Lockdown is where middle-class people hide and working-class people bring them stuff

[havanacabana]

I’ve seen this quote on twitter a few times and realised there is actually a lot of truth to it. IRL most of the people I know who are truly able to ‘hide away’ are the middle-class, privileged ones who are currently on furlough or working from home. People I know on minimum wage are the ones having to go out and mix at work in supermarkets, takeaways, warehouses etc. to keep everything going.

Well, it makes a change from the middle classes working 70+ hour weeks, paying loads of tax so that others only have to work a 16/24 hour week and get their income topped up by tax credits and housing benefit.

🙄

There are a few Airline pilots working as supermarket delivery drivers who can't fly at the moment due to the bloody virus, I know at least two, what does that make them? I'm tired of lockdown being turned into a competition, we're all trying to muddle through the best way we can.

*So doctors, nurses, dentists and teachers are working class now? What utter nonsense! Are police officers defined as working class? Are social workers defined as working class?

Depends on their upbringing doesn't it*

Yes. Yes it does

For me, anyone who has to work for a living is working class by definition. How much you earn is immaterial, if you would starve and be homeless if you didn't work.

@Highfalutinlootin

Yep. Upper middle class people crowing about how necessary and holy lockdown restrictions are while everyone else continues to go to work and/or loses their jobs.

You think working class people are happy to catch covid?

This has moved on a bit from the OP (& page 1!) - but going back to that, I always thought the big catastrophe would be the internet failing - some massive cyber attack, like when the NHS computer system got hacked. In which case those of us who rely on that for work would be screwed.

How the pandemic has affected us has felt very random - if you worked in a cafe, a school, a hospital, or university you were hit in very different ways - but it's also shown which jobs are essential (working class or middle class). Maybe we should be paying more than the minimum wage to people who are doing essential jobs - if we want them to keep doing them. I predict that afterwards, lots of nurses, care workers, shop staff and delivery workers will think it's just not been worth the money, and that clapping doesn't cut it.

In my experience, Communism is more often promoted by the middle classes.
The idealistic among them want working class people to be as comfortably off as they are themselves, with access to the same privileges.

l find 'hide' unecessarily inflamatory as if you cannot add any value within your profession, ie an accountant cannot help those in hospital with Covid, the next best thing you can do is 'hide' at home and not become a burden by staying well.
Not driving- less chance of an accident.
Not going out- less chance of catching Covid
Not going on holiday- less chance of inadvertantly spreading the virus.

Hiding is fine.
As to the class divide well, this virus does not discriminate, l have may middle class friends whose staff are furloughed, whilst said friends ie the bosses, are putting their homes on the market to raise cash to keep their businesses going, they are often running around much more than their furloughed staff, so more at risk.

Personally right now l would rather be the waitress than the owner of a restaurant.
The worst that may happen to the waitress is a loss of a job, horrible yes, but not as horrible as the owner who has a landlord demanding rent with no income, business rates and all the other costs, a responsibility to his staff, and huge mounting debt possibly secured against his home.
Bankruptcy is the only way out.

It’s also true that “working from home” is mostly a middle class privilege. It’s hard to clean an office from your own home

Also hard to be an ICU doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a senior government official, a social worker...etc etc from your own home. While it is very normal to work from home as a lowly date inputter, low level (low paid) civil servant, basic admin, customer service, and lots of other low paid jobs.

A lot of bitterness, jealousy and envy in this thread.

Also hard to be an ICU doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a senior government official, a social worker...etc etc from your own home

Some in these occupations have worked from home though.

NHS workers are usually middle class no ?

While it is very normal to work from home as a lowly date inputter, low level (low paid) civil servant, basic admin, customer service, and lots of other low paid jobs.

Is that true? I would have thought higher salaries & remote working was more aligned.

This is interesting, although I don't agree that face to face service industries are solely staffed by " working class". I know of friends who normally have a very comfortable lifestyle who work in supermarkets now as their business's have suffered due to lockdown. Sadly some are embarrassed about it, but they have no reason they should feel embarrassed?

We live near an area that is considered extremely upwardly mobile with a proportion of residents who are very vocal in person and online regarding those from another local disadvantaged area not following lockdown rules. It has been interesting to observe since the first lockdown on the odd occasion when needing to drive through the more "salubrious" area pavements full of hipsters totally ignoring the very rules they accuse others of breaking.
Just an example, but I'm sure there are many areas in the UK have had similar in terms of irony/ hypocrisy.

I think there are times when some believe socio economic status or educational level place them out of harms way.

@CorianderBlues

A lot of bitterness, jealousy and envy in this thread.

A lot of reasons to feel bitter, jealous and envious.

Furloughed ≠ privileged.

Almost the entire aviation industry is currently either furloughed, or looking for work in other sectors after redundancy. This has happened because the pandemic has decimated their industry, not because of the class they belong to.

What is middle class? Just having a job you can work from home doing now?

@Bluesheep8

*No. By virtue of their profession, whether they were originally WC or not, they are MC.

It's not as simple as that to change class.

It's so subtle. Yes profession is a big part, but it's also about whether you ski, where you 'summer', what you call your main living area, what you call your evening meal, what you call your parents, which school you went to, your accent, your knowledge of social etiquette, your appreciation of the arts...*

Agreed

If that’s the case then I’m not middle class at all! I thought it was just down to your job. DH and I both worked out way up to management so I assumed that meant we were now middle class! I don’t really get the class System of today

Husband is a doctor and has been at work every day. Often on the train because more people driving meant he couldn’t get to clinics on time.

There may be some truth to this though. I don’t know anyone in a middle class job who has been furloughed. Working class who think it’s middle class, then yes.

But most people who only need a computer for work can wfh and that includes call centre staff, but I don’t think of that being a middle class job.

@catspider

Well, it makes a change from the middle classes working 70+ hour weeks, paying loads of tax so that others only have to work a 16/24 hour week and get their income topped up by tax credits and housing benefit.

Hmmmnnn there are many people working those kind of hours on the minimum wage and they literally live hand to mouth and do not claim any benefits!! The people I work with have worked their bollocks off since Christmas and most definitely couldn’t work from home and many including myself had Covid for good measure!!

@LetMeBubble

NHS workers are usually middle class no ?

Not based on the practically illiterate midwives I’ve come across

@catspider

Well, it makes a change from the middle classes working 70+ hour weeks, paying loads of tax so that others only have to work a 16/24 hour week and get their income topped up by tax credits and housing benefit.

Working ridiculous hours is a choice. If everyone had the sense to refuse to do it the expectation would stop. After all the people doing it would still get the same salary and pay the same tax whether they worked 35 hours or 70.

The real heroes of this pandemic are NHS workers, supermarket staff, delivery drivers and care workers - the last three groups being the lowest paid. I’d like to see a reassessment of work and its value to society after all this ends but of course it won’t happen.

Did this quiz for fun and apparently we are both working class.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cambridge-news.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/working-middle-upper-class-quiz-14599753.amp

I assumed the markers for middle class were a lot lower. Ah well, either way I can’t say it affects me what class I’m in.

@TheReluctantPhoenix

There is no question that, statistically, this is true. I did laugh about people saying Heads and SMT were in schools-yes, but in offices, with very little contact. Healthcare are the big exception to the rule, but that does not make the rule untrue.

The proof is who is hospitalised and who is dying. The statistics are all there by income and profession.

Having said that it is true, however, does not imply that it is morally wrong. ‘White collar’ jobs can, on average, be done from home, physical jobs cannot.

My headteacher isn't mixing generally but that is because she is clinically vulnerable. So like myself, also clinically vulnerable, we are mainly working from home.

However the deputy head is in and around school, and is still seeing children. The rest of our SMT/SLT are part of the teaching team and have their own classes, so all are in school, in class full time (bar their PPA time) along with the rest of the teaching staff.

I think it's an unhelpful and untrue sweeping statement. Sounds true like most of these things as it has a grain of truth but when you drill down there are lots of furloughed and wfh working class people and lots of middle glass people going out to work. And as others have said working class people are still using the same services as everyone else.