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 🤣

Probably a guy I knew when I was at uni (he was a drop out, aged about 25.)

He would wear a waistcoat, hat, and long coat. He said a lot of stupid narc things like 'I know you better than you know yourself' when he'd known me only 6 months. He claimed to be the font of knowledge on all branches of spirituality.

His most pretentious moment was probably when he said 'I consider myself one of a dying breed of Englishmen.'

At one point he said 'This is going to sound pretentious, but I don't belong outside of a monastery.' (You could've fooled me with all the shagging various women.)

'The problem is when it comes to magick I've done it all. I was 18 when I discovered the secret of the Philosopher's Stone.' (This was pre- Harry Potter.)

At one point he displayed self awareness and said 'I'm a buffoon.' He even had to be pretentious when realizing he was pretentious.

Apparently a couple of years later he married a Muslim girl and converted to Islam. I wonder how long that lasted. Shame he had a fairly generic name and of course then maybe a Muslim name, so I can't find him on FB to see what he's doing now.

'Seen someone do?' Erm, the guy above used to walk with a cane for literally no reason, just to seem urbane or whatever. It's usually more things people say.

My mum used to refer to her very expensive car as "The Lexus" and not just "the car" like everyone else.

Think (loudly in the supermarket), "DH, darling, I'll go ahead and start putting some of the shopping in the Lexus!"

"The other day, DH and I were out driving in the Lexus when we saw..."

"We'd better leave a little early so we can fill up the Lexus on the way."

Etc.

I worked with a man who gave HIMSELF the nickname “The Dr” because he had a PHD. He introduced himself that way, it didn’t catch on. Oh my god, I still cringe on his behalf when I think of it.

@Tulips15

Drove their 'A-B' car home and returned in their new expensive car- A 2min walk from house to bus stop, to collect their child.., to make all the other parents 'jealous'at the bust stop where we collected the primary age children. Their exact words were ' Can't be seen in the cheap car'🤣

Our neighbour does this. They have 3 cars, two sports cars and one a little two door Toyota. They drive the Toyota everywhere except the school pick up line.

My 2yo DD was playing with another little boy in the park. At one point as they were on the swings the little boy’s dad was trying to get his kid to count to 10, and the child had gone selectively deaf as 2yos do. When he wouldn’t cooperate the dad said loudly, “why don’t you do it in French then, DS? Ok then, Farsi? Japanese?”
I hope he was joking but I don’t think he was.

An ex colleague who said if she HAD to go in to Tesco she’d hide if she saw anyone she knew as she thought Tesco was downmarket compared to Waitrose and she didn’t want anyone to see her shopping there. Never mind that anyone of her “class” she saw was also shopping there!
Also SIL who won’t drive anything other than a BMW, merc or Audi because her DD goes to a private school (that SIL/BIL can’t really afford) and she wants to appear wealthy altho she’d never say it out loud. If I pick up their DD in my old banger nobody gives me. 2nd glance

@starrynight21

Suddenlyfamily5

My MIL telling me about her trousseau.

I don't even know what trousseau is!

That wouldn't have been pretentious coming from someone of her vintage though. Back in the day, a trousseau was the norm, it was just the nice new holiday clothes that you bought for your honeymoon. Everything was new and pretty, it was part of the planning for your wedding really. You'd get your dress, and your trousseau for the honeymoon .

My mum insisted on buying me a trousseau five years ago. It wasn’t really something I had considered but I certainly didn’t object. She wanted to because she had happy memories of my grandmother doing the same for her. I just thought of it as a mother-daughter shopping trip.

The most pretentious person I ever met was a friend of a friend. My friend (actually DH’s friend), brought a South African friend of his to our place (near Heathrow) for lunch before she left the U.K. to fly back home.

She was just thrilled(!) to see we had a Brita water filter and warbled on for twenty minutes about tap water versus bottled versus filtered. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we hardly ever used it and the filter hadn’t been changed in about six months. She got her filtered water and I think the rest of us had tap.

I think the lunch time discussion also covered tiny U.K. houses (true), how she couldn’t live without a swimming pool (really?) and home decor (she preferred shiny and new furniture, most of mine was inherited from my grandmother and looked its age).

@starrynight21

Suddenlyfamily5

My MIL telling me about her trousseau.

I don't even know what trousseau is!

That wouldn't have been pretentious coming from someone of her vintage though. Back in the day, a trousseau was the norm, it was just the nice new holiday clothes that you bought for your honeymoon. Everything was new and pretty, it was part of the planning for your wedding really. You'd get your dress, and your trousseau for the honeymoon .

I agree. My generation had trousseau parties before the wedding. (Like Hen parties but with no drunkeness or foreign travel). The brides friends gathered to help her pack and brought something special as a gift. It could be an embroidered apron, a set of towels, crocheted lace centerpiece etc. The groom's mother would give the bride a cake plate and the bride's mother would bake a cake for the groom and serve it on the plate. I have my grandmother's and my mother's cake plates ready to hand down to my granddaughters.

Intelligent rap?? I suppose anything's possible ... the local university used to offer a credit course "The Philosophy of Rock". Oxbridge we ain't.

Still waiting to reading about the "Canadian rr"

When talking with a group about what I find relaxing, reading being one just thing the, the others present came out with "Who has time for reading? ... oh I don't ever have time to read ... no one has that amount of time on their hands, to read."

Brazen ignorance or pretension?

@CanadianJohn

Intelligent rap?? I suppose anything's possible ... the local university used to offer a credit course "The Philosophy of Rock". Oxbridge we ain't.

Still waiting to reading about the "Canadian rr"

I think they just mean pronouncing the “r” more noticeably in words where most British accents would not- for example say “birthday” in a typical English accent and then in a typical North American accent. Or at the end of words- water, butter, car. The English accent is more “wat-ah, butt-ah, cah” whereas the North American pronounces the end r sound more. I believe it’s called rhoticity.

It was pretentious for the PP as she’d only been in Canada for one year as an adult (not a child) so was affecting the accent to sort of “show off” that she’d been living abroad.

@SophieKaczynsky

When my children were at primary school, a designer clad mum told everyone that her husband worked in London in investment banking and that they lived on a very posh, expensive road in the town.

Turned out they lived in a 1980s three bed semi. Oh and the husband was in prison!

Oh I’m not sure this is pretentious, it sounds like she was very insecure. It’s made me a bit sad.

@CheshireLife

My story is probably the weakest, but I'll explain it more if someone asks.

This is quite pretentious. “I’ll explain it more if someone asks”.

Nobody asks, but you still go on anyway.

@LobsterNapkin

What's a Canadian "rr" and why is it pretentious? I really need to avoid using it if I ever get to travel to England again.

Yes, as a Canadian I am wondering this too I had no idea.

Sorry yes, the pretension was pronunciation-related. It came across very try-hard to be back home sporting a new Canadian accent when my actual accent is an Australian drawl.

@Dibble135

My old boss used to speak about himself in the third person 🙄

My DH does this frequently - but he isn't pretentious at all, just quirky (And he's a fairly high-level boss, too.)

My DD on her second birthday, poncing down the stairs in her party frock and announcing in a la-di-da voice, " I don't sit on public toilets!"

New neighbours moved it across the road. I passed the mum and the son (about age 7/8) in the road. I did the usual welcome to the neighborhood etc. Then the boy just started going in about how much better this house is, what they had paid for it and the excellent interest rate they had got from the bank. I was quite dumbstruck about how to respond to him, as the mum was just standing there with this 'oh isn't my child just so clever' look on her face. So in my response I asked him where he had moved from. He said the area and then told me the price they got for selling their old house. Which was quite low compared to this new house. At this point the mother finally piped up saying and said, 'ooh let's not discuss our finances with the whole street shall we.'.

I am all for getting a child involved in certain household issues, and teaching them to be money wise, but this just took the cake.

When my kids were primary age we went to a little one off callligraphy and craft class run at an abbey in half term. The only other family there were two similar aged girls to mine and their competitive parenting gran. Oh my god that woman was mental. Even my 9 year old was laughing at her.

“Look darling flowers! They are lovely but not as nice as the ones in granny’s garden”.

“Come on darling do better writing. Since you moved to [insert local private school] how your writing has improved!”.

Dd2 played her at her own game and said loudly that she was going to do her writing in Mandarin. I thought competitive gran was going to cry. Never been more proud 😁

My ex FiL was dreadful for this. He had married a woman whose family were wealthy and harboured a chip on his shoulder worthy of Harry Ramsden’s.

Before I married his son, my parents invited my future in-laws round for lunch so they could get to know each other. Stepping into my parent’s very well-kept garden, FiL turned to his wife and said, “Now this is what I call a garden. Ours is far too big” My parents had such a job not to howl with laughter.

A woman whose daddy bank rolled her through two university degrees and bought her a flat once said to a colleague when the colleague was treating her family to a takeaway the weekend (colleague's husband had just found a new job and had money worries before) said a takeaway is every day life a treat is a designer bag .

I used to work with a lady who "pan fried" everything she made for her tea.

One day someone asked her if she had a deep fat fryer, because otherwise why did she feel the need to distinguish the method of frying.

@DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult My cat used to refuse to watch anything but David Attenborough documentaries. She was no great intellectual .

Friend announcing her concerns about Reception curriculum, because “it is nowhere near little Johnny’s level” 🙄🙄

Little Johnny is bright but not exceptionally so. And obviously teachers are trained to be able to stretch more able students as needed- let them assess his abilities and do their flipping job!

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!