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 🤣

@Soybean31 I know, madness.

MIL thinks it’s hilarious that I once popped to Tesco for groceries when she was with me . “I can’t believe you went to…Tesco” (cue much baffled laughter). She still brings it up many years later: “remember when you went to Tesco!”) . I still don’t understand.

car in Question was a rear engined German car.....

a classic VW Beetle? excellent

Not seen but ex-SIL was a particular snob (she came from a Welsh mining town) ex-BIL has a fantastically high powered job (lovely bloke) and they have lived all over the world. At the time of her visit to us they were living in Shanghai with their two primary aged dc.

First comment that got me fraught was her asking if my 2 dc got much home work from their primary state school upon my reply she remarked
"well thats the difference between state and private schools"

Secondly when seeing me put on a clothes wash "gosh how do you cope with working full time and doing all of these chores, we could never cope without our maid".

Thirdly she has some weird food obsession with the dc "are you really going to give them a full packet of fruit pastilles, mine have never had a full pack" had to laugh at this one though as her dd was particularly tubby and I caught her sneaking food out of the fridge when we visited them.

Was glad to see the back of them!!

@AngelinaFibres

Joined a sewing group locally. Woman there ,very nice, terribly posh, had a husband with a Morgan car.She was sooooooooo proud of this car. No problem. It did start to grate a bit when she mentioned "taking out the Morgan for a spin" every single time we got together. In the end I used to have a little bet with myself of how many minutes in to the session it would take before she would mention the bloody Morgan.

I like near the factory and have met soooooo many people like this

*live not like!

As a nanny I hear ridiculous levels of parenting pretentiousness frequently.

I have been told, in a written contract, that’s absolutely fine to serve chicken nuggets or fish fingers occasionally but these should always be referred to as ‘goujons’. Mashed potato is ‘crushed’, and please never use the words crumpet or pancake. It is pikelet or crepe.

One boy I looked after was a 2nd Sept birthday- so heaps older than many in his year- his mum claimed she had to take him out of the vestry back door of the church rather than the main exit after the reception Christmas concert, because his part in the reading of ‘I’m a Little Reindeer’ was so fantastically brilliant it was likely to cause civil unrest amongst the envious other parents.

@simitra

Moved into new neighbourhood. One day I pinned up a sheet against the dividing fence to use as a photo backdrop. Towards the end of the session nosy NDN asks me what Im doing.

"Photographing things for insurance purposes". I wasnt going to tell her I sold antiques online.

Then she starts to tell me that its "her" fence which she paid for and I shouldnt be pinning things on it. I told her ok, you show me your reciepts to prove you paid for it and I will stop using it. But until then its just a boundary fence and I will continue to use my side as I wish.

She then launches into a long diatribe about new people moving into the area and how she and hubby have lived here since the dawn of time.

"There was no fence when we moved in, only the concrete posts. We put in the fence"

"So you built it to keep the dinosaurs out then?"

You should have seen her face.

I think this was rather rude of you. You could have just offered to tie the sheet and had a good relationship moving forward.

I became acquainted again through my dd’s weekend activity with someone I worked with many years ago.There were a group of us and we’d sit and have a coffee and catch up whilst our dd’s we’re off doing their thing.The lady I knew said she’d got to pop out to pick a parcel up from John Lewis so off she goes she returns with said parcel and puts it on the table as I glance at it I notice it’s addressed to a ‘Lady X’ instead of ‘Mrs X’ which she was known as when I worked with her.She must have noticed that I’d seen it as she said “oh I’m not a Mrs anymore we are both Lord and Lady X as it gives you a better class of service and people are intrigued by it”.

A woman who went to a lot of the same baby/toddler groups as me always referred to her house by the street name (as in 'Would you like to come over to Posh Street for coffee?). I was never sure whether this was done just to make sure we all knew she lived in the nicest part of town, or to hint that she had more than one home (she didn't), or possibly both.

She also referred to her car as 'The Audi' at all times- when her DC started school she would always instruct them to 'get in The Audi and put your seatbelts on'.

I once bumped in to her in the Aldi car park and she made a point of telling me she'd only parked there because it was such a nightmare parking outside [local organic produce shop]. I didn't tell her that I'd been on the phone in my car for the last 15 mins and had seen her coming out of Aldi with a trolley full!

@SpindleWhirl

The man who forgot how to speak English having spent the summer in France. He couldn't actually speak French though, so communicated to us in mangled franglais.

God that was funny.

Oh god, I have had this sort of experience too. Usually with a tinkly little laugh alongside?

Or similarly, returns from a brief holiday speaking the language with a french or american accent!?

DS and I were unintentionally pretentious the other day while waiting for a new tyre in a full Kwikfit waiting room. We were talking about how he wouldn’t have much time to do his homework before Army cadets. “It’s OK,” says DS, “You can test me on my Latin vocabulary now while we wait!” I think it was made less pretentious by my attempts at pronouncing the words though!

No contest. When I was at baby yoga (what was I thinking?!) a woman pulled out her phone in the middle of meditation time and started loudly ordering a game pie for Christmas. Afterwards there was much tinkly laugh apologising about how “my little farm shop” gets so booked up.

Refuse to have anything from IKEA in their house.

(Me.)

I volunteer for a charity. Our volunteers are mostly a mix of retired people and people who can’t work due to their health or caring responsibilities.
The topic of people’s kids/grandkids comes up a lot in quiet moments. Here’s the latest school photo, any sign of the new grandchild? Type thing. One of the trustees was forever telling people how his kids went to “slough comp” (this is a nickname for Eton).

I was at an NHS walk in one weekend in one of those bits of London that is a border between very expensive and deprived. A woman was there with her daughter and mentioned the private prep school her daughter attended in every other sentence.

-Why don't you read the book you brought from "St Cake's" whilst we wait. Remember to sort out your uniform for "St Cake's" when we get back etc.etc.
It was bemusing and stupid. If people recognised the name of the school it was because their DC also go to private preps (my DC had played sport against them so I knew it); it would be meaningless to anyone else.

She must have mentioned the school name loudly in the waiting room more than a dozen times. I don't know who she was trying to impress. Why not just use the word school.

It was circa 1984. I was attending the local technical college doing a catering course. It was said by someone else on the same course, same age as me, both teenagers. Here is the most pretentious thing I've ever heard in my life to date:

I can't make up my mind whether to go on the Beaujolais run or whether to go skiing.

(I neither know nor care whether he did either or neither.)

@WheelieBinPrincess

I packed a trousseau for my honeymoon in Tuscany!

This was in 2019, and I was 33. I’d been enamoured with the idea since I read ‘I Capture the Castle’ at about age 11.

I had a lovely time deciding on my trousseau outfits 😂

Does that make me pretentious

Certainly not! I’m going to pack a trousseau for our (very, very late) honeymoon when we finally get to go on it! Can’t wait, tbh.

I was standing by the harbour admiring the view in a village deep in Cornwall and a woman nearby said something to me, which I didn't quite catch, so asked her to repeat it. She gave a tinkly laugh and said, "Oh, didn't you understand me? It must be my London accent!" I smiled and said "beautiful isn't it? Are you enjoying your holiday?" To which I got another tinkly laugh and "goodness no, we're local. We have a cottage ".

My son at Uni has found that most of the students in his year have come from private schools and entered into a conversation with one of his friends about school photo's which ended with.. 'and you always get scratches from the owl don't you'....
Son says 'the owl?'
It turns out that although his friend and his friend's brother had gone to two seperate private schools they both had photo's with an owl perched on their shoulder to look more Harry Potterish and I suppose, and so he had assumed all schools in the UK were the same!

@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 cat had a trousseau that went with him when he went to live with his new family. (Long story: cat ran away to join the circus - family with two other cats and a huge garden - and decided he liked his new home better. As this was only around the corner from my place, it was easy to pack up all of things to hand them over to his new servants.)

I'm not sure if it counts as pretentious or just stupid but chatting with nursery mums about applying for reception places. Around here, most of the schools are pretty good and entry is almost all based on distance, which tends to be pretty close. If you want to apply to a school that's a bit further away, you have the option to add a "reason" but it seems a bit silly as the entry criteria never include, "if you've got a good reason".

One mum told me she was applying for a particular school that was definitely out of her distance because, "little Johnny is so good at football and it's a sportier school, so I've put that on the application and I'm sure he'll get in."

I didn't know where to look!

A friend of mine’s husband lost his good job (not his fault, the company went under), she was mortified that she had to start shopping at whispers Asda…

She’s actually a lovely woman but still 🤣

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

Nobody asks, but you still go on anyway.

And it didn't add anything to the initial post anyway.

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"

This one's my favourite. Pretentious bordering on eccentric, and really made me laugh!