AIBU to think that workmen should offer to take their shoes off in your house?

[Dollslikeyouandme]

I'm a shoes off in the house person, and always offer to take mine off when visiting. It's not because I'm a weird cream carpet visitor slippers freak. But I have carpet, a ds who likes to play on the floor. And a neighbourhood where the streets seem to be covered in dog shit.

I hate asking people to take off their shoes, so usually don't, and just hope they do anyway.

I've noticed workmen never take off their shoes, and lately I've had to have a few people in and around the house and gave been cringing at their boots standing on my bathmat mainly.

I just think shoes on carpets are gross.

MrsDeVere, you are right. Roots are class-based.
Logic being 'I can't afford to get my carpets cleaned and replaced' vs 'How dare you suggest I can't afford to get my carpets cleaned/replaced'. Also, the over-familiarity in the act of removing shoes and wandering around barefoot/sock-clad is relevant. So is the discomfort of one's guests.
Hygiene didn't really come into it originally.
As I said above, the lines have become somewhat blurred now, but it is a post-war thing. No need for anyone to take offence, some things just DO have origins like this.

Catsize there has been a lot of sneering on this thread.

MrsDeVere & Catsize: if it is a class thing, how far back does it go? Only to the 70s & 80s, or earlier? It wasn't just fitted carpets that came in around then, it was also central heating: you can't go around barefoot in an unheated house.

MN is very class conscious I find.

Terribly class conscious - and then say there is no such thing these days!

Erm, dolls, not sure if you accusing me of sneering, but as said above, we are a shoes off household that still lets guests over the threshold if they want to wear shoes.

Goes back to around the 1950s. Post-war thing.

No sorry not you cat size, or mrsdevere, there were a few posters earlier in the thread being rather vile and using the class argument to be very sneery.

It's perfectly possible to make a point whether it be about roots cultural and religious differences or just the difference between living in a dirty city or just having personal preferences without sneering and not being able to understand that people just don't think the way you do.

Oh, okay then. Phew!

missy - calm down and read the whole thread? shoe covers for workmen in most cases (major renovations / demolition aside) were already discussed looooong ago!

MrsD - I'm not sure if you're saying that it was a working class thing to take your shoes off indoors, or the opposite? I'd have thought that if there was a class aspect to it at all, it would be the middle classes who took their shoes off because their houses would be better heated (and maybe more likely to have impractical light-coloured carpets...) Also, would you agree that class markers in one part of the country might not have the same meaning in other parts? I don't see much of a class divide on this topic so much as a regional, generational and possibly also an urban/rural one. But I don't live in the UK any more so am very likely to be out of touch.

MrsDeVere I think your musings are spot on and borne out by my observations of mum's and dad's families, and experiences visiting friends' houses in Dublin suburbs in the 70s.

Morgause -- Dodging the questions is fine since anyway, since your responses tell me you think the thing to do at all times is whatever you do at home and if you don't do it at home you don't do it in someone else's home. But overall you seem to hold that something you do or don't do at home must be fine for someone else's home. I personally think this is pretty rude and the attitude shoes are meant to be worn and carpets are meant to be walked on very arrogant. I very much agree with Bunbaker.

How does it work with kids who are in and out all the time? I can't imagine my DSs, when young, ever being persuaded to get in and out of shoes every few minutes.
I don't know a single shoes off household, and would think anyone we met who went in for it absolutely barmy. Sorry.

I found it made them think twice about the very annoying habit of coming and going constantly if they had to take off footwear every time. They mostly wore flip flops in warm weather when young so it really was no skin off their noses but still gave them pause. In winter weather their footwear would be wet or crusted with snow so it would come off anyway.

No questions were dodged, math

There's plenty I do at home that I wouldn't at anyone else's house. I slouch around in pjs. I burp. I turn the TV on when I want to watch something. I go online whenever I feel like it. I text or phone people. I paint my nails.

All of which would be rude in someone else's house.

Arrogant is telling people to take their shoes off when they call to see you.

"I don't know a single shoes off household, and would think anyone we met who went in for it absolutely barmy. Sorry."

I'm sorry, I don't think it is barmy at all. All of my friends have a shoes off house. They don't have hard floors/laminate floors throughout. I only have one child and have never had multiple children running in and out of the house all the time.

Asking, Morgause. Asking visitors to take off shoes.

Any place I go, I ask if the hostess would like me to remove my shoes. If the door is answered by someone in socks or house slippers then I assume the answer will be 'thank you, you can put them in the closet'.

Or some other polite response. It's not a matter of rudely telling people what to do when they come to visit.

I'm still confused about where class comes into it, and I haven't figured out from the various postings on here whether shoeless is supposed to be lower or upper class. I grew up in rural Wales and then rural/small town England in the late 50s and 60s, and I honestly never encountered any "no shoes indoors" households in the UK until about 10 years ago, and they were Russians.

Shoeless is lower class, LongWayRound. It goes with having a parlour for best.

I think you are more or less correct, TamerB, though I would say shoeless is aspiring working class, or petit bourgeois, of the genteel Hyacinth Bucket persuasion.

Historically I think that it was considered lower middle class aspirational , the whole thing about being able to afford something better than the neighbours and it being for show and not for use,

The cleanliness thing has only come in fairly recently I think probably in the last decade .

Well personally speaking from a working class background. My parents never did shoes off, neither did aunts and uncles, my parents are certainly not house proud. My dad was always telling me to put something on my feet incase I stepped on something.

I only heard of shoes off when older and visiting friends. I ended up making quite a few friends through work who happened to be Muslims and were very strictly shoes off and had lovely clean cosy carpets.

I made a personal choice to keep shoes off when I had a baby crawling around the floor as it somehow didn't seem right to have baby ds crawling and playing where the bottom of people's shoes had been. So for me regardless of anything it's hygiene.

I was thinking of this thread out and about today and was consciously looking, the streets are definitely filthy in this city there seemed to be pigeon shit and fag butts at least every square metre. Not to mention broken glass from a smashed bus shelter, definitely wouldn't want to be walking that in.

Surprised at JapaneseMargaret's responses to this thread, considering that in Japan people baulk at entering someone's house with their shoes on.

I like shoes off, in my own house and in friends homes. If I am doing home visits for work then I tend to keep shoes on. Otherwise it's shoes off.
Am staggered that some people find socks so offensive that they would make me keep my shoes on if I visited them as a friend! I don't think I would visit very often, they sound like v uptight hosts!