What's the most privileged/off the mark post/response you've read?

[waywardways]

I've name changed for this, just in case anyone does an AS and accuses me of getting DM fodder.

Me and the DC had to flee our home several years ago and we were moved into a tiny 2 bed flat temporarily. I made a thread at the time, saying me and 3dc had had a traumatic move and were very overcrowded and asked for advice on how to store our daily stuff in an efficient way.
Several posters replied helpfully, linking shelving units/freestanding storage, but one poster replied along the lines of:

"Your DH must be high up in the army and you have to rough it in officers housing until your 5 bed detached home is ready".

Another poster quoted the above with "This was my immediate thought too! It's so hard OP, but we've all been there".

I found this both amusing and perplexing because a) I would never have assumed the above and b) it was so far off the mark.

There was another thread very recently about food guidelines where the lack of awareness and privilege was quite frightening!

I have a lovely friend, who is very privileged. She’s said a few things over the years.

One was when we were talking about retirement and how I hoped I had been contributing enough to my pension etc.

She said something along the lines of ‘well by the time you retire you’ll have had your inheritance so you won’t have to worry so much about how big your pension is.’

I explained that no, I wouldn’t be inheriting anything.

when we were 20 and I wanted driving lessons but couldn’t afford them, she told me i could just use the money I’d get when I turned 21, I asked her what she meant and she said ‘well surely your (single) mum has a fund for you, she might give it to you when you’re 21’

I went to Bristol university, and somehow landed in a group of well off friends. I worked on Saturdays and during the holidays. Once one of my friends said they’d wanted to ask me for a while, but could I explain why I worked so much? Wouldn’t I prefer to just relax on the weekend and go travelling in the holidays instead? And I could do a one week internship if I wanted work experience.

they thought I was working for ‘my CV’, not because without my job I wouldn’t be able to afford to feed myself.

also the fact the just assumed everyone can get a one week internship at a top law / finance firm with the click of a finger.

No one is this obtuse and clueless, surely to not understand that most people only have one car/the realities of terraced housing. Really?

They aren't telling them to stay in Europe,they are saying they shouldn't go ANYWHERE as it will increase their carbon footprint and so many DC globally will die from respiratory issues caused by the air pollution from your selfish holiday.

" can you not get a cleaner"?

Ha brilliant - where do these people come from 🫣
Without even meaning to they made me
laugh out loud.

I agree. I often thought I was doing ok as a single parent with my own home. but no, I have a washing machine in my kitchen........

The driving one really annoys me, on every driving thread you get so many posters acting like not being able to drive is a moral failing - it’s ridiculous.

Learning to drive is expensive, time consuming (and at the moment - near impossible due to the significant backlog and DVSA issues). But not being able to drive really seems to rile a lot of posters on Mumsnet, it’s bizarre, especially when in real life I’d say only around 50% of the people I know drive. The rest of them still manage to have lives, jobs and families.

There was a thread once by an OP who couldn't believe that her friend had invited her over for a quick sandwich lunch and not only had she been served a sandwich on a side plate, but the bread was a white, pan loaf. It was very funny with a 50:50 split between "I'd rather die than eat a white pan loaf" and "how else do you eat a sandwich".

Just in

”Anyone who thinks 50k is a high earner is getting 35k in universal credit and school dinners”

How shameful 😁 you could try propping a Picasso or Da Vinci painting in front of it!

Colleague who lives in a large modern house outside of London asking why I didn't fit a heat pump as I sat shivering in my unheated Victorian flat. Hmm yes why didn't I think of that.

I’m sorry, this makes me laugh. This is exactly what I’d say. I hope you kept it up as it’s great cardio and park runs are fab.

The worst are the ones who see it as a failing to adult and then proudly go on about how they bought each of their children a car and paid for all their driving lessons (and it’s upkeep!) and the clever things were all driving by 17!

And one poster saying her kids ( still in their early twenties) refuse to date a non driver.

See also: those who would never buy a flat, you should just get a house instead.

Great, so you’ll pay the extra £££ for me, then?

This is it! The snobbiest, braggiest, most tone deaf, spoiled, arrogant and off-key post I’ve ever read on Mumsnet!

I’m only up to page 5, mind.

Reminds me of when I was 17. A very close school friend, who had often been to my family home which was a 3 bed semi in town, was astonished I didn’t know how to drive.
‘But haven’t you been driving round the fields?’ What fields you idiot?!
She was an only child from a very wealthy family who lived in a massive country pile. Lovely, but it had never occurred to her what those lifestyle differences meant in practice.

In the end I was 25 when I learned to drive, took that long before I could afford to pay for it and the car. My parents very unreasonably prioritised keeping my siblings fed and housed and had no spare.

I read one thread about how to get kids to do more exercise and a woman living in Switzerland boasted that her son did 2-3 hours of physical activities every day such as hiking and rock climbing in the mountains, and how all kids should be doing the same. I don't know if it occurred to her that not all of us have mountains nearby, or if all children have 3 hours spare after school to scale one. She was certainly very defensive when someone pointed that out.

My ex MIL frequently judged people who paid things by instalments and would say "We prefer to pay the whole thing in one go" about stuff like council tax etc...

Well, yes, wouldn't everyone prefer to have the money to pay everything in advance for the whole year?

She couldn't accept that it was anything other than a choice for many people though.

So sorry to hear how awful people some people were to you.

The food threads and in particular the UPF ones are INSANE. People act like giving your kids white supermarket bread is akin to giving them crack cocaine for lunch.

And think fruit is a healthy snack? Think again. May as well just pour the sugar right down their throat.

I remember one thread where I commented that I sometimes fed my eldest on occasion fish fingers etc because I work full time and on weekends we spend visiting family, friends etc and am now on maternity leave and pre-occupied with a baby.

The OUTRAGE that this occurred from posters was unreal. The usual from posters that they managed to work full time with multiple children and still find the time to make absolutely everything (flatbreads included of course) from scratch and because they did it, therefore everyone else must be able to manage as well.

When I challenged this and said I did not want to spend a whole day each weekend to chained to the kitchen, I was asked why I didn't make this into a fun activity with my children and they had great memories with their young children doing this.

Completey ignoring the fact I had a 3 year old and baby and most 3 year olds have the attention span of a goldfish. Plus I'm sure mine would actually have more fun you know outside, playing etc than a whole day cooking!

😆

God knows how they would feel about the fact I made cheese and ham toasties on Warburtons white sliced bread this weekend 😬

This is off topic but my DS with autism and sensory issues once had a full on meltdown at the school gate. He was about 9 at the time.

One of the mothers was watching with what can only be described as a sneer on her face.

later on that day she texted me and suggested that I 'stop feeding him refined carbs'.

The funniest thing? She worked in CAMHS. FFS if that was the best she could do.......

It's a different type of "privilege" (that of health rather than money) but there are people who specifically come onto the weight loss injection threads to tell people suffering from chronic morbid obesity (a metabolic disease) that they should "just eat less and move more", like this is some sort of revelation and everyone should be grateful for the amazing wisdom which we had never thought of trying.

They have to do that just to get to school in Switzerland. I've seen Heidi !!

Also, on the non-wealth related privilege theme: the (now ex) friend who told me, when my autistic son turned out to be non-speaking, having already had a long period of speech therapy, "oh [wide-eyed "kind and helpful" expression] maybe you should try TALKING to him! I'm mad, me [tinkling laugh], I talk to my children all the time!".