What's the most snobbish thing you've heard out loud?

[Applescruffle]

Online doesn't count. It has to be something said in person.

Here's mine, from two separate people:

"The house was perfect, but if I'm paying that much for it, I don't want to have to drive through a council estate to get there".

"We looked round (school) and it was our favourite, but there's so many council houses round that area so he would just have too many council estate kids in his class with him"

Oh no, you have left me speechless. I think this is one of the worst comments I have read. There is one famous thread in Classics where this lady fostered a baby who was withdrawing and I had my heart in my mouth whilst I read it. I felt so sorry for the tiny mite. I don´t think your ex-DP is snobbish, I think he is heartless, as in there is a void where his heart should be. I wouldn´t feel the same about someone who thought that uttering such a thought was acceptable.

We her response wasn't really relating to the previous sentence in the conversation. She just wanted to make it known to the other mums that did live on council estates that she thought she was superior in her dark, dingy Victorian terrace with it's shanty town extension on the back .

yes indeed. crab bucket. Been there with my lovely Mil's family. Happily she wan't having any of it.

A boy in DS's class went through an awfully snobby stage a year or so ago.

A friend had a lift share to an activity that often resulted in him complaining about how slow and rubbish her car was and comments about how his Mum wouldn't be seen dead in it.

He also liked to tell other kids how much bigger his garden was than theirs and ask Mums, and I mean literally ASK MUMS if they had abs, because his Mummy worked VERY hard in lockdown for a 6 pack 😬

Genuinely strange. He's grown out of it, thank feck.

It made me distrust his parents for a while as I don't see how an 8 year old would become that snobby without getting it from adults? That said, they seem absolutely lovely in person so it's all a bit confusing, really.

@StaunchMomma I suspect his mum was very stressed over lockdown, and he picked up that the exercise thing was really important to her. I would think that is one really stressed parent!

First graduate job was in Surrey post masters - my parents being helpful drove me down to help me sort a rental flat and get lay of the land.

We went in first estate agents - and got looked up and down and politely but firmly walked to the door and directed elsewhere.

Mum was mortified and blame me said I wasn't dressed smart enough - I wasn't dressed badly just causally - told me to consider this in future which actually wasn't terrible advice but stung at time.

I would have written a note to the vendors telling them how their vile estate agent was rejecting potential buyers.

100% agree some of these comments are obviously jokes, hilarious ones to imo. A lot of posters are obviously above average wealth themselves but maybe theyre jealous they aren't at the top top?

Oh and living in a council house doesn't make someone "deprived" the rent is half what regular renters pay. Us regular renters are the deprived ones man 😂😭

I grew up in a village during the 1980's, and my mum was part of a baby sitting circle, where they would meet up, exchange and had a system in place where they would take it turns to babysit for one another. It was a very middle class affair. My mum was well spoken, and seemed to fit in, but she wasn't from the same background.

One day when it came for her turn, someone asked where she lived - an ex-council house in a slightly poorer part of the village - the lady at the club physically gasped and stepped backwards. She was completely shunned from the group from that moment on.

My father once had this

Context is,he's minted,but to look at him,you wouldn't know it

He worked in a factory in the 70's,bought his own (ex council house) in a property crash in the early 80's for £7k (now worth half a million-its in a posh city near the well known uni,i have explained that its down the road to the local council estate,which isnt bad-i lived there myself,but my mother refuses to say she lives there herself) and invested well (helps he never spends a penny if he can help it)

Anyway,he has always had a passion for motorbikes and has always owned one-at this point I'm going back a couple of years

He bought a bike in the early 70's (before my time) and every 3 years,he does a part exchange for a bit bigger,a bit better bike,so over time he's upgraded to a bloody big and powerful bike

He walked into the local bike shop (looking his usual scruffy,bit dirty (dirt under his nails and a bit unkempt),tiny bit smelly (he's a gardener and always smells a bit of manure) and wearing his normal clothes that are falling apart/bit grubby (no normal person would wear them,they are that falling apart)

The bloke looked him up and down,sneered and tried to point my father towards the cheaper end of the shop

He refused and said 'what will you give me in part exchange for this bike?'

'£500' came the reply

My father smirked and walked out

He had 3.5k within the hour from the shops rival for his old bike and bought his new bike with cash (getting a small-ish discount)

In the words of viven from pretty woman 'big mistake!huge!'

(He's a bit of a twat and told a friend of my mother's,who has a big gob and knew the bloke from the first shop so he knew it would get back to the snobby fella-apparently it went down like a pork chop at a vegan meeting)

Can't say I felt too sorry for him-he not only lost out on that sale,but my father will never step foot in that shop again

Oh, we/they're expats, not immigrants.

I know. I was bullied at school for precisely the kind of perceived intellectual snobbery you describe. That I don't have a strong regional accent certainly didn't help.

My grandfather was of that rare breed with a sunny, naturally inoffensive personality who was loved by pretty much everyone who ever knew him. He never cared what people had or did in terms of leisure pursuits, he only cared what they were.

There are narrow-minded idiots of all backgrounds. I prefer not to be pigeonholed into a set of social conventions and expectations associated with background, 'gender', tradition, or other meaningless categories of that kind.

The British fixation with so-called class is really tedious.

That reminds me (the other way around) of the time we were in a really lovely farm shop cafe. They actually had a big sign up explaining that the food was all cooked to order and that it was not 'fast food', but that you would have your food as soon as it was ready.

There was a group of middle-aged hoorays at one table - all dressed in red/salmon/mustard - and, after they'd been waiting for about 15 minutes after ordering, one of them angrily shouted across the cafe "WHERE is our food? We are LITERALLY starving here!!!"

A young boy - probably about 7 or 8 - on another table said very loudly "Oh, don't be ridiculous!!!" They looked furious at being owned by a primary school kid - it was glorious!

I don't understand 'parrabel' but if you're trying to refer to the parable then do try to recognise mild humour! Copper is actually quite useful when I have to take £600 in cash to the bank, they would hurt far more than paper money if anyone tried to mug me!

I live in Europe and recently went to dinner with a British (female) friend. where we live, kids are allowed to choose which high school they go to. Places are assigned in a sort of lottery system. There are no catchment areas. Anyway, I was telling her that my daughter was debating between studying art and studying math. She responded, ‘ oh well she can do art stuff in her spare time’. I just stared at her. Studying art where we live is not like ‘ooo let’s do some crafty stuff.’ It’s a gateway to architecture and design jobs and you also have to study all the other normal stuff too. my daughter has been obsessed with drawing and designing all sorts of things since she was a little little kid. I want to support her interest and I just felt that her comment was insanely snobby.

No, ir's not part of the package, though the 'rent' for the property is taken from the service person's salary. The costs will be determined by a number of factors; the size of the house or flat (number of bedrooms etc), facilities and the condition.
It's been a few years since I was involved, but the rent was subsidised.

The snobbery over the family size v rank allocations was mostly because Officers and their spouses didn't want to end up living next door to 'other ranks.'

Well clearly not obsessed enough to definitely choose art as her subject as she’s also considering maths. I wouldn’t take that as snobby - she’s saying maybe there’s a way for her to continue her art even if she chooses to study maths. And presumably like in nearly all countries, doing maths will be seen as better career-wise.

another one. My husband went to pick up a colleague from work in our only car, a Mazda CX5. It’s the sort of smaller size mid range SUV. His colleague said, Is this your shopping car? When he got in. my husband was like what the fuck are you on about? yes, this is our shopping car. And we have a fancy car for special occasions. And we have another car for when we travel and another for when we pick people up. And another for when we just want to tour around. WHAT.

yes we used to dress unnaturally tidily when we were younger and looking for rentals...this was in the 70's when the whole area was less well regulated and a lot went on whether the person you dealt with liked the look of you or not. The only other times we rented were again when Dh's company wanted him to work somwhere other than where we lived.....its a whole different ball game doing it with the backing of a global major and you are looking in an area where they are big employers. This is no kind of humble brag, the work was hard but the pay and benefits package was good.

A 'friend' said to me that if her DD had to go to the school that my DD was going to 'her life would be over'. 😁

really surprised at that from a bike shop. We used to spend loads of time in them in the past (late DH was a keen biker) and all the ones we used to go to were full of (and staffed and owned by) scruffy types either in oily jeans and really old T shirts or biker riding gear. I mean you'd know who had the money by what they were riding (unless they had brought the rat bike and left the good stuff at home) but apart from that nada.

I went a very normal state comp in a middle sized city. Before we went on a school trip to a local ex mining town, our history teacher warned us not to stare at people as it wasn't a very wealthy area. She was a nice teacher and I'm sure she didn't mean to sound snobby, but we weren't exactly from a well to do area. And it was only 30 mins up the road so pupils could easily had relatives living there.

Completely agree with you about things that are said with tongue in cheek. Some people just don't pick up on self-deprecating humour. That said, I still don't believe some of the stories on here, or at least I don't believe that the conversations are a true account of what was really said. There is a huge amount of exaggeration going on in the re-telling, to add weight to the accusations of snobbery, which might be quite flimsy otherwise.

I can tell exactly which anecdotes that applies to on this thread, because honestly, unless they are joking, people simply do not speak like that in the real world. It's like something out of a cheesy American film where they try to emulate things they think the British upper classes would say. It's all 'oh darling, how awfully, frightfully horrid for you, having to share a bench with a poor person, etc, etc.

As an example, the story where a small child offered to share her lunch with the cleaner, only to be told by her mother 'don't be silly darling, the cleaner won't be used to eating quinoa.'

Well I'm calling it. That did not happen. I just do not believe it.

What might have happened is that the woman said 'no darling, that's very kind but the lady doesn't want to share your quinoa'

Or the woman said to the cleaner, in a jokey manner: 'I'm not sure you really want to eat my child's quinoa, do you?'

Or: the cleaner might have said 'Ooh yummy, what have you got for lunch there then?' to which the mother might have replied 'Oh it's just quinoa, have you ever tried it?'

Or the client was south American, where quinoa is a staple food, but something quite niche here, so she might have said 'I don't suppose you really eat quinoa, do you?' Referring simply to the fact that the cleaner is British, not suggesting that she is a total pleb.

None of those things would be evidence of snobbery, but the need to make it sound like that says more about the person telling the story than it says about anybody else. The main thing I took from it is that the poster thinks quinoa is a food only eaten by pretentious people.

I went backpacking in my twenties and found all the people insisting they were "travellers" not " tourists" hilarious. Personally I was very much a tourist, with my backpack and my budget hotel, checking out the amazing architecture on the local temple.

I don't think that's a snobby thing as much as a youngster thing.

It's a bit dated now, but Are You Experienced? by William Sutcliffe is a very funny 90s novel about a gap year traveller and this, among other things, comes up. Probably won't really resonate with today's young backpackers but if you know, you know.