What is the most pretentious thing you've seen someone do?

[kinzarose]

Inspired by another thread. When I was at university there was an older lady who thought she was vair posh, was very keen to have her designer labels on display and loved name dropping brands into conversation. We had a group tutorial over lunch once, so we all ate together. This woman took a two foot (yes, literally) wooden salt and pepper mill out of her bag, stood up and started grinding pepper onto the shop bought sandwich she had with her. It was just the most pretentious thing ever, she was a "food snob" apparently 🤣

To add a bit more to mine, I suppose it seemed pretentious in the sense that they were doing what was on paper an act of kindness in an ostentatious way, with eye-catching clothing, and mostly throwing towards those who made the most effort to indulge them.

Long time ago now a neighbour told me she wanted her only, late and much cherished son to play with his intellectual equals rather than my son. Today her son is a much tattooed average Joe and my son has his own very successful company.

Visited a boarding school friend at her stepmother's Upper East Side apartment in New York City when I was 15 years old. The first morning I was there, stepmother dramatically throws open the window to the honking city far below and declaims, "Ahh, my city of gleaming towers!"

@WalkingOnTheCracks that is such a funny and rather sweet story! I have met a few publishing people and always feel a bit like the working class oik in the room. Did you keep on writing?

@SoosanCarter

When I was at a Scottish University aeons ago, there was a chap who offered two different kinds of sherry to his visitors, complete with silver tray and sherry glasses. It was the hall of residence later popular with Kate and William.

I thought I was posh having a bottle of Ribena.

St Andrews is full of old traditions like the gown wearing and yes it does attract some characters .

When someone is tasting food that's being cooked and they cup their free hand under the spoon. I know the idea is to catch drips but it always looks so pretentious to me.

An ex friend of mine told me she needed some cheap everyday sunglasses like the ones you have gesticulating at my 200 Pound ones .

When I was in college there was a fellow student who every single day dressed, spoke and acted like a 17th Century European aristocrat, complete with ruffles embroidered coat, gloves and cane. Actually it was a bit of a mashup as he also wore a tophat. He was Chinese

Racist then. Mimicking Europeans

Someone I knew years ago fancied himself as a bit of an aristocrat, land-owning type. This is despite him growing up in a fairly standard 3-bedroom house with parents who have normal jobs.

He was pretentious about everything but the wildest thing was him getting an oil painted portrait of himself done during his PhD where he posed like a future Conservative Prime Minister.

He is currently selling his house and RightMove shows that this masterpiece is on display in a very, very small box room.

A relative who spent a summer in the states and in the 35 years since has kept up a really false accent. She insists on American terms whenever possible.

On a visit home to our Northern Ireland town we went to a chemist where she asked for 'diapers' and then pretended to struggle to remember the word 'nappies'.

The pharmacist who has known us all our lives said "Jaysus X have ye forgot the bowl ye were baked in?" 😁

Another friend who grew up near me in quite a rough area of said NI town, speaking about her son:

"Yes, I've had to explain to him that we're now middle class and it's not appropriate for him to mix with the natives when we have to come back here because he may pick up their rough ways."

I think she must have memory loss as she was definitely one of the roughest in the area 😂

Friend loudly proclaiming at her DCs birthday that they specifically banned branded toys being gifted e.g. no cartoons, big names or mainstream stuff. Then waxing lyrical about how a retro wooden toy was exactly like what he'd had as a child - who're we celebrating here?!

I sheepishly stuffed our branded card to the bottom of the pile and legged it before they started opening them

DS is at his first formal halls dinner at Cambridge where male students must wear suits.

Student 1, adjacent to DS says to him " I say, what an absolutely frightful suit you're wearing. Looks like something from a charity shop".

DS replies cheerfully " It is. I got it in Oxfam".

Student 2 opposite says mildly " Probably not as old as mine, it was made for my grandfather."

Student 1 is utterly crushed.

@2bazookas

DS is at his first formal halls dinner at Cambridge where male students must wear suits.

Student 1, adjacent to DS says to him " I say, what an absolutely frightful suit you're wearing. Looks like something from a charity shop".

DS replies cheerfully " It is. I got it in Oxfam".

Student 2 opposite says mildly " Probably not as old as mine, it was made for my grandfather."

Student 1 is utterly crushed.

Love it - your DS and Student 2 that is.

@ClawedButler

£4k spent on a four-year old's birthday party. They had caterers. And a wheel of brie.

The marquee came down in the sudden storm, though. Cue a dozen screaming toddlers charging into the house, and a dozen parents in Breton tops/red trousers leaping and darting about in the garden trying to catch the flailing bits of marquee fabric and metal poles, trying to rescue the cous-cous and save the brie from watery ruin. Outwardly I said, "Oh dear!" and helped to fetch bunting, inwardly I laughed and laughed and laughed.

As long as the brie was saved, that's the main thing. Head straight to the cheese.

[quote Claudethecat]@WalkingOnTheCracks that is such a funny and rather sweet story! I have met a few publishing people and always feel a bit like the working class oik in the room. Did you keep on writing?[/quote]
Thank you, and the others who’ve commented.

Yes, I did. Were it not for the valued anonimity of MN, I’d now be directing you to Amazon.

How’s that for pretentious?

Pack Aldi shopping into selfridges bags

Getting on a Ryan Air plane on a weekend away with my friend who's husband is a pilot for a major air line and she normally flies first class.

When we boarded the plane and was guided to turn right to the seats she exclaimed loudly ' Right?! Gosh I'm sooo used to turning left for first class (titter)'

She also baulked at having to put her own litter in the black bin bag the air stewardess was carrying round. She actually went to pass the litter to the stewardess but the the stewardess just nodded to the bag as in 'put it in yourself'

@MsTSwift

Yes our neighbor announced her pfb could not possibly go to the primary at the end of the road all our kids went to “because they won’t be able to cope with his sporting prowess”. He was 2. My friend and I carefully avoided each other’s eyes for fear of cracking up!

That just really made me laugh out loud on a day I could really do with a laugh, so thank you

@HosannainExcelSheets

*I remember when a couple at work got engaged and a very pompous man swept in and said:

"Felicitations! Let's have a decco at the sparkler"*

I was taught by my very proper Granda that one never congratulates a lady on an engagement, as that would imply that she'd worked for it. Félicitations was the "correct" answer.

Yes! My nana (who worked in service so wasn't posh but picked up lots) said the same. You congratulate the gentleman and praise the lady for her good choice.

A lot of this stuff isn't pretentious I don't think, just a little unusual. Different things are important to different people, it would be boring if we were all the same.

@WalkingOnTheCracks that's great - congratulations!!

The guy at Univ who wore plus fours and a monocle and carried poetry books around with him..He wasn't posh but so seriously wanted to be

There was a boy at my school who carried a briefcase and a walking stick umbrella and had a Mervyn King/Keir Starmer comb over and a blazer (not a school one!) I think it you went to a school as rough as mine it's not even pretentious, it's more that if you're even slightly interested in school people will call you posh, so you can head off the pisstaking by playing to it deliberately. It leaves them nowere to go, you know? In much the same way as I heard a colleague at Asda once head off a slagging for liking Morrissey by saying "I never really liked his music, I just fancied him."

......and the bloke who claims to be a writer misspells 'anonymity'.

I shall be taking down servers worldwide to erase that post. The internet may not be available for several weeks. Just so you know...

It’s sweet when it’s the other way round. My parents were at a village dinner party and a new couple were there. Someone asked what he did he said “plumber” and changed the subject. My parents became quite friendly with them and but were taken aback when the return invite was to the village Manor House beautifully done up Elizabethan manor with 2 swimming pools. He was a plumber alright but owned a large name plumbing company.

A mate of mine lived abroad for a while, in Japan. When I met up with him in London during one of his visits back to England, he was reading a Japanese newspaper. I remarked upon this, to which he feigned shock and said "oh! I hadn't noticed it was Japanese - it comes so naturally to me now".

He'd been living there no more than a year! No way was he fluent enough to be reading Japanese as if it was his mother tongue 😆

Not so much pretentious as ill informed about others this story always makes me smile.

At a Royal Gala performance attended by Prince Charles, when the stars line up for the obligatory handshake, Les Dawson the comedian attempted a joke with Charles to break the ice.
He said something along the lines of 'I see the Argentinians won in the end sir.'

How so?

.'.They nicked all the keys off the corned beef tins.'

Charles didn't understand. So bully beef was never on the menu at Balmoral then :)