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 🤣

I was called pretentious for saying I wanted a sous vide gadget. Hear me out…. I’m vegetarian and can’t cook a good steak. Apparently, all you do is cook it in the machine, then seal it off. You have perfect steak all the time!

@dentydown
A sous vide is the best kitchen gadget ever. Bought one for my husband a few years ago - have never benefited more from someone else's present!

Pretentiousness is all relative 🤷‍♀️

Sitting on a commuter train home. An older man was sitting there wearing red chinos and a shirt with a cravat. He was talking very loudly on the phone to someone, and his voice was booming throughout the carriage. The jist of the conversation was him and the other party discussing where someone they knew had eaten dinner (either by choice or under duress I don't know). All of a sudden he loudly shouts down the phone "GOOD LORD....FRANKIE & BENNY'S?!" Then starts laughing in a disbelieving way. He was also looking around at others and trying to catch their eye like they may also share in his horror of someone eating in such an establishment.

Me - to my shame. At about 13. My single mum had just moved us into a small 3-bedroomed cottage with a downstairs bathroom, so nothing posh, going to stay with a boarding school friend (I was a bursary scholar). On our way to the house having been picked up from the station.... Oh I hate all these modern little boxes! Of course, friend 's family lived in a modern box. To be fair, it was officer's married quarters so probably had 4 bedrooms and wasn't small, and they wouldn't have had much of a choice if any, but it still makes me cringe 45 years later.

A friend always used to insist on telling me how hard it was to work 'in hospitality'. She worked in the cafe of a well-known department store.

@dentydown

I was called pretentious for saying I wanted a sous vide gadget. Hear me out…. I’m vegetarian and can’t cook a good steak. Apparently, all you do is cook it in the machine, then seal it off. You have perfect steak all the time!

If you’re vegetarian, I can understand why you might not want to cook steak at all, and therefore have no experience in cooking it. However if you are happy to cook it for others, why does being a vegetarian make you unable to do that? Steak isn’t like a casserole or something that you taste as you go along.

My husband's niece was at university to studying English literature ( or similar ) she came home at the end of term wearing chiffon type scarves and laying ' artistically ' on the couch while sighing deeply and commenting that it's terribly hard being a creative writer.
I was visiting my sister in law one day when niece was sprawled out on the sofa telling me how no one understands how hard it is to write creatively when one has such a mental block.
My sister in law came into the room and barked ' aye well, you can get yer fancy arse off that sofa and get creative with that bloody pile of ironing lady!'
I laughed way more than I should have.

@allSunshineCake1 cake forks are so useful! We have bog standard stainless steel ones, and I also inherited some fancy ones we use on birthdays etc. Also have grapefruit spoons which I agree make short work of eating grapefruit.
The oddest thing I inherited was a 1950s sort of spade shaped silver plated fish server for tinned sardines. it has a sardine engraved on it. I have never used it, as even in the privacy of my on home I would feel pretentious using it. Fun thing though.

I vaguely know someone very well heeled but with no side about it. Nice enough bloke. He has a minor title but doesn't use it. In the same broader circle there are some sisters. They are roaring snobs and professional husband hunters. They've been known to try and divert/siphon off other people's nice boyfriends. The sisters run a rather fancy supper club. It's good for their CVs and it's an excellent networking opportunity, obviously... but that's just window dressing, it's ostensibly for them to meet MEN. Nice bloke got an invite- but only on the condition he used his title.

It all seems a bit nineteenth century... and a bit fake and desperate.

This is why I love these threads. Every day is a school day. I am not British (actually I count as one now, I got naturalised ) and have always lived with DH here (he apparently knows some stuff about cutlery, but obviously not enough ) So today I have learnt about Apostle spoon, grapefruit spoons and demitasse spoons. And I discovered that the spoon he uses for sugar is actually an egg spoon - he prefers it as he tries to use as little sugar as possible in his coffee. We do have and use cake forks and soup spoons though (sometimes )

@Pigeonpocket

My family thinks using any type of fork for cake is pretentious. It's either a pudding which requires custard and a spoon, or it's cake which you pick up and eat with your hands.

Some cakes are too crumbly for picking up with the hands, at least for me. I like using forks as I make less mess.

Owning and using cake forks, grapefruit spoons, fish knives, etc. Not pretentious.

Insisting that a standard greasy spoon must supply cake forks forthwith because you cannot possibly eat cake without one; pretentious.

@HaveringWavering. My mother was amazed someone had the time to drive 90 minutes to Boston and go through several shops for an everyday white blouse. She went to local shops and chose quickly. We were also on a tighter budget. This girl had cashmere uniform sweaters; mine were hand me downs from my sister or shrunken and felted wool from my brother.

off subject I reckon there is apart of the ocean with lost teaspoons (not far from the odd sock sea)

@allmumwon I am not sure you get the complate picture, but I get where you are coming from. The list must surely include: lost teaspoons, egg spoons, demi tasse spoons, grapefruit spoons, dessert spoons, soup spoons, marmalade spoons, coffee spoons, honey spoons, latte spoons, syrup spoons, knickerbocker glory spoons, caviar spoons, table spoons, serving spoons, sugar spoons, porringer spoons, mustard spoons, salt spoons, gravy spoons, horseradish spoons, béarnaise sauce spoons, mayonnaise spoons, ketchup spoons, soda spoons, latte spoons, chocolate spoons, entree spoons, olive spoons, ice cream spoons, fruit spoons, apostle spoons, Kanji spoons, Chinese spoons, salad spoon, baby spoon, cocktail spoon, tasting spoon... and please don't get me started on wooden spoons or ladles... :D

LOLSPOONS

It was the year 2 Christmas nativity at my dd’s school about 10 years ago. My dd was playing a sheep lol. You had to queue to get in. A few of us turned up early to queue and bag front seats. We sat down at the front, only to hear the mother of the girl chosen to play Mary piping up in the row behind. She declared in a loud disparaging voice to a teacher that the front row should have been reserved for those parents whose child had a ‘key part’ 😂 how we laughed.

@EsmeCrowfoot
I mean a café is in the hospitality industry, so she was right. Not the phrase I would use but she was right

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.

What the fuck did you do to it? Goose is fatty like duck, really moist and lovely. How on earth did you manage to dry out a goose?

A little thought on what might have once been thought pretentious. My mother always starched our linen napkins. Weekly, No meal, however small, was served without a napkin (and personal napkin ring) the napkin lasted a week. Scroll on a few decades. I now realise that my mother was a paper towel saving, planet saving, eco warrior! (with or without cake forks)

[quote FelicityBeedle]@EsmeCrowfoot
I mean a café is in the hospitality industry, so she was right. Not the phrase I would use but she was right[/quote]
Fair point, I think a lot of the pretentiousness came from the way she used to talk about it tbh, like she worked at the Savoy or something 😄

@AlternativePerspective

On honeymoon we went to a grill type place. You know, chicken, ribs, burgers, very much a grill.

So we’re standing there waiting to be seated when this child in front of us who couldn’t have been older than about 9 pipes up, “there’s just nothing on this menu to eat.”

I think lots of kids are like this, either fussy, have aversions or just super picky. I feel sorry for them, being taken somewhere they hate the food!

Perhaps a little off the point, but about 25 years ago I had cause to visit an obscure tailors in Horsham. There were no customers in there but the proprietor was fascinating and the shop was a complete jewel.
The business was making stage clothes for theatre performers, singers and musicians and so forth. The racks were loaded with custom clothing such as country and western tasselled jackets and dresses and suits so tailored that you couldn't sit down in some of them but they would look great on stage. As he showed me around he produced clothing labels properly sewn with labels of any couture brand you liked, and any dress/clothing size you wanted.

I was so impressed; you could have a garment made that would be labelled to look as if, should anyone sneak a look, was an expensive designer model, and show a natty small size 10 even if you were a 14.
I didn't think of it as pretentious but as very funny and a satisfying joke on anyone nosey enough to look.

@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).

She self-published.

Also.. It is the most resold without being finished book on record 😂

sjxoxo
We bought a real fixer-upper abd a few months later the house next door sold too & we had new neighbours. Their house was not ‘a wreck’ like ours, not fabulous either; but lovable sort of 1980s styling and I was hoping the newbies would spice it up and our houses (once finished) would be lovely together in our road! We were quite excited as previous couple were much much older everything v dated & the new couple were about our age so we thought ‘ooh new friends!’ And invited them round. They paid well over the going rate for the house, we couldn’t believe anyone would pay the outrageous asking price given the house stuck in the 1980s still. When they came we showed them around our house, bit of a ‘work in progress’ before having a drink, and during this the new neighbour wife said to new neighbour husband, in front of us, “still it is quite spacious” which I thought was v rude! She is about ten years younger than the rest of us & I find them so wierd even now. They’ve marked their own parking space outside and lobbied the council to put up a sign saying ‘no parking’ outside their house (it’s rural where we live!). They have finally gotten round to updating the front of their house and we did secretly have a little giggle when we saw their planning application had been refused for a 2m high wall all around the front of their property (like a fort!) and the feedback from the council was to find a ‘more tasteful solution like a green or brown fence that is in keeping with the other properties in the area’ 😁 xo

You sound like the snobbish and unpleasant neighbour, wow.