Even if my boss was joking it's still a horrible thing to say

[CristinaYangsBrain]

I work a minimum wage job. I was chatting to my boss today and I mentioned that I had bought a small food item from M&S and suggested she might like it too.

She stared at me for a few seconds and then said to me "If you're shopping at M&S I'm clearly paying you too much." and then walked off. She wasn't smiling or anything but she does have quite a dry sense of humour usually.

AIBU or is this a really horrible thing for her to say?

It’s a joke about M&S, not a comment about you.

This.

There was no need for her to say it joke or not.

Maybe it was a joke about M&S prices but it made me feel a bit upset. The more I'm thinking about it the less unreasonable I feel. If a coworker had said something similar to me I wouldn't have been offended because we're in the same position.

Why? What do you gain by feeling offended? Is work more enjoyable if you assume bad faith on the part of your boss? Do you want everyone else to overthink every comment you make?

Being offended is a choice. Instead you could choose to assume the best interpretation of every comment. You could accept that humour is objective. You may be wrong sometimes but you'll be a damn sight happier.

Do you think the MNers claiming she intimidated, saying you should argue back or leaping to the conclusion she's putting you down know you or her at all? Are they really being kind and helpful with those comments?

There was no need for her to say it joke or not.

There is no need for any humour but without it everywhere would be like an AIBU thread.

Not funny, it was snide and meant to put you in your place. What a bitch.

It does depend a lot on context here.
If my boss said this to me (and it is the kind of thing he would say) I would laugh because : he's a great and supportive boss, I'm paid plenty, and I feel valued and am just as likely to make the same joke to him.

However in a different context , which I suspect is where Op is, it is a ghastly joke to make.

@rawlikesushi

Of course it's a joke.

Surely we've all heard similar a million times, it's a thing.

New house, new car, new outfit, booking a holiday....'I must be paying you too much.'

Good grief I don't know how some people survive a day, seeing malicious intent everywhere.

You do not say such a joke to someone on NMW! I wouldn't say it to anyone I work with, whether they earn more or less than me. Too much potential sensitivity. I'd only say it to someone whose finances and sense of humour I knew, dh or a close friend

Awful comment.

I think I'd say next time I saw her when leaving work, "well, I'm off to the cut price supermarket to hunt in the bargain bin for food past its sell by date. Don't want me to be able to afford to eat quality food after all!"

Put the wind up her!

Boss was punching down. Dick move.

She's either stupid or she thinks she's better than you OP.

Or both.

It's a twatty passive aggressive comment

Not funny in the slightest. What a cow...

What an arsehole.

Reminds me of a previous job at a cafe where I had had an unpleasant encounter with a customer in the morning - I had been training a new staff member and she was huffing and puffing because her cappuccino took 30 seconds longer than usual while I was showing my colleague. On my lunch break I treated myself to some bits from M&S, and bumped into said customer. She sneered that I was obviously being paid too much to be shopping in there.

@Honeyroar response is what I would go with

It's a joke. M&S is like Waitrose to me, certaintly not somewhere I could afford to shop. If she has a dry sense of humour, of course her delivery was dry...

It's a standing joke with virtually everyone I know that if you shop in M&S and god forbid Waitrose then you have way too much spare cash.

But it depends on your relationship with your boss hard to know know if she was joking or being a bitch. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This comment isn't a joke because NOBODY would find it funny, at best it's an unimaginative naff comment.

Some people are on a Pavlovian loop whereby they ALWAYS make this same comment whenever anyone buys anything from M&S food and genuinely think this passes for humour.

Id assume it was a poor attempt at humour before assuming she was a dickhead/cow/bitch (lots of names directed at her on here!) who revelled in putting down a more junior member of staff.

I sincerely doubt that your salary featured in her thought process when she said it.

If she's usually ok, see it for what it was intended to be - a jokey, throwaway comment that she's heard/used many times over, to the extent that it doesn't really mean anything any more, just smalltalk.

really inappropriate and rude. Try not to take it to heart. She was very rude