all over again’.
Even by Hollywood standards, this is pretty bizarre.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (and the richest man in the world – at least before he’s reached a settlement) went on to gush that he and wife Mackenzie would remain ‘cherished friends’ with ‘wonderful futures ahead’.
If they get on that well, you might ask why split up?
Split: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon worth some $140billion, is divorcing wife MacKenzie
Perhaps the fact that the National Inquirer was just hours away from revealing flirtatious pictures of the billionaire with a Californian TV newsreader and their eight month affair might have had something to do with it.
How tawdry and predictable. I only hope Mackenzie sorted out her settlement before she signed up to his face-saving Gwyneth-speak.
Of course all the sugary comments were probably designed to reassure stockholders that whatever has happened behind closed doors in the Bezos household, it will be business as usual in the warehouses and boardrooms Mr Bezos controls all over the world.
The half a million employees need not worry, their ruthlessly monitored shifts in Amazon’s fulfillment centres will continue exactly as before.
Apart from Amazon, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post newspaper, the Blue Origin rocket company and Whole Foods, as well as countless startups, including one growing food on towers using artificial lights.
He’s always ready to look at new ideas and new ways of getting us to part with our cash.
‘Remaining friends: Jeff and MacKenzie are seen arriving at a corporate conference in 2013
Back then: Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are pictured together in the early 2000s
It always amazes me when people whinge about the world domination of Amazon, blaming the company for clogging up our roads with their deliveries, using tons of cardboard and wasteful packaging, and treating their employees at the fulfilment centres like drones with a pulse, checking on their movements, removing their belongings and enforcing strictly timed breaks.
Chatting is frowned upon- but surely if you wanted the kind of job where you could discuss the weather and last night’s television, you wouldn’t be opting to work the night shift in a giant warehouse?
The monster success of Amazon is not just down to the genius of Jeff Bezos, but is 100% the result of our laziness.
We claim to care about the environment, claim to want to support small businesses, claim to care about our favourite department stores.
Then we sit on our fat backsides and click a mouse, ordering from Amazon.
Jeff Bezos has brilliantly exploited our other innate weakness – not only are we lazy, when we want something, we want it NOW! Sod carbon emissions, we need our daily fix of an Amazon delivery.
I have no insider knowledge of life in the Bezos household, but having been married to a man who set up and ran a successful business, I can imagine what life was like for Mackenzie.
New paramour: Bezos is seen with Lauren Sanchez, the woman he is accused of having an affair with, and her husband Patrick Whitesell in 2016. The couple were said to be friends with Bezos and his wife before Bezos began seeing her on the side
The National Enquirer will publish photos of Bezos and Sanchez in this edition set to hit the stands on Thursday. Bezos announced his divorce in anticipation of the photos’ release
Jeff Bezos has gone to inordinate lengths to portray himself as just a normal kind of guy. He gets up early, goes to bed early, needs 8 hours sleep, doesn’t rely on an alarm clock.
He reads the newspaper every morning, drinks coffee and has breakfast with his kids. His wife drove them to school every day in an unostentatious Honda Accord until 2013.
Jeff Bezos says he likes to ‘putter’ in the mornings’, never has meetings before 10am and any serious issues are discussed before lunchtime.
He tries never to take serious work calls after 5pm and claims ‘doing the washing up every night is the sexiest thing I do’.
Chi-ching: Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos did not have a prenuptial agreement and she will therefore be entitled to half of his $140bn fortune – making her the richest woman in the world
‘As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,’ the statement posted to Jeff’s Twitter account on Wednesday read. ‘If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it again’
If he is this normal, you might ask how he’s garnered a fortune of 140 billion dollars! I get up early, I drink coffee and read the newspaper every day, I like a bit of washing up and I refuse to have any meetings before 9am… but I don’t have half a million employees, or at least five homes, one of which is a former museum in Washington.
Jeff Bezos is basically a nerd, through and through. A Star Trek fan, he finally got a walk on part in the last movie.
Another obsession is action movies starring Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock – well, both are bald men of a certain age.
Bezos, just like my ex-husband, built the original desks in his first office out of doors and cheap timber, and still has one to remind him of his roots.
Like my ex-husband, Jeff Bezos claims to be a homebody, but I am sure his wife has found out that whenever he is in the room, he might appear to be talking to you, he might give the impression of someone interested in supper or what you’ve been doing, but basically he is 100 per cent committed to his business 24/7.
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He is on another waveband. He will go to sleep thinking about work and get up ready to focus on it all over again.
You are on the sidelines, registering as an unavoidable distraction from his single goal- world domination.
Every tech billionaire is weird – Mark Zuckerberg with his pompous New Year resolutions (how about one to clean up Facebook properly and cut out the excuses?) and his dreadful taste in tee shirts, Elon Musk with his bizarre twitter rants and grandstanding pomposity.
At least Bill Gates and his wife just get on with spending their time fighting malaria and helping the poorest people in the world.
Jeff Bezos met his wife when he worked at a hedge fund and she applied for a job. They dated for three months and were married within six.
They’d been married for just a year when she agreed to chuck in everything and go to Seattle as he could start Amazon.
She’s been his tireless supporter, never speaking out of turn. An accomplished novelist, her first book won a major award in 2006, but she’s only written one since, bringing up three sons and an adopted daughter.
Maybe it’s about time Mackenzie put her life first.
There’s one thing all the money in the world can’t buy, and that’s an emotionally bankrupt man’s attention.
But at least with half Jeff’s $140billion fortune, she should be able to buy herself pretty much anyone else.
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