To want to scream when posters confuse 'hardworking' with successful / well off /professional- because poor people can be hardworking too. And professional people can be under employed.

[BobbingForPeachys]

yes I know i'm averaging one AIBU thread a day ATM, am tired so it is fun. This isn't a paty political rant, it's about usage of phrases by posters and campaigners of all ilks.

Anyway this is a big bugbear of mine

'X do nothing for the hardworking people'

'We will support hardworking famillies' (always picture five year olds cleaning streets with that one!)

'I need my thirty four homes / swan hotel / private jet as a reward for being so hardworking'

blah blah blah

What you mean is you will support the more professionally employed or affluent

Which is fine, society needs all those people to function

But it also needs poorer people to staff nurseries / be HCA's / mop up poo in care homes. The affluent cannot survive without the less well paid, that's a basic fundamental of life under our system.

And that's hard work too, and just as valid. Dh used to manage 60 salaried hours a week when he worked for El Shitty Company years ago, for a fab £18k per annum (normal for area), and moved job when his boss dropped dead at his desk. And I am a hardworking carer in fact. Different existences, no less effort.

Just respect people who comtribute by fulfilling their job or role please.
Regardless of how many GCSE's or ££ it creates for them.
Is all thanks.

A woman at a school coffee morning last week asked me how I coped with all the kids in my tiny house. I remained calm and said it was fine really (lie) and I commented on how lucky she is to have a lovely big house. She said "It is lovely isn't it. I bet it makes you wish you worked harder in school." I nearly choked on my coffee and managed to keep a plastic smile like this on my face. I should have said actually its Dr MintyCane thanks.

As the conversation went on she said that she doesn't actually work and never has and her father had bought her house. I think some people who have always been blessed with good luck just think they have got what they deserve. They do not understand how lucky they are.

It is a very odd attitude isn't it ? We couldn't work harder than we do/always have We will probably never be able to have a big house or even the bike dd wants for xmas.

Agree with starwhores... I understand "hard working families" to mean people on low and middle incomes who struggle (to varying degrees) to support their families financially.
I also think of it as including people like carers who are not in paid employment but work relentlessly neverthless doinf an invaluable job.
In fact, to me, it means the majority of people in this country - excluding only the idle rich and the genuinely "workshy".

MintyCane i am so astounded at that I am going to do a double emoticon...

I agree with the OP - in that I hate the term - but I don't think it is intended to exclude people on low earnings. I hate it for excluding those unable to work, unpaid carers, people with disablities or illness that (often combined with certain societal hurdles) prevent them from working, people who aren't in families, people who have recently fled an abusive home, people who failed to get an education because of illness or abuse as a child, people who have fled torture or conflict abroad who are legally excluded from working even if they want to, the homeless, ex-prisoners who have been given no realistic opportunity to reform and integrate back into society, the elderly, children in poverty, children in care, people who have become addicted to drugs...basically anyone who actually needs society's help and support and who society needs to support if we want to see it improve

The same lady asked if I thought my dd "had special needs because I ate some funny cheese when I was pregnant" If you didn't laugh you would cry !

mintycane what a hideous hideous woman! it would have been bad enough if she was a smug "hard worker"...but to be smug and then go on to say she's never actually worked herself defies belief.

Oh i do love you guys ! Next time I see her I can snigger to myself and think "hideous hideous woman"

Blimey Minty, I think you deserve an award for not thumping her!

Agree with most people on there that the 'hardworking families' phrase really gets on my tits.

Especially when used by government to mean 'we aren't talking about the poor here, we are appealing to the middle classes' or by well-off people to mean 'I worked hard for my big house/posh car/tax bracket/ability to educate my children privately, if you don't have those things you are inferior to me and just Not Trying Hard Enough'.

I spent the last four years of my education in a private school - we were very unlucky that my mother was made redundant and then had a serious illness that meant she couldn't look for work for a while. But lucky that the school were flexible about fees and prepared to keep me on. Oh, and unlucky that the local state school was full of bullies and teachers who did nothing about it.

next time you see her you have to drop the "Dr" into conversation. she's probably one of those awful snobby types who will suddenly want to be your best friend.

I take hard-working to mean lower and middle income families. But I do think it's a bit patronising.

I do think though that there is a real attitude on mn that people who earn a higher income (and we're not talking footballers and celebs here as they are not represented on mn), don't actually do much for their salaries and that a high income just falls into your lap in the shape of a bonus which you probably have a clever accountant to be able to dodge the tax loopholes for you. When that is actually not the case at all, and people who earn a higher income do work for it as well.

OMG mintycane!!!

I am guessing she worked hard at school but has no life skills as we used to call them.

My friend's son always says things along those lines to me and I'm stunned that his mum doesn't call him out over it. They've been living in America and I knwo houses are generally bigger there, but... even when I moved into a victorian semi many years ago, (with x, his house), she said "a doctor lived here before you?, what was a doctor doing living here???"

Now I live in a much crappier house. I can only imagine what she thinks. Her son though, he comes right out with it! 'your yard is tiny.' 'The decor reminds me of grandma's house'

riven " 'what a waste of your intelligence' she said 'there's plenty of thick people around to do that'
"

I'll try telling DH that next time he pissed me off.

hatwoman - that is the very reason I never use the Dr ! I find if people like me despite my small size scruffy clothes etc they are usually the loveliest people.

MaggieBehave how very rude of her !

Riven you are utterly amazing.

Actually I did cry later on. I cried because things are hard for us and we never ever get any help though, not because she was mean. I don't care about people like that she is the stupid one.

lol at Minty's hideous woman, maybe that's a warning not to hang out at school coffee mornings.

(and the side moral of this thread is, a phd is sod all use for financial gain or for making friends)

LOL Fennel I find a phd is sod all use for much you are quite right. I really don't plan to go to a school coffee morning again.

YANBU, it pisses me off utterly and completely. Its just an update on the 'deserving' vs 'undeserving' poor.

Indeed true also re the PhD. IIRC there is a nice upward curve of earnings related to years of education which then falls off a cliff once you have a PhD . . .

The top 10% of academic acheivers earn significantly less in life than the next 10%, as a cohort. There's a warning not to work too hard or do too well at school.

I suspect lots of the academic achievers have been siphoned off into phds when they would otherwise have been doing something useful/relevant for actually getting jobs and earning enough money to pay for boring things like mortgages and childcare.

(not that I'm bitter or feeling overworked/underpaid/undervalued, oh no )

Of course luck does come into it, but to put everything down to it takes away people's achievements no?

I was born and brought up on a sink estate. My Dad was an alcoholic. We were poor.
I did work fucking hard to get out of there and I'm still working fucking hard now.
DH was brought up in not much better circumstances.
Just because we're wealthy doesn't mean we got here by luck alone. It also took hard work, skill, risk and constantly keeping an eye open fop the next opoortunity.

minty - I would have decked her just for the satisfaction and not becasue I cared what she thought. It would be an important life lesson for her.

My grandparents all worked like slaves all their working lives so that their childrne and grandchildren didn;t have to have the hard life they did and I'm very lucky that I don;t have to work that hard.

I have worked in a shop, have been a paid-for carer, a student and a highly paid accountant.

I know which one was the hardest work and the longest hours (hint it wasn't the highly paid finance director).

I did work long hours as a finance director and it was stressful because I had to make the decisions and thats why I was paid so much because very few people are prepared to make major decisions which affect the jobs of thousands of people. Few people want to take that kind of responsibility or are able to make right decision which don't result in hundres of people being laid off (I accept sometimes theres no way round it). But when we have to cut salaries I took the came percentage cut as everyone else despite my boss urging me not to

I absolutely accept that I need to pay more tax than others to help the state support those who need it.

And the pursuit of pure knowledge for the love of it, of course. I was quite idealistic, back in the day. What sort of soulless person would choose a course based on considerations of financial renumeration?

(that was before I had 3 lots of nursery fees to pay on an, ahem, idealistic salary. and I still do think there's no better subject to study than philosophy. Just not so convinced about the worth of phds.)

lol minty (is that mintyyy or another minty person)

we had someone come round to our house and ask us (quite rudely) when we thought we might be doing it up (we didn't have the money at the time) - they were giving it that look that says 'don't sit down, you might get something on your coat' type look. I, quite honestly, said 'we are trying to save up to have enough money to do it' at which point they looked utterly horrified at the fact that both of us worked full time but still couldn't afford to do the house up (you know what it's like, childcare eats up most of your salary plus travelling yadda yadda).

Oh and did I mention that they were given a huge detatched house in London by his parents so have never had a mortgage and because of that, she doesn't have to work and he can work part time lol!

I so agree with people getting handed stuff on a platter THINKING that they deserved it. I see that attitude in a lot of people, especially those who have inherited huge amounts of money, and tbh, I find it so distasteful!