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 🤣

'Quite a middle class comp' 😂

Why is that funny? Do you think comprehensive schools simply don’t exist in middle class areas?

You don't think it's funny that in a thread about being pretentious, somebody came out with the unnecessary and pretty pretentious phrase "my son goes to quite a middle class comp"?

@MsAdoraBelleDearheartVonLipwig - hey we could start a trend! Just make sure they are either stainless steel or chromed steel if you want to use them for eggs as silver or silver plate will tarnish and taste horrid.
I have also seen them as teaspoons but am not planning on expanding my assortment of spoons any time soon.

I have just remembered a funny FIL story from a few years back. I offered to do some shopping for him which involved going to all sorts of specialist delis, bakers, cheese factors etc. The veg was not specified. I am a big fan of Lidl so got it there and included some gorgeous loose tomatoes on the vine. On the phone later, he said the tomatoes were very nice, and did I get them from M & S. When I said they were Lidl, his answer? "well, of course they are not as good as M&S". followed by next time could I go to there. Not sure whom he was trying to impress with that one, certainly not his tastebuds. So whenever we have delicious Lidl tomatoes one of us usually comments, "ooh, not as good as..."

@Toasteh Thanks for the link to the bolognese thread! Solid gold entertainment.

@FirewomanSam

Puts me in mind of the David Baddiel sketch about his mother - he said if he were drowning in a canal she would shout “help my son the Cambridge graduate is drowning in the canal!”

Ohhh that reminds me of a family friend who mentions her ‘high 2:1 from Cambridge’ as often as she possibly can. So many of her anecdotes start with something like ‘a few years after I left Cambridge, with my high 2:1…’

One of my young cousins graduated from Durham with a First recently and this woman said something like ‘oh well done you! A First! I only got a 2:1 myself although it was a very high 2:1, from Cambridge of course…’

She is nice enough but I sometimes wonder if she feels like she ‘peaked’ at Cambridge and has felt the need to define herself by that achievement ever since. Makes me a little sad for her since she must have graduated at least 40 years ago.

University is always guaranteed fertile ground for a good dose of pretentiousness . Or maybe it's stealth-boasting - probably both!

When mentioning the name of a famous person (politician), the response was "oh yes DH studied with him at Oxford"

bleughhhh

I like a nice cake fork, me. They're neat.
Mine are stainless steel and came from Hema, though.

I am a complete bookwork and I did read all the classics whilst sat in the car waiting for various pick up's.

I would often drop my son at cadets and then sit reading in the car until it was time to ring my husband who was in the falklands.
It was easier to sit in the car and talk to him than drive the 15 minutes home have a quick chat and then have to leave again.

Books have got me through many a RAF OOA, am I a pretentious twat for reading classics?

I enjoyed the classic just as much as 50 shades of grey 😂

@flirtybird nothing pretentious about actually reading the classics. Reading 50 shades inside the cover of Jude the Obscure would, in my mind, be pretentious.

I enjoyed the classic just as much as 50 shades of grey 😂

I don't think reading classics is pretentious at all. I would much rather read them than 50 shades (I blame the publishers for that. How they could allow something so poorly written to get through without some serious editing is beyond me).

Thanks @myfaceismyown, I’ll have to check. I didn’t even realise they were for eggs. I’m definitely not pretentious.

@NorthernLion

I like cake forks. I also like coffee spoons with little coffee beans on the end, and fish knives and butter spreaders and those long pickle forks for getting things out of jars. My DM seemingly inherited all the old-fashioned family wedding presents and I feel it's my duty to see them used.

Same!

@SisforSoppy

"what did you read at university?". I've been asked this more than once. Its such a fucking pretentious question that only people who've been to oxbridge ask. The rest of us study at university and have fun.

Have you seen the film, 'An education'? The main character gets asked why she's going to Oxford, and she answers 'I'm going to read English'. Her friend looks baffled and prompts... 'books? You're going to read English books?'.

Soz….. not us sweetheart 😂

@Pigeonpocket

'Quite a middle class comp' 😂

Why is that funny? Do you think comprehensive schools simply don’t exist in middle class areas?

You don't think it's funny that in a thread about being pretentious, somebody came out with the unnecessary and pretty pretentious phrase "my son goes to quite a middle class comp"?

You’ve made the mistake that a few people on this thread have made - that anyone even vaguely describing a scenario where someone earns more than two bob and a toffee apple on an annual basis is themselves ‘pretentious’.

Did you even read the post quoted? The status/position of the school was important in context.

@FluffyBooBoo

I enjoyed the classic just as much as 50 shades of grey 😂

I don't think reading classics is pretentious at all. I would much rather read them than 50 shades (I blame the publishers for that. How they could allow something so poorly written to get through without some serious editing is beyond me).

Didn’t it begin life as a self-published Kindle title?

I live near an old fashioned popular pub in a pretty countryside area with open fields behind our row of picturesque cottages (rat infested claustrophobic nightmares btw). Anyway, someone (the only person ever) decided to arrive by helicopter in the fields nearby, rather than drive, because that's for plebs and clearly Bugatti Veyrons are sooo yesterday. The pub was quiet and I was there with my little boy, fascinated to meet the person behind the rather unsubtle entrance. He wafted in with gleeful condescension. After watching him patronise everyone including the ducks, I asked him if he was the pilot of the helicopter that had just landed and how did he manage to get permission to land there. He said he was and bragged and bragged and spoke to me like I was an idiot until I told him I had a LAPL and was interested to know why he chose to fly helicopters. He couldn't get away fast enough. The real pilot (hidden away) flew him and his pretentious, lying bs away. Idiot of a man.

@AmySnowlish

I'm not sure why asking for goose, for Christmas, is pretentious, or posh?

Exactly. It's very British traditional. Scrooge giving the Cratchits a Turkey showed how generous he was compared to the 'humble goose'. Turkey was extremely exotic.

We had a goose one year. The thing was fucking massive and shrunk to the size of a dried up pigeon in the oven. Shit.

We have grapefruit spoons! DH went through a spell of grapefruit breakfasts. They have a little serrated edge like a knife in the pointy bit which helps to remove the segments so you don't get juice squirted everywhere.

I can't see how they are pretentious. They're are bloody useful!

Didn’t it begin life as a self-published Kindle title?

It certainly started out as fan fiction. I don't know if it was on kindle or not.

But books get revised all the time, and there's no reason why the publishers couldn't have improved it before releasing it (unless maybe the author didn't want it to happen). I guess they just saw it as a cash cow.

I'm no book snob. I've read my share of chick lit. I just couldn't read crap that didn't even make sense. She didn't have to 'scramble' out of a lift because she'd just met a man that she liked. Calming yourself down is not a 'valiant' act. I didn't get to the 'interesting' bits because there was so much cringey bad writing that was distracting and jarring. I stopped reading at chapter 3. She's a very lucky woman, to have managed to capture the imagination of so many people with such a poorly edited book.

I wonder if children liking cutlery such as cake forks and egg spoons is because they are smaller and more child sized. Apostle spoons are quite small too, actually mum used to have some.

@myfaceismyown

Back to cutlery. We can all use whatever we want to eat with. Whatever makes you happy and regular. Personally I would think it was pretentious if someone openly criticised someone for using the "wrong" implement in public. I have seen that happen. Or some odd behaviour like to only have soup spoons out for guests but normally using another type of spoon, hopefully not a demi tasse spoon (deliberately pretentious use of the name...) If you eat cake with a cake fork great, no sticky fingers for you. Going out to buy a set purely in the hope of impressing someone, then not using them when just family, seems pretentious.

The sticky fingers point was so good I immediately went on to Lakeland to order some cake forks. They have a set of six pastry forks for £11.99 so I might buy them. I don't have a soup spoon and actually think they would be a useful addition.

@ISeeTheLight

A colleague of mine had his wedding announced in the New York Times. (It was sent around the whole team)

And I worked with a guy who had a comb for his beard. One that he brought to work. A very fancy comb. Cost a fortune apparently. He would sit there every day and comb his beard.

You meet some pretentious people in advertising

My father used to do the same - back in the 1980s. Some men have itchy beards, perfectly normal behaviour.

I absolutely love goose. But you’re lucky to feed more than four from one! Haven’t had one for Christmas for several years now...and won’t this year either either 😔 but maybe next year!

I think the ‘pretentious’ label is thrown around way too much.

@Malin52

We have grapefruit spoons! DH went through a spell of grapefruit breakfasts. They have a little serrated edge like a knife in the pointy bit which helps to remove the segments so you don't get juice squirted everywhere.

I can't see how they are pretentious. They're are bloody useful!

@Malin52 Yes, I'm not objecting to the grapefruit spoons as such, I appreciate that they have a practical use. It was more referring to a guest in the third person (in front of them) and making a big show of astounded that an 8-year-old didn't know what a grapefruit spoon was.

I used to have grapefruit spoons. They disappeared during our last move.
I miss them, must buy some more.