Marc Benioff's 'real life Seinfeld' situation

American tech billionaire Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, got to relive a scene straight out of Seinfeld while travelling across Europe recently. When Benioff stopped by famous Paris café — L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon — for lunch, the maître d’ refused to serve him. The CEO later sent out a tweet saying, “Wow turned away by MaîtreD for lunch @ L’Atelier de Joel Rubuchon! ‘No Foie Gras Burger for you!’Real life Seinfeld !” Benioff wouldn’t say why, no matter how many times he was asked via Twitter and Facebook.

Possible reasons include: He didn’t have a reservation. He was wearing sneakers. The maître d’ was just feeling ornery. In fact, that might be closest to the truth, since Benioff called the situation “Real life Seinfeld".

He was, of course, referring to the famous Seinfeld episode the “Soup Nazi,” based on a real-life New York City soup vendor with strict rules as to how his customers should behave if they wanted to be served.

Popular tech blogger Robert Scoble couldn’t help but to rub it in, leaving this comment on Benioff’s Facebook page, “Been there twice now. Love their cookies! #firstworldproblems Where did you go instead?”

The situation was strange for Benioff, whose net worth is $3.2 billion (Rs 19,250 crore) and has rock-star status in his home town, San Francisco.