Nervous so start my new job as everyone there is very "middle class" and I'm not

[nervousz]

I'm trying to word this carefully as I am not trying to offend people or make it sound like I'm being judgemental.

I'm a recent graduate from a very working class background and grew up quite poor (free school meals, council house, a really rough secondary school). I am not ashamed of my background but ever since I started university I have found that my background is very different to most people I interact with. There are certain aspects of my life I choose not to talk about or I gloss over. I don't like opening up about my background, it can be quite painful and heavy.

I recently got a job offer for my chosen career field and I was really excited. However, I have recently been looking at the company social media and there are video clips of employees and they are all come across as very middle-class (or what I would call "posh"), confident and well-spoken. There are little clips with questions about getting to know different members of the team with questions like favourite place you've travelled to (I've never been abroad, don't even have a passport), favourite sport to play (never played a sport outside of PE lessons at school), favourite concert you've been to (never been to a concert). Obviously I'm an adult now and can change things like having never been abroad but I feel like my worldview is so limited and small that I don't even think about it.

I'm not judging them, I'm sure they are lovely people but there is just this pit in my stomach about it. It reminds me of people at university who would talk about boarding school and polo and traveling and how it felt like we lived in completely different worlds. I did click with the people on my interview (which is why I accepted the offer) so I'm hoping that that is a better reflection of the company culture rather than a glossy social media account.

I'm sure there are others who can relate to this and I was wondering if any of you had any advice.

[quote SmallChairs]@thevassal, I don’t drive for medical reasons, so have no licence, so I actually use my passport a fair bit for photo ID. In fact, I’d be pretty stuck without it. And I think you’re out of date with the registered professionals, which now include licensee of a pub, nurse, post office official, teacher, Salvation Army worker, minister of any organised religion, local councillor etc — it’s hardly a matter of needing to play golf with your MP and bank manager.[/quote]
OP hasn't said she doesn't drive though? Presumably she has used something for ID up until now so it's hardly a neccessity or caused any hardship so don't know why you are extrapolating your circumstances onto her.

There was a thread on here just recently complaining that dr's can't sign passports and they don't know everyone else, and I see facebook posts come up on my local community site often saying they need a signature. My sister is a teacher in a poor area and often has parents asking her to sign theirs which she can't because she doesn't know the parents well or for two years. Nurses, teachers, local councillors etc are all still professional jobs! If all your family/friends work in shops, factories, hairdressers etc it's not that easy, especially if you are young so your own friends are only just graduating so have to rely on your parents' acquaintances. You can't just pop along to your local church/mosque/post office etc - they need to know you personally for at least two years.

Given that the OP has already stated that she intends to acquire a passport, it seems odd that anyone should be so keen to tell her that she isn’t in a position to get one.

Surely the point is that she is piercingly conscious of her new colleagues’ wider opportunities and experiences - and the perceptible social gap caused by her own lack of foreign travel. She will presumably soon be being paid a salary - perhaps not an enormous amount but probably more than in her first job. So it won’t be money that stops her getting on a weekend ferry to Dublin. Taking this significant step, getting a passport, will be a tangible move from the limitations of the past into the possibilities she has earned for herself in the present.

And yes, it can be vital for ID, even if one is not about to leave the country.

@edmontine I think the parents of uni friends one is a bit of a stretch - even the friends I lived with for three years I barely met their parents more than once or twice!

Im certainly not telling OP why she can't get a passport (I think it's a great idea), and wasn't suggesting that OP herself would be completey unable to find anyone to sign her passport if she wished, as she indeed appears to be doing. I was disagreeing with the comment "your background doesn't prevent you from getting one" - as IMHO being poor and not having a lot of people around you going on regular holidays or having passports are exactly the sort of things that do discourage if not prevent it, so it is completely understandable that OP doesn't have one yet- as OP herself said its not that she couldn't get a passport for whatever reason, it's that it wasn't even something on her radar.

I read silver chairs' comment as saying rather pompously that OP "really should" already have a passport at her age, rather than suggesting she might now want to think about getting one, and I maintain that if you don't have much money it is completely understandable why you wouldn't pay out nearly 80 quid for something you have no immediate use for, would be a complete pain if you lost, etc.

No-one is telling OP that she isn't in a position to get a passport. They're pointing out that the notion that an adult "should" have one seems a little strange.

I'm 45 and haven't had a passport for getting on for twenty years. Having a child whose medical needs which make it challenging to travel within the UK rather removes the need for one. I have my driving license for ID.

I think on a thread like this telling the OP that she 'should' have a passport comes close to saying "yes, you're right, you should be trying to be like those other people". OP has said she does want a passport and is going to get one, and that's great, bit it's important she's doing things like this because she wants to for her, not just to fit in to what she perceives as a different class environment in her new role.

OP, you sound great and I'm sure once you get settled in your new job you'll look back on this and wonder why you were concerned about it! I hope it all goes really well for you.

In my experience your Eton crew with money in the family are the least snobby people you will ever meet and some of the very lower middle class the most snobby. I also know someone who over emphasises their council scheme background credentials. Just be yourself people are people at the end of the day and the good ones don’t judge you on your background. Turn the conversation around so for example I can’t wait to get my passport and explore once Covid allows where can you recommend for my first trip etc.

@thevassal, you seem quite to enjoy creating imaginary difficulties in other people’s lives.

The OP has possibly had student ID which has sufficed till now. Obviously I have no idea, and nor do you, whether she has a driver’s licence.

I’m simply pointing out that there are other genuine uses for a passport, and that it is perfectly likely that the OP will know one of her old school teachers or university lecturers, the person who is the postmaster/mistress of the post office near where she grew up, ditto the licensee of a local pub, her GP practice nurse, her dentist, a local priest, imam or minister, a local police constable etc. It’s not that she needs to be on hobnobbing terms with her local MP or solicitors or airline pilots to countersign.

I have certainly not implied that the OP should, in getting a passport, ‘try to be like’ her new colleagues. However, she’s young and independent, newly in a graduate job and thinks her life so far has been ‘limited’ and says that now she’s an adult she can ‘change things like never having been abroad’. Why wouldn’t she get a passport?