Does being rude come with Nouveau Riche territory?

[Slinky1460]

Just had a few days out and about, one day at a car event where we treated ourselves to first time ever hospitality, and a couple of days in a nice hotel by the beach.

Both venues were amazing but I couldn't help but notice both seemed to be dominated by 30-something couples or groups of very entitled people being unnecessarily demanding or rude to the staff.

Now, if your thing is swigging magnums of Whispering Angel, regaling stories of your time flipping between the UK and Dubai, asking your little darlings to act out for your insta then reading their school reports out during breakfast - great, you do you. But being rude to the waiting staff, never saying please and thank you, and actually believing you're the most important person in the room was embarrassing.

AIBI to think this isn't acceptable behaviour and flashing the cash is just plain vulgar?

But what's the correlation between them 'flashing the cash' and being rude? Don't you think they'd be just as rude if they were broke and they'd be the type to throw a drink at a member of staff in McDonald's?

Lots of wealthy people have manners. And leave generous tips.

Those people were just obnoxious. The amount in their bank account isn't necessarily what's causing that.

I don't think rudeness is a class issue. I think all sorts of people are unbelievably rude!

I’m not sure whether it is a nouveau riche thing. For me it was the other way around. I grew up “normal”, had a weekend and evening job in a shop and later a call centre, I learnt that the public were generally horrible to service workers, and vowed never to do the same. I often find that people who never worked customer service treat service workers a little worse than those who did.

I’m always lovely to service workers now, whereas my husband never worked in customer service, and I sometimes have to remind him that whatever problem he is encountering has nothing to do with the poor person dealing with it, and they have limited power to do anything about it, so getting frustrated with them is achieving nothing except making their day a little worse.

”Flashing the cash” is a different thing though, and has nothing to do with your treatment of the staff. I don’t see an issue with spending a lot of money if you have it, regardless of whether you’re old money or new money. It’s better than hoarding it.

Not a class issue really - I think it's more of an upstart thing done by loadsamoney people who think they are better than everyone else.

Probably alcohol fuelled.

But it's refreshing to see '30-somethings' being derided on here. Usually it's 'elderly' (eg over 50) or, of course, the classic go-to: 'boomers'. So yes, absolutely fair the Milennials take a turn to be bashed!

There's bellends in every walk of life, it's just that you're used to the bellends in your usual social strata, so they just become noise. The knobhead at the till at Sainsburys, the bore at the pub, the micromanager at work.

You go away somewhere outside of your usual experience, you suddenly meet a whole new set of bellends. Novel bellends! And because they're new, and different, they're far more noticeable that your common garden bellend.

Was it in the UK?
Sounds like horrible performative behaviour

As far as I can tell selfish anti-social behaviour crosses all classes including the classless.

I mean the very term nouveau riche to me is a somewhat veiled insult that implies that someone has the money, but none of the taste, decorum, manners, education etc that is usually associated with someone of that background.

So the idea that the nouveau riche are rude is kind of implicit.

They sound like parvenus. I think this is the first time in my life I have typed out that word 😃

I've worked in retail customer services, as a bartender in a nightclub and very briefly as a waiter. In almost all cases, showing your frustration to the person who is the face of the business causing it can help the situation. You either get what is fair/ due to you, or you demonstrate to the business that they should change, or you communicate to the worker that they aren't demonstrating the prerequisite skills.

If everyone just smiled and said 'oh that's fine' then we'd probably end up like they are in the USA, where people tip even for bad service.

Goodwood?

if it was its known for it. The true enthusiasts left it a long time ago.

There are plenty of old money people who are incredibly rude and dismissive to service staff too.

Hmm, I sort of get what you mean, OP. Most of my neighbours are ‘Edinburgh old money.’ They have wealth and class (I’m the token poor neighbour!). Often when I’m out and about, I hear them with the various tradespeople they have in (believe it or not, chimney sweeps are still a thing here 🤣). They relate to everybody so, so well. It’s how they were raised. Their manners are impeccable, they have a laugh, they’re easy. They have nothing to prove.
I have absolutely no doubt that what you are describing is nouveau riche behaviour. People won’t like it but it’s true 🤷‍♀️

Yes. It's a stereotype Mners do like to believe in, though, just as they cherish the myth of the gracious, beautifully-mannered Duke, who dresses so raggedly and drives a car so ancient and dog-hair-clad that he is frequently mistaken for a passing tramp until someone hears a forelock tugger address him as Your Grace and realises he's the owner of the giant Palladian mansion up the road.

Of course it's nonsense. I've encountered incredibly rude aristocrats. Mn is just quite socially conservative and loves the idea that old money whispers, while new money screams 'Fuck you!' while swigging magnums of Cristal in a white 4x4 with false eyelashes appliquéd to the headlights.

I also think @VimesandhisCardboardBoots -- you notice a different style of asshole-ishness to the one you usually see around you.

It can do, OP. But not always.

A friend married a man who'd become rich very quickly. He'd come from a poor background with a violent alcoholic father. I wish I could say things went well but they didn't - he turned out to be violent and controlling and they divorced in the end.

But she told me that going out for meals with him was a nightmare. He treated waiting staff appallingly, often shouting at them an humiliating them to the point of tears. She said it was as if he thought that was the mark of a really successful man - that you kick ass all the time and use your power over others to show them just what a big man you are.

I got the measure of him early and dodged and dived to avoid seeing him if I could manage it, but on the occasions that I did see him he was vile. I invited them to a meal once...before I knew what he was like...and he was openly rude about my food and basically chucked his cutlery down, calling it shit! Unbelievable,I know - and that's why he never got another invitation. Looking back I can see it was too humble for him - going for a home-cooked meal - he thought successful people go to Michelin star places, rather than eat home-made boeuf bourgignon and dauphinoise potatoes. Oh - and I'm sure my meal wasn't actually shit, in case anyone is wondering!

It all ended very sadly and my friend still suffers the mental scars to this day. He's dead now but he was one of the most unpleasant people I've met. I'd never experienced blatant rudeness like it.

I think sometimes such behaviour is when people think that being offhand or dismissive and impersonal is how rich people do treat others. And copy it. Not realising that it is not so. Some will, many won’t.
It is a sign of insecurity as much as anything else.

Another thing...

I worked at an independent school for a while and I was surprised by the behaviour of some parents. After one evening event there were parents shouting at each other in the car park because some cars weren't leaving quickly enough. It was shocking to hear - effing and blinding from the parents in the presence of their teenage sons.

Sorry if this is an awful cliche - but cliches exist for a reason sometimes. Long-serving staff said that yes, the demographic at the school had indeed changed over the last 15 or so years and a very different kind of parent was now in the majority. They were loadsamoney types and for them, only money talked. The school did its best to instill other values and to give these boys better manners!

But being polite to tradespeople is hardly the only measure. The rudest old money/wellborn people I've come across aren't screaming at the staff, they're being quietly, acidly, subtly cruel in a 'NQOT' way about someone they consider beneath them. Often their target would have no idea they were being mocked because it might be a matter of apparent compliments. 'Look at all the trouble you've gone to to dress up! And here I am in positive tatters!' ('You poor try-hard arriviste in your Boden, you're not fooling anyone.') 'Look how clean and shiny-new your house looks!' ('You bought your furniture from Dunelm, Real people have inherited Chippendale.')

Or it was nothing at all to do with his self-made wealth, he just grew up with a violent alcoholic father and was copying him, because he thought this was how you demonstrated being a man, or wanted to make people fear him?

You were staying at the same place as them, so what makes you think that they were richer than you? Or indeed what makes you think that their wealth was more 'nouveau' than yours.

Given that you can't have known either of these things, your use of the term 'nouveau riche' can't be intended as anything other than its standard derogatory meaning of behaving in the crass and entitled way that 'old money' derides (or at least obscures).

And in that usage, yes, being rude comes with nouveau riche territory -- the question in your thread title contains a tautology.

I guess what you in fact witnessed was a lot of people seeming to be less considerate than you view yourself as being, regardless of whether they had recently acquired wealth..

Could be, but I'm sure he was super-driven to become wealthy because of his difficult childhood (mum was a 'respectable' church-going lady, in contrast, but I suppose he must have seen her knocked about and humiliated in the home).

And then, when wealthy, he used it to assert his superiority over other people. He was an extreme case, and as you say, his motivations might have been due to other things than money.

But I've encountered other people who fall into the new-rich category who will regale you with stories of how demanding they are in hotels and restaurants, so I think it is something that rich but insecure people do to make themselves feel good.

Agree, though the OP will now come back with 'evidence', that the people in question were arrivistes. In the meantime, I think the references to Dubai and Whispering Angel are doing rather a lot of hard work...

Not quite the topic of the thread, but about the thorny topic of class...

I used to work with school children in museums/galleries and I had regular annual visits from a prep school. The boys were lovely and they always had a particular master with them, who clearly had taken pains to dress in a very specific, country/uc style. Whenever I directed the boys to the toilet he would repeat my instructions, using the word 'lavatory' instead of toilet VERY emphatically. It became a game in the end...with me saying toilet as much as possible!! I'm fully aware of the U and Non-U stuff about lavatories, looking glasses instead of mirrors, napkin v serviette etc. But in the 21st century, most people use the word toilet, the signs say toilet, the boys asked where the toilet was etc etc etc.

Real class (ooh, horrible vulgar term, but what else can I say?) doesn't correct people or make anyone feel uncomfortable. This chap obviously needed me to know he was posh! I did smile behind his tweedy back.

If he was real posho would have said 'loo'