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’m not really understanding all this class system stuff. I’m in Scotland, so maybe a bit different up here. As no one I know speaks like this. I find it a bit embarrassing all this “I’m posh” or I’m so m/c. I’m actually cringing for half these people.
what I don’t understand is, teachers, doctors are m/c. Plumbers, joiners w/c.
I know plenty teachers, office folk who live in council houses, drive cheap cars.
Then some joiners living in big detached houses with 4x4 cars.
I work in a warehouse, partner a sparky, so we are W/c. But across the road is a doctor, he must be m/c. So there is m/c and w/c in the same street? His house the same as ours?
Them Katie price, worth a lot of money, so what’s she? Or if I won 10 million in the lottery I can become m/c? Lol 😂

I know some 'posh' people who use tumble dryers all the time. Eg a couple who both went to expensive boarding schools and live in a very large rural property where they could easily dry everything outside or in an outbuilding.

When my children were small I was a single parent and didn't have the space or money to buy a tumble dryer or run it. When I met my second husband he was a widower. His wife had died young after suffering from cancer. When he came to live with us he brought his tumble dryer. His late wife had become doubly incontinent as the disease progressed so they had bought one to keep up with the amount of washing. The tumble dryer went in the garage. It changed my life. It was fantastic. No more washing all around my little house because it was raining. No more putting washing out then frantically taking it in ten minutes later because it was raining. I am incredibly lucky . We bought a much bigger house together. I have a lovely utility room off a lovely boot room off a lovely hallway. I appreciate every single bit of it. I am middle class . I was still middle class when my life fell apart. A tumble dryer is a fabulous, practical, marvellous invention. It would never occur to me that it was working class.

I feel like the four crumpets confession may be the most outing thing I've put on MN ...

The other baffling part is when people 'look down' on someone who was brought up with less money than them.

How can your parents' income make you superior? It makes you luckier, not better ffs.

Please, would everybody just stop talking about the tumble dryer?! OP made a daft comment about it in her post and everybody took it bloody serious.
Almost every household has a tumble dryer nowadays, regardless of class or upbringing. Owning a tumble dryer might have been an indicator of class 25 years ago but not anymore.

It's not unusual in wc backgrounds though to use the word "posh" for nice things. My Nan often used it, along with "out the ordinary" for anything nice.

From my experience your 'class' (for want of a better word) only really shows if an individual wants it to show - i.e. the 'I'm working class and proud' types and the 'I'm a cut above types'.

Most sensible people just get on with it and are more interested if someone is good to get on with/work with.

As an aside, I know which glass to use for different drinks but instead I just use the glass I like best because it feels nicer in my hand 😁

I have no idea why I am being doubted. We live in a rural location so I don't have easy access to dry cleaners. I have a cleaner who sorts the linen (every other week), we definitely don't wash 10+ towels a week (maybe 3 a fortnight) and nobody wears hoodies! Sportswear is mainly jodhpurs (worn daily) and putting them in a drier would ruin the elastic. The same applies to underwear. We do a three washes a week on sunny days and it mostly goes on the line or on the AGA overnight - my house never looks like a launderette!

you've hit the nail on the head , indicators of class have totally changed since I/probably many of us , have grown up. I grew up WC, lead a very MC life now (i felt that judgement too when meeting the parents of my very MC husband) and when I visited homes as a health professional the boundaries are very blurred! if I throw my 1 pennyworth in - indicator nowadays is 1. size of TV in proportion to the room!!! ie. mahoosive TV in small room 2.smoking/vaping ....but perhaps we need to talk about the POSITIVE values/indicators of being WC ?

but perhaps we need to talk about the POSITIVE values/indicators of being WC ?

Or perhaps we shouldn't even categorise people by class?!

'Class' is such an outdated meaningless concept imo.

I am from a single/parent council house background, went to grammar school and got into a spangly university (first in my family) to do law, then became a corporate solicitor at a naice firm.

Anyone who thinks WC people are imagining this are themselves MC. I had no idea how to eat a bread roll correctly or at what point or from which side. I didn't know a suit with polyester in it was unacceptable or that package holidays were chavvy (because we'd never been able to afford one). It had a serious impact on my MH.

I am sure the lovely people of MN don't care about class. There are loads of amazing people in the legal profession trying to open it up to different socio-economic people - and even they give subtle and probably unconscious signs that certain (often WC) things are just not cricket. And they can be pretty sneery.

I have no idea why I am being doubted

Because very few people only wear wool and silk. It sounds ridiculous and the sort of thing someone who is attempting to be posh would say

Though with only three towels to wash a fortnight I assume you live alone so I guess that makes it easier to rely on the washing line.

I did a Social Admin degree at Manchester university and had the same experience as others. A field trip to the estate where my auntie lived to see social deprivation and watch people pulling faces at the cups of tea with sterilised milk (I had only recently discovered any other kind). Years later my accent still suggests working class but other aspects of my life are middle class. I know people from a wide variety of backgrounds and I don’t feel inferior or superior to anyone now. I just go with whether I like them as a person.

I had never eaten in a restaurant until I was 18, so I get the thing about being embarrassed not knowing what to do ( I had of course been in cafés but never a proper meal out). At first I felt uncomfortable but with more experience it fades and if anyone is judging they just aren’t very nice.

I like sugar in drinks as it's about the only added sugar I have in anything at all. I don't massively like the taste of tea on its own but really enjoy a cup with milk and sugar sometimes and it keeps me going until dinner time. It's not really worth worrying about whether you have an extra 16 calories. If you like it, have it.

With coffee I'm slightly odd and I do like the taste, very much. I drink a cup of instant at work without sugar and have black bean to cup coffee in the morning at home without sugar. But if I make myself a flat white I have sugar in it.

The main thing is to just have what you want and don't make choices based on how you think others perceive you, which I think is a very lower middle class, insecure thing to do. If someone judges me adversely for having sugar in my tea then I am not interested in being friends with them.

I can honesty say, someone else’s supposed class, has never come up in conversation with anyone I’ve spoken to.

I think it’s cringe when people say things like ‘I’m middle class’
By saying things like that, you are separating yourself from other people, putting yourself in a group.
Class shouldn’t exist, it serves no good purpose, so we should stop acknowledging it.

I am sure the lovely people of MN don't care about class. There are loads of amazing people in the legal profession trying to open it up to different socio-economic people - and even they give subtle and probably unconscious signs that certain (often WC) things are just not cricket. And they can be pretty sneery

Yes, I found that too. But law firms are full of psychopaths, workaholics and insecure middle class people whose parents or grandparents were working class, and very much want to distance themselves from that - or people who are all of the above in one delightful package. I'm firmly middle class now but don't hide my working class heritage at all. And if anyone thinks I ought to or I'm a bit common or (shock horror) Northern then they can piss off.

I have 12 port glasses in the loft, don't have a tumble drier (no space and couldn't afford to run one), work in a school, eat supper, but live in a terraced house. What does that make me?

I’ve never heard anyone refer to themselves as Upper Middle Class in real life, only on here. Is that a class indicator in itself?!

But law firms are full of psychopaths, workaholics and insecure middle class people whose parents or grandparents were working class, and very much want to distance themselves from that - or people who are all of the above in one delightful package

Well that's probably true. I think there is a seniority element here too. I remember being sneered at for going to Tunisia on a cheap deal as a trainee. (I think the response was "ugh"). It was only the second time I had been on a plane and I cried in the loo. Same guy commented on my plastic shoes - tosser. After that I just lied if I thought my holiday destination would be sneered at - hardly appropriate for a solicitor! Now I am senior exec level I just tell them I'm having tea at my nan's and we're going to sit and watch Corrie eating Crumpets and I give them a hard stare and eventually they look away. 😁

Glasses- yes
Champagne need to be served in flutes
Wine only up to the widest point of the glass.
Both held by the stem or base so the wine stays the temperature is was poured at.
I would never serve wine in a straight glass (a curved tumbler might be ok).

Not a fan of champagne coupes?

My tumble dryer has a cashmere setting. You can also proof a Barbour in it, so I think it is pretty solidly MC or more! Its also pretty much free to run as I also have solar.

No goes flat too fast.