Home bargains hell.

[ilovepixie]

Just visited Home Bargains for the first time. What a horrible shop. Full of the great unwashed and plastic tat! People standing around talking, you can’t get past them. The queuing system is mad! Everyone stands up one aisle and then goes to a till when it’s free. What wrong with queuing normally behind each individual till.
You may save a few pence but you’ll loose your sanity!

Well I’m a scouser so we grew up with home and bargain (as we still call it).

You’d have looked down your nose at me last week whilst I balanced a cardboard sleigh under one arm and a basket full of Christmas shower gels, dog treats and ceramic Christmas houses on the other - I only went in for envelopes!!

Jesus people calm down. The great unwashed was coined by Edward Bulwer -Lytton, it was commonly used to describe a mass of ordinary working class people. It can now be used to describe the general public. And yes Home Bargains was hell, people shoving, blocking aisles and due to half term children crying for plastic toys that will break within minutes. I don’t like the shop, but then again I don’t like most shops, I prefer quieter peaceful shops where I have time to browse, or even better internet shopping.
if you like shopping in these types of shops, great! If you don’t, great too! We are all different!

Thread didn't go the way you wanted it to @ilovepixie ???

Maybe you should take your own advice in future......

From your last post on here. ^

if you like shopping in these types of shops, great! If you don’t, great too! We are all different!

Yes, we are all different, and people who shop in Home Bargains, B & M, and Poundstretcher and the like don't deserve to have people looking down their nose at them.

And that is that you were doing. (And are continuing to do.)

The Home Bargains crowds you describe, and uncontrolled children, and complete mayhem you are describing is nothing like the Home Bargains in my little local town. It's lovely, and a pleasure to walk around. No badly behaved children - or people. And lots of good, reasonably priced goods.

Maybe you don't live in such a nice area as I do.

.

You didn't mean 'the general public' though, did you? You used the term 'the great unwashed' because it has negative connotations and made you feel superior. And now you're pretending it was all just a bit of a joke. I'm glad most of the commenters here saw your post for what it was.

Nice touch of gaslighting.

The great unwashed was coined by Edward Bulwer -Lytton, it was commonly used to describe a mass of ordinary working class people. It can now be used to describe the general public.
Name dropper! Was he an ancestor? Was it his daughter who was a Suffragist who went to prison and did not live to old age?

Perhaps it is a term used to describe the general public - but only by raging snobs!

It's a turn of phrase. Get over yourself and nip to Home Bargains.

Bulwer-Lyton's description of ordinary working class people as 'the great unwashed' is not acceptable usage for the general public of the UK (or anywhere). Or have you forgotten that government whip who lost his job for calling a policeman a pleb? Not sure what sphere you live in but 'great unwashed' is rude (even though it probably includes both you and me from the pov of people who talk about the lower orders in this country).

It's unacceptable to call ordinary people the great unwashed and suggests the OP is a raging snob or belongs to the 1% of the 1% (which I don't believe they do). I have only been in Home Bargains once (bought oil paints, a tube of toothpaste and used the loo - which was the reason I went in - staff very helpful, no queue).

It’s unacceptable to you. Don’t forget that.

Meh - choose your words better in future. I think you’ve got the “reaction” you wanted though.

The general non-judgemental term for the masses would be "hoi polloi", @ilovepixie

(You're welcome).

YABU - just don't go in. You weren't frogmarched in or detained. You left 😄

ilovepixie I hate shopping too!
When I have to go, I usually take on the mission when I know there’ll be fewer folk, (especially screaming babies☹️) about.

This!

No, not this. I go to a few Home Bargains in the cities I go to for work and the one where I live (average part of a north west city) and they’re all the same - a bit grim.

Home Bargains don’t put their shops in Clifton, Hampstead, Didsbury, Morningside etc.

Exactly this, theres a fair bit of gaslighting going on in this thread. Different shops are aimed at different markets, theres nothing wrong with that

People who are better off (unless canny) dont tend to go there, there will be always be outliers before someone says 'I shop in M+S and Home Bargains'. Yes there will always be people that go in a mixture of shops but for the rest of us, we go there because its cheap

But the clientel is akin to that, often with scruffy families, unruly kids, and yes Ive seen a rough looking 'support dog' that was nothing of the sort but who is going to challenge the owner?

LOL. I cannot do this either!

Not so much because of the clientele, more the crowds in a room without windows and utter impossibility of finding a member of staff.

Last time I went I had to leave due to complete sensory overload (I'm not ND).

DH takes them now.

I've never seen an XL bully with or without a harness inside or out of Home Bargains. Or anywhere else in fact. The local Facebook page would implode, there's enough fuss about dogs in general.

They are in mixed areas near me, including some that are working class (I can sense you shuddering from here). I don’t see anyone that appears not to wash in any of them and the stores are clean and well organised. Like I said, perhaps it’s the area the OP lives in.

Not sure what it is about this site, I notice it more on there than other forums where people struggle with phrasing.

The great unwashed is just a phrase to mean the bog standard rabbly public, you and me, not posh people, the proletariat if you like (and someone will take issue with that descriptor no doubt)

It doesnt literally mean someone doesnt wash.

Anyone this expression (the great unwashed) is acceptable to is beyond the pale. It is a term of opprobrium and that is how the OP used it.

OP could have written a much less sneering description of her HB shopping experience and wouldn't have got such pushback. Plenty of ways to put it with a touch of humour not punishing down or whatever they call it.

My nearest HBs is 2 doors up from a M&S foodhall ( which has just been extended) so perfectly placed to suit a range of savvy shopping.

And of course you apparently shouldnt use the term 'beyond the pale'. Its highly offensive to some people.

So that’s you, then.