To think British people aren't thought of as rich anymore

[DeliaSmithsEpicGuitarRiff]

I kind of love this, as the child of someone from a colonised country and different race, but the other half very much British.
I am away somewhere that it is possible to spend a lot of money. There once was a time where being British would mean you received excellent service, no one thought you were poor, no one suspected you would steal or have your card declined.
Now I feel the opposite. That being British makes people assume I'm poor or likely to quibble about prices. Where I am now there are so many tourists from much richer countries such as the Middle East, China and India and we simply do not compete. The sales people look at us with contempt and pity, the poor English woman. It feels like some epic karma for the empire.
Are we likely to continue to decline in standard of living until we are Europe's shabby cousins, you know the ones who had lice and lived off tinned ravioli? And will the proud, Brexiteers even recognise that this our fate?

This reminds me of posts where someone says " there's no cost of living crisis because of the amount of fireworks going off" or " there's no cost of living because Birmingham airport was rammed" 🫣.
It's almost like you can't believe that not everyone is living the same financial situation.
People buying Hermes aren't the same people using food banks.

Depends how you are presenting yourself. Lots of Brits abroad look rougher than badgers' bottoms and will be judged as not having much spare cash, other than for copious amounts of fags n booze. (I'm not saying I'm judging them, but others might.)
Indian and Chinese tourists do tend to be wealthy, the poor in those countries are mostly living on the poverty line, not saving up their benefits for a week in the sun.

What's wrong with tinned ravioli?

😛

No idea what us looked for in Europe but further afield they will look at your watch and jewellery rather than your Tshirt and flip flops to assess your spending power.

OMG this has made me piss myself laughing 😂

The rest of Europe always hated us. I don’t know why people hold “Europe” up as a paragon of wealth and progressiveness either. There’s much poorer places in “Europe” than the U.K.

I have. I gave literally no thoughts to who could afford clothes, and given I wasn’t living in Pretty Woman I never did the creepy razzle dazzle thing - I was a student and usually too hungover to notice who I was serving.

You are paranoid, and probably look unfriendly

Why would you give a moment's thought to what you imagine a waitress in a cafe in a foreign city might be thinking about the average wealth of a British customer compared to an Indian one?

I recently subscribed to the New York Times. Sale on, £20 for a year, and I thought, interesting to see the next Trump term through US eyes / more informed eyes. I found it astonishing how obviously dripping with money and production values the NYT is, it made our newsmedia look like pathetic little rags. Not just the fantastic look/visuals, but the scope and intelligence of the content. I suddenly realised how poor the UK is. We are scraping about, the so called NHS is a joke these days, we're a little poor country, with some of the poorest cities in Europe.

Firstly, wages are stagnant and prices rising in a lot of countries. Some of them are electing orangutans to high office because they're cross about the cost of eggs.

Secondly, I am not American. Therefore I want to be left alone to browse or eat in peace, rather than being fawned over ("schmoozed") by a waiter or shop assistant who is desperate for a tip. If I wanted help, I would ask for it. Otherwise please serve my food/scan my goods and leave me alone.

I think it's true that the UK has experienced very slow economic growth and looks less well off than most of the Anglosphere and our Western European neighbors.

We are still well off compared with the rest of the planet and with the planet as a whole though. And we're not "entitled" to be richer than the rest of the world because we have an empire once. I would like to see the UK getting real about sorting out its various issues, but let's do it for ourselves and our kids, not because we're nervously comparing ourselves with other places.

I've never experienced the kind of differential service you've talked about in your post, where patrons who are expected to be "rich" get fawned on while those perceived to be less well-off get the cold shoulder. That's probably because I generally avoid visiting the kind of rude and shallow places where it's normal to treat people in this kind of way. One thing I love about the country I live (Japan) is that standards of service are generally good and polite to everyone regardless of whether they have been stereotyped as being from a "rich" country or not. Maybe come and visit us instead!

Switzerland, eh? See how one of the richest women in the world (who definitely isn’t British) was treated:
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/aug/09/oprah-winfrey-swiss-apology-racist-treatment

Also

I kind of love this, as the child of someone from a colonised country and different race, but the other half very much British.

Is a really weird and chippy attitude. People in the modern UK aren't personally responsible for the shittiness of colonization and don't deserve to be punished for it. What's more, few younger people (under 40) voted for BrexSHIT, and yet they are the ones, overwhelmingly who are going to be punished for that one, too. For decades to come. Are you actually saying that you're happy to see young British people, who have done nothing wrong to you, suffer because of some kind of genetically transmitted guilt?

We need conversations about improving the roadblocks to prosperity in the UK but we need constructive and positive approaches, not this kind of unpleasant stuff.

@GreenTeaLikesMe One thing I love about the country I live (Japan) is that standards of service are generally good and polite to everyone regardless of whether they have been stereotyped as being from a "rich" country or not. Maybe come and visit us instead!

I love Japan. But they're hardly exemplary when it comes to the treatment of disabled and other non-norms.

It’s not that they think the UK is poor, they think you are.

It's sartorial. Most British abroad are badly dressed.

It sounds like everyone in hospitality is racist and unprofessional what with treating different nationalities differently.

I am against empire but it is kind of nasty to sneer at a struggling nation even if it is "karma."

I have heard that the general stereotype of a brit abroad is of being cheap.

Being British in posh shops in Europe has always been like that. Our dress codes don’t travel.
40 years ago a woman in Paris recoiled from me, I was wearing a Barbour 😂
Brexit aside, I don’t want to look British abroad.

I worked in retail in high school and college and I tried to treat everyone the same. I guess some people didn't learn their lesson from Pretty Woman.

Well the country is in decline and we lost a lot of "soft" power/ respect during the Brexit process, breaking our word and losing our reputation for sensible governance.

Real wages have been stagnant for years...

😂😂😂😂

I bloody hope so I hate being smoozed into shops or restaurants. Hopefully I'll be avoided!

Other countries don’t centre their thoughts around what is happening in the UK. They’re not waking up every day thinking ‘oh I wonder how wages are in the UK today?’ The world doesn’t revolve around the UK

This is definitely a YOU thing OP or the shop you were in.

Are you following/hanging around to see how fellow brits are served?

Having worked in a high end jewellery shop, one thing you learn quickly is to never judge a book by its cover.

Today's browser, is tomorrow's buyer.

It's not what you're wearing but how you carry yourself.
As they say, new money shouts, old money whispers.