To think working class shows?

[MrsBonnie]

I work in a lovely school where they’ve all had very different upbringings to me. Very much working class here. Sometimes I think it shows with little things I’ve noticed.

Having sugar in tea, using a tumble drier, not having a cleaner, using the wrong glasses for different drinks (I.E using the same one for everything!)… what else am I missing that excludes me from the club 😂 sometimes I will mention something like the above and get “oh I never use a tumble drier” … then I just think oops have I said something weird there?

Sometimes I think they’re judging me with things I say and do but I hope not! I grew up being homeless at a certain point, council houses, single teen (but amazing) mum, a very specific type of circle. I feel like Mum did everything she could to get us out of that way of life, but I can’t help but feel I don’t belong sometimes. Or that I stick out like a sore thumb. Am I being daft? Imposter syndrome a little bit!

I faked a posh upper class accent for years at school and no one cottoned on, and outside school until I gave it up.

When I started work, I used to have to mix with a company with posh people in Surrey, one day we were at some social together and talk turned to areas and where I was from, and I had to say a posher area nearby and not my common one to avoid being found out! Had lots of posh boyfriends who had no idea I was common.

No, apparently drinking wine from a tumbler does. Do keep up...😄

I understand op, you don't stick out but you feel like you do. I always have too but I know it's just how I feel, not others. We used a tumble dryer because we didn't have much of a garden or space to dry washing for a family of 8 anywhere else

Four crumpets at a time is frankly a minimum for me.

People of all social classes are only human. Either you are surrounded by nice humans at your school or horrible ones. Nothing else matters. Do you judge them for creating excess washing up with all their different glasses?

And here was I thinking I was a glutton having 3, they come in packs of 9, 3x3,so it seemed sensible, cooled so the butter doesn't get wasted.

Working class people are all very different , and people's opinions of where they are in the class system are very different . But if you lost your job today and you don't have a mate that can set you up in another despite having no qualifications or ability ,you are definitely not upper class.

I remember going to work in an office where the four other team members had had fairly affluent upbringings. I often felt on the outside.

When I started, one asked me which college I'd been to. I thought she meant the local community college where I studied post GCSE. I didn't realise they meant something different....

Back to tumble dryers. WC background. We never had one. I own one now, but rarely use it. I'm still managing to dry clothes on the line now. I also have two lines.

The reason I don't like to use my tumble dryer is cost. That is due to my upbringing where my Dad was so careful about energy consumption because we didn't have much money (70s/80s) that it's rubbed off on me.

We are now in a household earning average/below aversge wages and those early 'rules' I grew up with have stuck. That's how my roots show, terrified of going back to having nothing (not that we have a lot, but even now I won't put the heating on until November, as when we finally got heating as a kid, we were allowed to have it on Nov-Feb).

When I had my twins 16 years ago, we lived in a two bed upstairs flat, not much money, no garden, lots of washing. Due to space, we got a washer and dryer in one. It waa really crap though.

LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet · Today 00:46
Not sure what tumble driers have to do with class but I’m always amazed when people don’t have them. How can you not have one?! My clothes would take forever to dry otherwise! I’d rather get rid of my oven than

Dear god! are you thick? People can’t afford them? That’s the reason people can’t have them.

Thank you. That's what I thought.

I live in an area with the biggest number of graduates outside London. Is this indicative of MC? It’s a very rich constituency and has a Labour pm. More MC?

Everyone l know has a tumble dryer.🤷🏼‍♀️

Perhaps it was the 4 crumpets you ate in one sitting rather than the actual crumpets. I couldn't stomach more than 1-2 at a time. I'm not a huge fan and always feel disappointed after eating them.

You can't have one teaspoon of sugar in tea, but can have it with a big fuck off scone with a table spoon of jam in it.

There is a class system to sugar consumption you know....

But of course it depends on your tumblers. Drinking wine from those Picardie tumblers is v French and therefore très chic.

I wouldn't categorise myself as mc but we're definitely middle income. We have a tumble drier. I love getting clothes on the line when I can, but I do stick them into drier for 15-30 minutes as they feel so much better (especially towels).

What class where you live actually has regular washer dryers? One for washing and one for drying? Not just one. But both?

Hmmmmm. I think that if you use the dryer regularly, then it is definitely higher class to have a separate tumble dryer (please don't take this too seriously). Because obviously they work better, so having a combined washer-dryer and using it regularly suggests you just don't have the space.

We used to have a separate dryer, but hardly used it. So we took it out and used the space for a drinks fridge (probably middle middle class, rather than lower or upper middle class; a beer fridge would be something else). There would be space for the dryer and the drinks fridge, but only if we removed an existing cupboard.

We also used to dry some things on the Aga. Which on one level is ultra middle class. But we recently took it out on environmental grounds and replaced with all singing, all dancing electric. Which is a different breed of middle class. Maybe the tofu wokerateri?

I drink wine from the same tumblers whiskey is drunk out of. I don't like wine glasses with tall stalks as I am a clumsy clot and knock them over far too easily.

No sugar in tea here, though I do like one in coffee. I do have a tumble dryer.

I am middle class I guess (teacher parents) but I am incorrigible!

I volunteered at a National trust house. It had a laundry garden. It was a separate, long, garden surrounded by high walls to hide the washing and also to radiate the heat from the sun to dry things quickly. The kitchen garden was also hidden behind high walls . The bits of the garden the family would have used were beautifully laid out. The family would never have seen the domestic trivia bits of their grounds. If you are less privileged your washing, and therefore your pants and socks etc, are drying in the only space you have . You havent got spare spaces to waft about in whilst your sheets dry. If you could hide those elements of your life you were a higher class than if you had stuff in your only garden or all over your house.

Having a cleaner is nothing to do with class, it's to do with money. And money is not classy I'm afraid. It's filthy.

I’m middle class, or so I thought. Then I started to find out about this strange level of ultra middle class that exists in England only, where everyone is privately educated because ‘their parents believed in education’ (= had the spare dosh required), goes skiing regularly, thinks being poor is letting the cleaner go. I agree with the poster who says this level of poshness/obsession with a very particular set of status symbols is not such a thing in rUK, because there isn’t as much wealth to divide into levels. (I don’t have a tumble dryer though could find space for one - my dad had one but panicked if anyone ever put it on and accused us of wasting money so I suppose I see them as expensive and stressful!)

And if you are going to get drunk and be a total annoying tit you have to do it on expensive wine, as that is somehow more socially acceptable than being a drunk twit on Lambrini.

I am sometimes baffled by middle class ideas about what makes middle class people more superior than working class people. The middle class kids i used to know were morally bankrupt, shagged anything that moved and took a ton of drugs, but somehow they were better than the working class kids that behaved in exactly the same way, or were much more tame in their behaviour. It is really odd.

I think it’s fake news that middle class people don’t have tumble dryers. Many MC people have cleaners, and many of those cleaners do the laundry. How on earth is the cleaner supposed to get through the family’s laundry in the 5 hours she is at your house if she is having to line dry everything? Clearly some things (the delicate fabrics, bed linen, etc) need to be line dried, but surely the rest goes into the (energy-saving heat pump) dryer.

And if mc is related to income, then no one can afford to use their fucking tumbler round me. Despite it being a wealthy area.

So l guess the ultimate in MC now becomes a tumble dryer you can’t afford to use!

Money doesn't equate class.

I would never label anyone as middle/working/higher class.
Nor would I look up to or down on anyone because of their perceived class.
I believe in meritocracy and social mobility.
I have a lovely friend who is always banging on about her working class upbringing, she never talks about how happy or unhappy it was just that it was working class.
She also uses the word “posh” to describe anything she considers to be nice, it’s such a cringy awful adjective.