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 🤣

@Conky All of us...?

@dayswithaY

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"

An (ex) friend talking about our kids playing football said she hoped they would provide adequate comensurables. I think she meant food.

Did she actually say “comensurables” or “comestibles”?

190190tnt

I insist on calling my home a flat when people try to
"elevate" it to an apartment.

Me aged 5 (eons ago) when visiting an aunt & when given some cake
"Can I have a cake fork?"
This became a family joke - I was given some cake forks next birthday
(Blame my dm she made a big thing of tea time when setting the table)

@Tamrastarr

I haven't read all of the replies yet but I look forward to it

A friend of my mum's who is an insufferable snob is originally from Ireland but lives in England and her children were born in England. Her daughter got engaged in England to an English man. The mum placed an engagement notice in the very down to earth local paper in her home town back in Ireland that included the daughter and husband's degree postnominals:

The engagement has taken place of Miss Ivana Huginkiss B.A. to Mr Seymour Butz B.Sc.

I have never seen the like. We all howled when we saw it.

And one for my mum - god love her she's very much in awe of People With Money. She differentiates between (what I'd call) upper middle class and above and middle middle class and below by how she refers to her families.

For the lower classes she just refers to "family", as in "her family is very nice".

For the upper middles and above she calls them "people". "Her People are very nice." Or even worse "She comes from very nice People".

I have no idea where she got this particular notion from!

What that Mumsnetter on a recent thread did - officially named her flat (not house!) after herself as "[name] Towers", so she didn't have to use the flat number in the address.

0n a (finance) works training day lunch hour, one of the attendees suddenly addressed the table and said, "Excuse me everyone, while I learn my Mandarin"..popped his earphones in and talked his Mandarin loudly ...while we all sat uncomfortably eating our sandwiches..

@Somethingsnappy my sister didn't drive when the children were little so my mum used to take them to a childrens farm not accessible by public transport when looking after them.

On a school trip her dd loudly told everyone this is nannys farm!!

When travelling on honeymoon I took the most pretentious flight of my life. The way out was fine. But on the way back it was out and out posh twats. When I booked it was £10 more for business class, so I picked that. When we got the desk we went straight up. But they were having some kind of problem with their computer so it was taking ages. During that time two old couples approached and queued behind us, but the man serving us asked them to queue in the other line (which wasn't very busy!). The one guy was outraged "what, here? In economy!?". They got in that queue but then the guy started huffing, puffing, and muttering about how awful it was. Then eventually he just stood behind us again. We had 2 toddlers so I think he assumed we hadn't actually booked business. At one stage I stepped to the side slightly to had a child back to my husband and this guy stepped forward and slammed his passport down on the counter. He was quickly told "sir, please step back. I am still serving this customer. I will call you when it is your turn". Cue more huffing and puffing.
When we got to the gate, for some reason they took everyone through and down to another area even though the buses weren't there to take people to the flight. So this area was really busy and loads of people were really loudly moaning, huffing, puffing, tutting, like everyone needed to know there opinion. When they called for families with young children I said to my husband we should just wait as there was no way to the front. But some non-twat guy spotted us and said 'they just called for families, come on' and started telling people to get out the way. But my god, the glares!
Then on the bus I was listening to some woman bang on to someone about how it was absolutely worth paying for business class for the peace and quiet. She mentioned her seat number.....same row as us! To be fair, the kids were very quiet and well behaved.
Throughout the whole process there were just loud, self entitled twats who clearly thought they were more important than everyone else and all the delay was infinitely more awful for them. My 3 year old and 1 year olds were better behaved than all of them!

@NotPersephone

£95 seems pretty reasonable to me. I took clients out for dinner about a decade ago and one of them ordered a £600 bottle of wine. It was bloody gorgeous but I was vaguely concerned about the expenses claim...

Anyhow, I didn't know that a wine of that calibre came with a sommelier to supervise its consumption and was pounced on by an irate Frenchman when I drunkenly cheerfully grabbed it to give everyone a top-up.

You win the prize for the most pretentious post and well as the most blatant [not so] stealth boast.

@Fozzleyplum

I am a lawyer who studied Latin for 7 years, and DH and I between us have 60 years' experience of working in an area of law where in camera hearings are common. We can't recall anyone, ever (judges and senior counsel included), using a pronunciation different from the usual English one. The barrister who made fun of you was clearly a complete idiot.

Thank you, I was thinking I had been saying it wrong for years!

I recall a friend of my mother's who always bragged that she had been to Oxford University. We later discovered that she had completed a secretarial course at Oxford Brookes before it became a university.

When my dd was young we were waiting in a hospital ENT dept for our appointment, in comes a celeb and went straight up to the consultant when he emerged from the cons room and started explaining what was wrong with her child and could he take a look, so my husband rightly put her in her place by saying that there was a queue and there are actually others before her!!

I feel embarrassed to even mention this. I know someone who is dating someone who is trying to sell his house. She has been trying ti sell hers since the beginning of the year… she said to me’ his will get sold, it’s cheap, like ex local authority, going for 700k or so’. 700k cheap???? Since when? Particularly as she is unemployed!!
It was pretentious and tactless!

My DD goes to a very good state primary school in a naice area. Mainly affluent families. I am a hard working single Mum, can't afford all the holidays and birthday parties the majority of the kids in her class have. Standing in wait for the gates to open, one of my DD class mates 8yp shouted 'why are you so poor' at me, loads of parents turned round. The lady she was with (not sure if was a relative or childminder) just looked blankly in my face. Good know how pretentious she will be when she gets older 🙄

(I've posted this once before, in a house numbers thread, but I just have to post it in this pretentiousness thread too.)

I once had to go to a house in a road of several hundred houses. After much searching, I rang for directions. I said his house was difficult to find because there were no numbers, and he said, “It doesn't need a number – it's the biggest house in the road!”

[quote JauntyJinty]@yesitbess
I think Tolly is probably the only sensible nickname for a Ptolemy! What else could it be abbreviated to?

I know a Ptolemy who goes by Tom - I knew him years before I learned the truth![/quote]
I do hope it’s Ptom.

Hahahahaaaa. With a non-silent P

@TheDramaLlama123
Said child might have money they've no manners that's for sure.
Obviously picked up her attitude from home.

My Geography teacher at school was Mrs. Sidebottom. She insisted that we all call her Mrs. Sid-e-botham. She always said this in a very post voice depite the fact that we were in a very rough school in Manchester.

Arrived in Spain for a cheap post covid holiday. Waiting in que at airport to get all documents checked. Woman behind us starts to have a really loud conversation down the phone about how she has just landed and will be in the country filming a new project and how she has been offered hundreds of thousands for her previous project but is holding out for a better offer.
Phone call lasts about 15mins with lots of boasting and name dropping. Passengers all round doing lots of eye rolling and smirking to each other.
Que flight back after a week. Same woman is in front of us going through security at passport control. Hands her documents over and gets pulled aside by waiting policemen and promptly taken away . Not so much eye rolling as eye widening this time!!

Can I offer myself as the parent of a PFB? Told my mother in law I gave my newborn his last feed listening to classical music... I lasted about 3 days then just watched shit on Netflix..

Now he's 6 and I let him watch shit on YouTube whenever he likes 🤣🤣

What a total twat I was 🤣🤣🤣

Arrived in Spain for a cheap post covid holiday. Waiting in que at airport to get all documents checked.

I like what you did there!

My brother pretends he's been to university when he hasn't. He also has a city on the other side of the world as his home town on Facebook. He was born there as DF was in the forces, but they came back to the UK when he was a baby. Never lived there really and yet it's his home town apparently