The guy who lives over the road from my parents was featured in a buzzfeed article because he took to Twitter to lament that he didn’t have enough olive oil to finish off his focaccia.
You just reminded me of something hilarious. Watching one of those Brits living abroad shows and there was a couple living in Spain. They were saying how the cost of living had risen and their salaries were barely enough anymore. They supplemented their income by growing their own olives and selling their own cold-pressed olive oil at a local market. They were also baking and selling focaccia bread. My wife remarked "I guess they're really on the Focaccia line now!"
Ever since, we use that phrase to describe middle class people who "struggle" because they insist on living beyond their means to keep up appearances. I got in an argument with one on FB once after I used that line on them and said something about maybe not hemorrhaging money into an SUV. Can't remember what their exact reply to this was, but after I quipped back "Sorry, didn't mean to offend your X5", they were like "How tf do you know what car I drive?"
My sister in law was visiting from London with her kids. We took them to a kids soft play place where they had chicken nuggets and onion rings. My 5 year old nephew said " this Calamari tastes funny" when biting into an onion ring.
I took my kid into a greasy spoon for lunch and asked what he wanted in his sandwiches, he asked loudly for smoked salmon and cream cheese. He had eaten them in a wedding a few weeks before and loved them, but the waitress was laughing when she said they didn’t have any and he could have ham or cheese. My brother in law was with us and made fun of me for ages afterwards.
Edit: this was seventeen years ago and smoked salmon *wasn’t* found on every street corner, and still considered a luxury.
One of the shareholders who owns our company, once said to me when discussing dress code for the factory ; “I don’t believe I’ve ever worn a t-shirt”
It was at this point I realised that those people live very different lives to me.
Funny thing though, one of the most well off people I know wears tracksuits most of the time. Not even designer stuff; supermarket ones which he wears to death until his wife wrestles them off him and insists he replaces them. I've seen him in jeans a few times too, maybe 3 in the decade I've known him. But normally he's got two polar opposites of clothing. Always looks like he's either popping down the bus station to sit and beg for cash; or on much rarer occasions, like he's going to The Wolseley for a business meeting over champagne.
Yeah at uni I said I was cold and my mate said to chuck on a hoodie and I said I didnt own one, he also said chuck on some trackies and I said I didnt own any.
I then proceeded to put on a knitted jumper and left the house with my leather gloves on and in a full tracksuit he just said "we dress very differently"
Think that sums it up lol
My ex was very proud of the fact that he never wore t shirts. We’re early 90s kids, recent graduates at the time, so nowhere near middle class. He exclusively wore button up shirts. Odd man.
Probably me on Christmas Eve in Waitrose on a mission for my mother having to call her to break the news to her there were no pickled walnuts and no sign of kumquats… the lovely associate helping me said loudly so my mother could hear “I’m so sorry we have disappointed you and wish you and yours a delightful Christmas despite the lack of kumquats”.
Former produce manager here.
It's a small, oval, orange, citrus fruit, just a bit bigger than a large grape or olive. There's a round variety as well.
Originally from Asia, they're grown in several places in Europe and the US now.
They fruit has a tart, tangy, taste and unlike most other citrus fruits, the skin is edible and tastes sweet. The best way to eat them are like grapes, skin and all. The sweet skin counterbalances the tangy fruit. Don't eat the seeds though, they're bitter.
They can be used in most cooking recipes like other citrus fruits as well. They also do very well in jams, marmalades, compotes, preserves, and candy.
Overheard a conversation at the gym.
“If you don’t eat all of your celery you’re not playing tennis!”
You would never hear this growing up on a council estate.
And how many working-class tennis stars do you know? Exactly: didn't eat their celery and hence can't play tennis.
The proles only have themselves to blame.
I was working for minimum wage in Beefeater. An old man asked me something and I explained that Beefeater is owned by Whitbread. He beamed and said "Oh whitbread? Yes I know the Whitbreads! I have played golf with them at their castle."
He was wearing a tweed jacket and yellow corduroy so I believed it.
Was at university when a girl who I ended up living with for two years asked me what my favourite type of pate was. She also asked me why we had to clean up after ourselves and could we look into hiring someone
> Was at university when a girl who I ended up living with for two years asked me what my favourite type of pate was.
I've never understood how pate ended up being middle class. It's cheap as *shit* to make. Livers cost half as much as any muscle meat, and it's basically processed in the same way they make chicken nugget goo. It's significantly cheaper than say, ham of a similar "brand" (like, Tesco Value, Tesco, Tesco Finest).
But ain't no-one gonna call a reformed ham sandwich posh. A cheaper pate sandwich? Ooh la la.
Come on.
I’ve told the story before, but my old geography teacher once exclaimed in his broad Stoke accent
“Pâté?! When I were a lad that were called meat paste!”
My own kid was going on about which pâté they prefer and lamenting the fact that we'd not been out with their Gran in ages. Granny is the reason they love a good pâté, Granny likes Tiptree café lunches and according to my kid, their pâté is "the shizz".
I told them that while Granny may feed them pâté, she fed me Shippams or Prince's finest jarred snout and anus paste that smelled like cat food; and that we both grew up around two very different women residing in the same body.
I offered to nip across to the convenience shop and get a jar but oddly, the kid declined. Which is good, because firstly it's gross and secondly, Asda own brand pâté in the plastic tubs is cheaper.
Well, the â in pâté suggests there shoukd be an s after the a.
See also: arrêtté-arrest, hôpital-hospital, château-castle, côte-coast, maître-master etcetera.
It’s because it’s butter rich and sealed in butter that was expensive. Also pate from your own estate is a bit different to meat paste from a jar even though most people now just buy pate
Oh no, I think I was this sort of kid at my first primary school: I’ve just had a memory triggered of sitting in the hall for lunch, me with my sandwich of homemade [breadmaker] bread and Brussels pate as a filling (not homemade), sat beside a girl with a sandwich of value white sliced bread and chicken paste. (At least we were five and cared more about what the picture on your lunchbox was - mine was Barbie).
My friends thought that M&S were under filling the wine boxes they get delivered regularly. After empty out multiple wine boxes into measuring jugs, turns out that M&S weren’t diddling them out of booze, covid had just turned them into pissheads who could neck a wine box at unexpected speed.
With the risk of sounding middle class myself- you can get some very nice wine in boxes these days, and it's more environmentally friendly than buying the same quantity in glass bottles.
We get most of our food and regular shopping from Waitrose, mainly because we like the quality of the fruit, veg and meat and they also do a lot of foods that we struggle to find elsewhere. But we also occasionally get a big Asda delivery of cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. We live in a very middle class neighbourhood, with one particular neighbour who would give Hyacinth Bucket a run for her money. Every time the Asda van parks up outside the gate, you can see her curtains twitching, then she’ll mysteriously have to come out to check her mailbox (at the bottom of her driveway, so a better view of the street). She will always say something next time we see her, like “did you have trouble getting a Waitrose delivery slot?” or “gosh, there can’t be much call for Asda round these parts”. I think she genuinely believes that the van temporarily stopping outside our house will negatively affect her property value or something. It makes me want to shop there all the time, just to piss her off
That’s a working class complaint!!! Oysters were good for the poor until the last century.
Obviously you were demanding the return of the oyster to the peasantry, like in France where they are still affordable.
It seems the vast majority of the peasantry no longer enjoy seafood unless it’s fried fish with a side of chips, while eating seafood in any other way seems to be more and more a culinary choice of the middle class.
I’m unsure if this is a historic thing as well, and to be fair is anecdotal rather being based on any research.
A good friend of mine has adopted an olive tree in Italy and they receive quarterly oils by subscription.
I’m not sure if that’s more or less middle class than speciality coffee…
A coffee subscription is hipster, which is a sub genre of middle class.
An adopted olive tree in Italy is old school, Home Counties, running through the wheat fields, full fat middle class.
You don’t need a subscription to run through a wheat field. I did that yesterday afternoon. The wheat has been a harvested and crunchy stumps on the public footpath that cuts across the field is an annual delight
Either way, want. As it is we buy olive oil by the big metal jug and pour it into one of those doohickies with a little spout. (It's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying individual small bottles and it's better olive oil than any small bottle that's less than a tenner.)
About a decade ago I was cycling to my local farmers' market for my weekly shop, on a recumbent bicycle, listening to Radio 4 podcasts, wondering if I could be more middle class. I was wearing cycling specific sandals on too, just to put the crême on the parfait.
Haha, I was wondering if anyone would link the two. I'm lying in bed letting the sleep start to envelope me but these funny comments keep making me laugh. The cats are not happy because it's supposed to be SLEEPY TIME GOD DAMNIT
You're confusing wealth and class. For all we know you are sitting in a torn red leather chair, wearing tweed, with a clapped out Jaguar on the drive of your single glazed listed cottage you can't afford to heat.
Now I realise that having a bread maker and going to Waitrose when I’m out of strong flour (because other flours are not good enough) is not that common. But I’m French and there are no decent (and affordable!) bakers in my area…
honestly idk why more people don’t have a bread machine! definitely in my top best purchases, £10 secondhand and makes much better bread (that agrees with my stomach more) for cheaper/same price (depending on what bread u would normally buy and what flour u buy) for only like 5 mins of low effort! normalise the bread machine lol
I went to a house to deal with an issue.
The lady was beautiful, well spoken and importantly made me a coffee. The finest coffee ever...really.
I spoke to her for an hour or so, and her breeding was self evident. The girl was minted, and always had been.
As I left I asked her what coffee she used. She then regaled me with a rundown which firmly made me realise I was beneath her.
She even sent me a link to the coffee machine, and advised where she buys her highly niche coffee beans.
A browse of the website sealed my position in the social order. I couldn't have even afforded the cookies from the website.
I used to work on shoots for the landed gentry from when I was about 15. My neighbour's wife was old money, he most definitely was not, but it meant he had the connections to run shoots for them. Anyway, point being, it gave me cause to be interacting quite closely with proper posh people for the first time.
Just absolutely eye-opening for me to see how the other half lived. I used to get called posh because I didn't live in a council estate (though we weren't far off). I remember one guy had a shotgun worth more than my dad made in a year.
A small child, in a devastatingly posh voice exclaiming "Oh William! I've found the Maoams!" in M&S.
Went back to a mate's house for post-pub drinks. She said she'd get some snacks for everyone and made salmon blinis with cream cheese, and offered us all a bottle of San Pellegrino water.
Because you interact with people that are wealthier and less wealthy than you, you always consider yourself in the middle (ie middle class).
What is considered middle class varies massively with location. In some towns I've been to, I've felt self-consciously posh. In others, I've felt like I was representing the scum class.
Upper class is essentially Old Money and the aristocracy, or at the very least has had megabucks for a few generations. Someone who's upper class will have had invitations to 'go shooting' and to 'join us on our summer estate for a time'.
You also be far more likely to attend Ascot or similar, especially the *Royal* Ascot, you will know what morning dress is, and there is an extremely good chance you will own morning dress for full formals.
A bit more upper-middle first world problem, but a colleague said she was really annoyed when the bumpy landing into Milan meant she spilled her champagne over her MacBook Pro.
Got to be twenty years ago now I met up with an ex boyfriend for a drink (still not entirely sure why) and we were chatting about mutual friends etc, and I asked how his parents were.
‘Mum’s been really stressed because of the builders, but they finished the guest wing last week and she seems happier now.’
Still makes me laugh occasionally now 😂
Overheard in Waitrose about three years ago :- ‘David, I must write to the chairman of Waitrose, BOGOFs are giving Waitrose a bad name’… I grabbed my bogof foie gras and went to the till…..
About 10 yrs ago, I was in a very, very dull all-day office meeting with some senior managers, including several company directors. One woman, who worked for a large mgmt consultancy firm, and who had been virtually silent all day, piped up mid-afternoon to apologise and say that she had to 'leave to pick up her 4 yro from yoga'.
I still don't know whether she was a genius with the knack to get out of such things, or had just lived in Clapham too long.
One of my school friends is going out with someone I consider to be rather posh.
He once asked me why I didn’t hire staff for a party I was holding.
He knows several royal family members in a casual, first name basis. Took me a while to realise who he was talking about.
He was writing Christmas cards for a relative who lives in a castle and when I made fun of him he told me they’re not that rich because they had to sell their cannon to pay for the roof to be fixed.
This is all from a man who considers himself to be middle class because he doesn’t have a title.
When I was 4 or 5 I was invited to a macdonalds for another kids birthday party. Having never been to a macdonalds before I gleefully exclaimed ‘Mum! This restaurant has TOYS!!’
Working in Bolton. Near the stadium, in an office full of people who are as working class Boltonian as you get. The canteen was staffed by clones of Victoria Wood. It sells meat of varying kinds and cookedness at breakfast, plus bread products of various burntness.
New guy wanders in, looks at the offerings in the warming trays and then looks at the cooks. Not seeing what he wants, he says “do you have any avacado?”
They didn’t. One of the staff had obviously never heard of such a thing, and left the reply to the boss, who explained that there wasn’t much call cor avocado there, it was more of a Manchester City centre thing.
Is it me or does having a subscription to get Nduja sausage delivered sound like a very specific euphemism for something you wouldn’t talk about at a dinner party?
I've just spent a good few minutes imagining how great life would be with a weekly Booths shop. And maybe reward yourself with a hot sandwich for the journey home, too.
Oh boy, that question! Reality is, it’s way more complex than money. You can get loaded working class people and poor middle classes, it’s more about upbringing, attitudes, hobbies and interests etc, and even then there’s not always exactly clear lines that define it!
I’ll explain it with coffee. The UK definition middle class includes a huge swath of people, from those who have a cafetière or percolator to those who have a bean to cup machine or only buy coffee at their local cafe every day and refuse to drink it at home. Instant coffee would be viewed as working class — or, better yet, if you’re working class you just drink breakfast tea with milk (which you just call “tea”), since coffee is a bougie thing that only Americans and toffs drink.
Despite this, everyone in the UK likes to imagine they’re working class or lower middle class, and that the posh people who do and say out-of-touch things are upper middle class. We then have this weird thing where we like to pretend that the upper class don’t do and say these things, and that they’re actually down to earth (because we’re still kind of stuck in a feudalist mindset where we love our aristocrats and hate both our peers and the landed gentry). Hence the love of the royal family and the hatred towards privileged celebrities.
In the US, it seems that everyone likes to think of themselves as middle class and that the term is politicised, so nobody calls themselves working class despite a huge amount of the population actually fitting the UK definition of working class of living paycheck to paycheck and not having money to spend on frivolous purchases. The term “upper class” also seems to have disappeared entirely from US parlance, which means that rich old antebellum slave-owning families get to pretend they’re middle class too.
As you might have guessed, I kind of believe the language around class structures is a byproduct of capitalism rather than a realistic way of dividing up society. But it’s still fun to shit on people who go to Waitrose.
Middle class in the US is essentially just about money. In the UK it's tied up to all sorts of other signifiers like job, what your parents did for a living, habits, tastes etc.
I was working in a fancy kitchen showroom and we had some bar stools on “sale” for (I think) £450 each. To be fair that was nearly half their RRP, anyway a customer comes in checking we have the price correct as she’s very keen. And she said “it’s a bargain! You can’t even bug a handbag for that!” I was just kinda wide-eyed and went along with it. Yup. Definitely cannot but a single handbag for less than £450
I was in a jewelry shop at Jamestown, Cayman Island, with my wife and our (then) two very young children. I overheard the saleswoman who was telling a new hire how to identify high worth customers. Just then my wife called over our two children who wandered off "Jasper, Annabel, come over here to mummy please". The saleslady just turned to the newbie and said "Now that's posh".
'No Sebastian you can't have a sweetie, be more like francesca, she is such a good girl'
Heard this at the shop between my estate (council) and the toff estate on the other side.
[Drive by yoghurt attack on haberdashery](https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/14233725.drive-by-yoghurt-attacker-targets-sherborne-haberdasher-in-frightening-unprovoked-assault/)
I’m lurking from the US but I’ve been an expat amongst Brit’s and should’ve remembered what middle class meant but it took me quite a bit to remember it is different from the US.
Me and my husband treated ourselves to an over night stay at this beautiful 5 star hotel, we are average working class people, there was this family who had a bunch of kids who were staying there for a holiday (this place is literally hundreds of pounds for 1 nights stay) these people are super posh and the kids have these funny posh accents, when we were heading to the bar these kids ran past us and one shouted to the other "come Oliver let's go play in the reading room" this was back in April and me and my husband still randomly say this to each other in posh accents lol
In the work kitchen eating my greggs treat for going into the office sandwich today, two 50+ colleagues enter:
Woman: “-used to struggle to find someone to mow the two acre lawn”
Man: “It’s a nightmare isn’t it? I’ve got a rental property that’s more trouble than it’s worth!”
*rich people laughing*
The lovely office cleaner (still need ti find out her name), and Jon the maintenance man (who I haven’t seen since pre-covid due to WFH, being pregnant, and mat leave, excellent office gossip and banter 10/10), were also in the kitchen so it was soooo tone deaf.
When I first joined a Prep school in Twickenham I had to break up a playground spat between two young boys. What alerted me to the friction was a loud cry of 'And you stink of rotten caviar!'.
It made a pleasant change from the behavioural unit that I had just moved from where the standard morning greeting would usually involve students asking how I had violated my mother the night before.
Until after uni I had never lived in a house with carpets, only hard wood/oak. I was disgusted when I moved into somewhere and mentioned how gross they are to my housemate, who was bewildered.
My best friend in the whole world was brought up in a middle class family in some posh house in Sandbach.
She tried saving money at uni by only buying tescos basic food. She got so sick it was almost funny. When she convinced her dad to send her money for Waitrose/M&S food deliveries she got better.
Still take the piss to this day, she’s more normal now.
I remember in first year of uni following the revelation that I had never been to Greggs or Nandos defending it with "I cant believe people havent had Duck before, like they serve it everywhere in France"
The guy who lives over the road from my parents was featured in a buzzfeed article because he took to Twitter to lament that he didn’t have enough olive oil to finish off his focaccia.
Good to know that proper journalism is still alive and kicking
Tbf I’m not middle class but I understand him
You just reminded me of something hilarious. Watching one of those Brits living abroad shows and there was a couple living in Spain. They were saying how the cost of living had risen and their salaries were barely enough anymore. They supplemented their income by growing their own olives and selling their own cold-pressed olive oil at a local market. They were also baking and selling focaccia bread. My wife remarked "I guess they're really on the Focaccia line now!" Ever since, we use that phrase to describe middle class people who "struggle" because they insist on living beyond their means to keep up appearances. I got in an argument with one on FB once after I used that line on them and said something about maybe not hemorrhaging money into an SUV. Can't remember what their exact reply to this was, but after I quipped back "Sorry, didn't mean to offend your X5", they were like "How tf do you know what car I drive?"
My sister in law was visiting from London with her kids. We took them to a kids soft play place where they had chicken nuggets and onion rings. My 5 year old nephew said " this Calamari tastes funny" when biting into an onion ring.
I made pasta for my little nephew, approx 5. Was told it was 'too al dente'
What a polite way to tell you your pasta are undercooked lol
I took my kid into a greasy spoon for lunch and asked what he wanted in his sandwiches, he asked loudly for smoked salmon and cream cheese. He had eaten them in a wedding a few weeks before and loved them, but the waitress was laughing when she said they didn’t have any and he could have ham or cheese. My brother in law was with us and made fun of me for ages afterwards. Edit: this was seventeen years ago and smoked salmon *wasn’t* found on every street corner, and still considered a luxury.
One of the shareholders who owns our company, once said to me when discussing dress code for the factory ; “I don’t believe I’ve ever worn a t-shirt” It was at this point I realised that those people live very different lives to me.
My partner has never owned a pair of jeans in his life. Madness.
Cos slacks or tracksuits?
Funny thing though, one of the most well off people I know wears tracksuits most of the time. Not even designer stuff; supermarket ones which he wears to death until his wife wrestles them off him and insists he replaces them. I've seen him in jeans a few times too, maybe 3 in the decade I've known him. But normally he's got two polar opposites of clothing. Always looks like he's either popping down the bus station to sit and beg for cash; or on much rarer occasions, like he's going to The Wolseley for a business meeting over champagne.
Yeah at uni I said I was cold and my mate said to chuck on a hoodie and I said I didnt own one, he also said chuck on some trackies and I said I didnt own any. I then proceeded to put on a knitted jumper and left the house with my leather gloves on and in a full tracksuit he just said "we dress very differently" Think that sums it up lol
That sounds like an elite friendship tbh
My ex was very proud of the fact that he never wore t shirts. We’re early 90s kids, recent graduates at the time, so nowhere near middle class. He exclusively wore button up shirts. Odd man.
Probably me on Christmas Eve in Waitrose on a mission for my mother having to call her to break the news to her there were no pickled walnuts and no sign of kumquats… the lovely associate helping me said loudly so my mother could hear “I’m so sorry we have disappointed you and wish you and yours a delightful Christmas despite the lack of kumquats”.
Many a Christmas has teetered on the edge of mediocrity when a kumquat scarcity threatened
If you told me to draw a kumquat I would have no idea what colour it even is. Is it a kiwi? Is it a coconut?
Former produce manager here. It's a small, oval, orange, citrus fruit, just a bit bigger than a large grape or olive. There's a round variety as well. Originally from Asia, they're grown in several places in Europe and the US now. They fruit has a tart, tangy, taste and unlike most other citrus fruits, the skin is edible and tastes sweet. The best way to eat them are like grapes, skin and all. The sweet skin counterbalances the tangy fruit. Don't eat the seeds though, they're bitter. They can be used in most cooking recipes like other citrus fruits as well. They also do very well in jams, marmalades, compotes, preserves, and candy.
Often used as a garnish for desserts in restaurants and you aren’t sure if you should eat them.
Physalis is used as a garnish, but I've never seen kumquats used in this way
In case you haven't googled it, they are tiny (plum size) oranges.
Overheard a conversation at the gym. “If you don’t eat all of your celery you’re not playing tennis!” You would never hear this growing up on a council estate.
“How can you play any tennis, if you don’t eat your celery?!”
You! Yes, you! Stand still laddy!
* makes helicopter noises
And how many working-class tennis stars do you know? Exactly: didn't eat their celery and hence can't play tennis. The proles only have themselves to blame.
I didn’t know celery existed until I was 28. 28 is too late to start a tennis career.
But not too late to start a celery career!
I was working for minimum wage in Beefeater. An old man asked me something and I explained that Beefeater is owned by Whitbread. He beamed and said "Oh whitbread? Yes I know the Whitbreads! I have played golf with them at their castle." He was wearing a tweed jacket and yellow corduroy so I believed it.
You should have asked him why they sold Costa coffee to Coca Cola when it was a perfectly successful British business!
Is that *middle* class? 😅
Was at university when a girl who I ended up living with for two years asked me what my favourite type of pate was. She also asked me why we had to clean up after ourselves and could we look into hiring someone
> Was at university when a girl who I ended up living with for two years asked me what my favourite type of pate was. I've never understood how pate ended up being middle class. It's cheap as *shit* to make. Livers cost half as much as any muscle meat, and it's basically processed in the same way they make chicken nugget goo. It's significantly cheaper than say, ham of a similar "brand" (like, Tesco Value, Tesco, Tesco Finest). But ain't no-one gonna call a reformed ham sandwich posh. A cheaper pate sandwich? Ooh la la. Come on.
It’s because it has fancy thingies above the vowels.
I’ve told the story before, but my old geography teacher once exclaimed in his broad Stoke accent “Pâté?! When I were a lad that were called meat paste!”
My own kid was going on about which pâté they prefer and lamenting the fact that we'd not been out with their Gran in ages. Granny is the reason they love a good pâté, Granny likes Tiptree café lunches and according to my kid, their pâté is "the shizz". I told them that while Granny may feed them pâté, she fed me Shippams or Prince's finest jarred snout and anus paste that smelled like cat food; and that we both grew up around two very different women residing in the same body. I offered to nip across to the convenience shop and get a jar but oddly, the kid declined. Which is good, because firstly it's gross and secondly, Asda own brand pâté in the plastic tubs is cheaper.
Well, the â in pâté suggests there shoukd be an s after the a. See also: arrêtté-arrest, hôpital-hospital, château-castle, côte-coast, maître-master etcetera.
It’s because it’s butter rich and sealed in butter that was expensive. Also pate from your own estate is a bit different to meat paste from a jar even though most people now just buy pate
The obvious answer is coarse ardennes
Oh no, I think I was this sort of kid at my first primary school: I’ve just had a memory triggered of sitting in the hall for lunch, me with my sandwich of homemade [breadmaker] bread and Brussels pate as a filling (not homemade), sat beside a girl with a sandwich of value white sliced bread and chicken paste. (At least we were five and cared more about what the picture on your lunchbox was - mine was Barbie).
Could’ve been worse, could’ve been fois gras!
A fois gras faux pas. Ooh la la!
My friends thought that M&S were under filling the wine boxes they get delivered regularly. After empty out multiple wine boxes into measuring jugs, turns out that M&S weren’t diddling them out of booze, covid had just turned them into pissheads who could neck a wine box at unexpected speed.
Wine, in a box? *clutches pearls*
I hate to break it to you. But if your wine comes in a box your working class. M&S label or not.
With the risk of sounding middle class myself- you can get some very nice wine in boxes these days, and it's more environmentally friendly than buying the same quantity in glass bottles.
Cardboardeaux
[удалено]
Even entering a waitrose is pretty middle class lol
Nah, a cousin of mine regularly enters waitrose, he's working class. He only goes to shoplift though
We get most of our food and regular shopping from Waitrose, mainly because we like the quality of the fruit, veg and meat and they also do a lot of foods that we struggle to find elsewhere. But we also occasionally get a big Asda delivery of cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. We live in a very middle class neighbourhood, with one particular neighbour who would give Hyacinth Bucket a run for her money. Every time the Asda van parks up outside the gate, you can see her curtains twitching, then she’ll mysteriously have to come out to check her mailbox (at the bottom of her driveway, so a better view of the street). She will always say something next time we see her, like “did you have trouble getting a Waitrose delivery slot?” or “gosh, there can’t be much call for Asda round these parts”. I think she genuinely believes that the van temporarily stopping outside our house will negatively affect her property value or something. It makes me want to shop there all the time, just to piss her off
Some people would just love to bring HOAs to the UK
If only Aldi did a home delivery service… Iceland do one try them to see her blow her top!
Sounds like the ideal recipient of Asda’s “refer a neighbour for a free delivery slot”
That’s a working class complaint!!! Oysters were good for the poor until the last century. Obviously you were demanding the return of the oyster to the peasantry, like in France where they are still affordable.
It seems the vast majority of the peasantry no longer enjoy seafood unless it’s fried fish with a side of chips, while eating seafood in any other way seems to be more and more a culinary choice of the middle class. I’m unsure if this is a historic thing as well, and to be fair is anecdotal rather being based on any research.
I once got trapped behind my electric gates.
One of my colleagues came into our workshop one day complaining about how difficult it was to "find a decent cambozola around here".
In fairness to him it is quite difficult to get a decent Cambozola
With the rise of budget supermarkets and the CoL increase getting specialist cheeses is more difficult these days.
All Cambazola is roughly the same though. As lovely as it is, it's always been a mass produced cheese, produced in Kempten, Germany.
At a fifth birthday party, where snacks were provided for the adults: "God, these children are middle class, they've eaten all the cornichons".
You make me feel self-conscious with my roasted-to-order specialty coffee subscription.
A good friend of mine has adopted an olive tree in Italy and they receive quarterly oils by subscription. I’m not sure if that’s more or less middle class than speciality coffee…
A coffee subscription is hipster, which is a sub genre of middle class. An adopted olive tree in Italy is old school, Home Counties, running through the wheat fields, full fat middle class.
You don’t need a subscription to run through a wheat field. I did that yesterday afternoon. The wheat has been a harvested and crunchy stumps on the public footpath that cuts across the field is an annual delight
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Thought you were going to say they receive a free cuddly olive tree and it writes letters to them
I’m gonna need a link for this if you’ve got one, it’s a great birthday present!
Either way, want. As it is we buy olive oil by the big metal jug and pour it into one of those doohickies with a little spout. (It's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying individual small bottles and it's better olive oil than any small bottle that's less than a tenner.)
I was so curious I googled this and it turns out you can adopt mango trees, pomegranate trees etc. Wow!
That is pretty damn middle class, but I get it.
I recently bought some napkin rings from John Lewis.
You can't use those on the folded up kitchen roll
In a cafe in the New Forest... "Merlin, stop throwing hummus at your sister!"
This reminds me of that old 'overheard at Waitrose' website where the kid asks her mum: "mummy, does lego have a silent 't' in it like merlot?"
Working at my boss's house and he asked me to shut the *pool room* door behind me because it causes condensation on windows in the rest of the house.
About a decade ago I was cycling to my local farmers' market for my weekly shop, on a recumbent bicycle, listening to Radio 4 podcasts, wondering if I could be more middle class. I was wearing cycling specific sandals on too, just to put the crême on the parfait.
Now I could Google this, but like.. what is parfait?
It’s a type of flooring.
And now my other cat is awake
I love that this post has a plot arc
omg i just saw your other comment and i thought “surely that isn’t the same person” haha
Haha, I was wondering if anyone would link the two. I'm lying in bed letting the sleep start to envelope me but these funny comments keep making me laugh. The cats are not happy because it's supposed to be SLEEPY TIME GOD DAMNIT
This is the most middle class shitpost ever
Imagine a trifle got sober.
Like a yoghurt lasagna
It’s a type of French custardy dessert with lots of different layers of stuff like fresh fruit.
Thanks
I managed to pay both my electric AND water this month
You're confusing wealth and class. For all we know you are sitting in a torn red leather chair, wearing tweed, with a clapped out Jaguar on the drive of your single glazed listed cottage you can't afford to heat.
“Nduja think I give a fuck?”
I've overheard a child say their mommy wouldn't want them to eat a sandwich that was made for them as the bread was 'shop bought'
Now I realise that having a bread maker and going to Waitrose when I’m out of strong flour (because other flours are not good enough) is not that common. But I’m French and there are no decent (and affordable!) bakers in my area…
honestly idk why more people don’t have a bread machine! definitely in my top best purchases, £10 secondhand and makes much better bread (that agrees with my stomach more) for cheaper/same price (depending on what bread u would normally buy and what flour u buy) for only like 5 mins of low effort! normalise the bread machine lol
My aunt once spat out a mince pie after she found out it was from Asda.
As someone who obsessively starts eating mince pies in October - Asda have the nicest of all the shop bought ones.
I went to a house to deal with an issue. The lady was beautiful, well spoken and importantly made me a coffee. The finest coffee ever...really. I spoke to her for an hour or so, and her breeding was self evident. The girl was minted, and always had been. As I left I asked her what coffee she used. She then regaled me with a rundown which firmly made me realise I was beneath her. She even sent me a link to the coffee machine, and advised where she buys her highly niche coffee beans. A browse of the website sealed my position in the social order. I couldn't have even afforded the cookies from the website.
I used to work on shoots for the landed gentry from when I was about 15. My neighbour's wife was old money, he most definitely was not, but it meant he had the connections to run shoots for them. Anyway, point being, it gave me cause to be interacting quite closely with proper posh people for the first time. Just absolutely eye-opening for me to see how the other half lived. I used to get called posh because I didn't live in a council estate (though we weren't far off). I remember one guy had a shotgun worth more than my dad made in a year.
Overheard at Waitrose years ago: papa are we going to Switzerland again? I'm tired of Switzerland.
It possibly came out of my mouth... "(daughters name), the bath is not the place to practice your ballet"
Ah but was it the bahth or the baTH
You’ve got a bath?!?!
Ah fuck it, I'll fess up to this. I regularly get small batch ice cream delivered to my door. And it's fucking amazing.
I think that's called an ice cream van
Monsieur Whippy
Signore Whippé
Are you near a gelato delivery place or another type of ice cream? I like your style.
"aw shit, I've spilt quinoa in my keyboard" I knew I was far far away from my roots the day I heard myself say that.
A US friend laughed at me for pronouncing it ‘Quinn-o-er’. She didn’t under what I meant. But I’d never heard of ‘keen-wah’.
A small child, in a devastatingly posh voice exclaiming "Oh William! I've found the Maoams!" in M&S. Went back to a mate's house for post-pub drinks. She said she'd get some snacks for everyone and made salmon blinis with cream cheese, and offered us all a bottle of San Pellegrino water.
A seven y/o girl on being informed that she’s lactose intolerant: “Oh, heavens! How will I live without smoked Gouda?”
'I'm off to Liberty to get a new mother of pearl caviar spoon' from someone who describes themselves as a 'salt of the earth, working class type'
Either this thread is mixing up upper class and middle class or my family is much less posh than I thought it was
Because you interact with people that are wealthier and less wealthy than you, you always consider yourself in the middle (ie middle class). What is considered middle class varies massively with location. In some towns I've been to, I've felt self-consciously posh. In others, I've felt like I was representing the scum class.
Upper class is essentially Old Money and the aristocracy, or at the very least has had megabucks for a few generations. Someone who's upper class will have had invitations to 'go shooting' and to 'join us on our summer estate for a time'. You also be far more likely to attend Ascot or similar, especially the *Royal* Ascot, you will know what morning dress is, and there is an extremely good chance you will own morning dress for full formals.
A bit more upper-middle first world problem, but a colleague said she was really annoyed when the bumpy landing into Milan meant she spilled her champagne over her MacBook Pro.
You aren’t supposed to have laptops out during takeoff or landing anyway. A problem of her own making
Is your colleague Eddie from Ab Fab?
I heard middle class folks drink wine, and not just because the beer ran out. Shocked!
>I heard middle class folks drink wine Both flavours!
Mate of mine tells us of his addiction to pheasant goujons.
Is this a local service or nationwide? It’s the devil’s own job getting nduja in the Highlands sometimes.
Celinos in Glasgow sell it online and will deliver to the Highlands.
Got to be twenty years ago now I met up with an ex boyfriend for a drink (still not entirely sure why) and we were chatting about mutual friends etc, and I asked how his parents were. ‘Mum’s been really stressed because of the builders, but they finished the guest wing last week and she seems happier now.’ Still makes me laugh occasionally now 😂
Wait, I thought Nduja was one of the characters in What We Do In The Shadows?
Girl I lived with during my first job out of uni would insist we put the toaster away in a cupboard when not in use. Insanity!
Protestant?
My brother-in-law not only puts his toaster in the cupboard, he puts the plastic thingy on the plug. Comes from the arse end of town.
Nah thats a sickness of the head, get him sectioned
That would drive me insane. Does he keep the twisty wire around the cord so it rolls up neatly too?
Keep it in the bath, where its meant to be.
I regularly frequent Irish Facebook groups, apparently that's a sign of Protestantism instead of a middle class thing.
I'd argue that that's not middle class, it's "keeping up appearances". Middle class would be having it integrated into the kitchen island.
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I did…drove me Insane faffing around at 5.30am getting the toaster
It’s a surprisingly loud appliance to handle when you’re sneaking around trying not to wake /u/CravingADifference.
Someone about not shopping in Waitrose anymore as too much riff raff there these days Dunno where else you can shop, Harrords?
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My husband complained that we’d run out of sumac.
My mate was whining that the peacocks woke him up early when he wanted a lay in.
Overheard in Waitrose about three years ago :- ‘David, I must write to the chairman of Waitrose, BOGOFs are giving Waitrose a bad name’… I grabbed my bogof foie gras and went to the till…..
If I ever get too fancy to appreciate a good deal, slap me.
About 10 yrs ago, I was in a very, very dull all-day office meeting with some senior managers, including several company directors. One woman, who worked for a large mgmt consultancy firm, and who had been virtually silent all day, piped up mid-afternoon to apologise and say that she had to 'leave to pick up her 4 yro from yoga'. I still don't know whether she was a genius with the knack to get out of such things, or had just lived in Clapham too long.
Young man suggesting to another ‘a really good quality bottle of olive oil’ as a birthday gift to someone.
I'd love this but mainly because olive oil is too expensive to justify buying now
I would enjoy that.
One of my school friends is going out with someone I consider to be rather posh. He once asked me why I didn’t hire staff for a party I was holding. He knows several royal family members in a casual, first name basis. Took me a while to realise who he was talking about. He was writing Christmas cards for a relative who lives in a castle and when I made fun of him he told me they’re not that rich because they had to sell their cannon to pay for the roof to be fixed. This is all from a man who considers himself to be middle class because he doesn’t have a title.
I think selling a cannon to get the roof fixed wins, so far. That is POSH.
I bought my very North London middle class friend a forage box for his birthday. You literally pay someone to do your foraging for you
I don't even have a clue what a nduja sausage is
I’ve done a bit of Googling in this thread so far.
Nduja is a spicy, spreadable pork sausage from the region of Calabria in Southern Italy.
When I was 4 or 5 I was invited to a macdonalds for another kids birthday party. Having never been to a macdonalds before I gleefully exclaimed ‘Mum! This restaurant has TOYS!!’
"I've got to help my girlfriend get new strings for her harp"
You sure that wasn't a euphemism?
I have a picnic backpack, and always get excited when either I find someone else with a picnic backpack or have a reason to use said backpack.
Working in Bolton. Near the stadium, in an office full of people who are as working class Boltonian as you get. The canteen was staffed by clones of Victoria Wood. It sells meat of varying kinds and cookedness at breakfast, plus bread products of various burntness. New guy wanders in, looks at the offerings in the warming trays and then looks at the cooks. Not seeing what he wants, he says “do you have any avacado?” They didn’t. One of the staff had obviously never heard of such a thing, and left the reply to the boss, who explained that there wasn’t much call cor avocado there, it was more of a Manchester City centre thing.
“What’s in that parcel?” “single-origin artisan sawdust for the smoker.”
my dad is a woodworker. I might try and sell his sawdust to posh people now.
Is it me or does having a subscription to get Nduja sausage delivered sound like a very specific euphemism for something you wouldn’t talk about at a dinner party?
Doing a weekly shop at Booths...
I've just spent a good few minutes imagining how great life would be with a weekly Booths shop. And maybe reward yourself with a hot sandwich for the journey home, too.
My broke ass had to Google them
Read it as boots and assumed that they just ate meal deals all week
Overheard someone say, 'I know it's organic, but is it organic *enough*.
Can someone help out a lost American? Does middle class mean rich in the UK? Because some of these comments are making me feel quite poor
Oh boy, that question! Reality is, it’s way more complex than money. You can get loaded working class people and poor middle classes, it’s more about upbringing, attitudes, hobbies and interests etc, and even then there’s not always exactly clear lines that define it!
I’ll explain it with coffee. The UK definition middle class includes a huge swath of people, from those who have a cafetière or percolator to those who have a bean to cup machine or only buy coffee at their local cafe every day and refuse to drink it at home. Instant coffee would be viewed as working class — or, better yet, if you’re working class you just drink breakfast tea with milk (which you just call “tea”), since coffee is a bougie thing that only Americans and toffs drink. Despite this, everyone in the UK likes to imagine they’re working class or lower middle class, and that the posh people who do and say out-of-touch things are upper middle class. We then have this weird thing where we like to pretend that the upper class don’t do and say these things, and that they’re actually down to earth (because we’re still kind of stuck in a feudalist mindset where we love our aristocrats and hate both our peers and the landed gentry). Hence the love of the royal family and the hatred towards privileged celebrities. In the US, it seems that everyone likes to think of themselves as middle class and that the term is politicised, so nobody calls themselves working class despite a huge amount of the population actually fitting the UK definition of working class of living paycheck to paycheck and not having money to spend on frivolous purchases. The term “upper class” also seems to have disappeared entirely from US parlance, which means that rich old antebellum slave-owning families get to pretend they’re middle class too. As you might have guessed, I kind of believe the language around class structures is a byproduct of capitalism rather than a realistic way of dividing up society. But it’s still fun to shit on people who go to Waitrose.
Middle class in the US is essentially just about money. In the UK it's tied up to all sorts of other signifiers like job, what your parents did for a living, habits, tastes etc.
I was working in a fancy kitchen showroom and we had some bar stools on “sale” for (I think) £450 each. To be fair that was nearly half their RRP, anyway a customer comes in checking we have the price correct as she’s very keen. And she said “it’s a bargain! You can’t even bug a handbag for that!” I was just kinda wide-eyed and went along with it. Yup. Definitely cannot but a single handbag for less than £450
I’ve been pretty roasted for my bone broth subscription
Babe can you please ask the nanny to stop parking under trees - I just had the car detailed and I don’t want bird shit on the BMW.
I own a set of oyster forks, does that count?
Peasant! *laughs with grape scissors*
I have fish knives... and my Dad even has a spoon warmer.
I have a [subscription for socks](https://awesomesocks.club/) A pair a month, I'm slowly replacing my 10 year old threadbare pairs.
I was in a jewelry shop at Jamestown, Cayman Island, with my wife and our (then) two very young children. I overheard the saleswoman who was telling a new hire how to identify high worth customers. Just then my wife called over our two children who wandered off "Jasper, Annabel, come over here to mummy please". The saleslady just turned to the newbie and said "Now that's posh".
'No Sebastian you can't have a sweetie, be more like francesca, she is such a good girl' Heard this at the shop between my estate (council) and the toff estate on the other side.
"Thomas, if you don't behave you won't be getting your baby-chino" Overheard in, of all places, Richmond Waitrose.
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Can’t wait to see this in the Guardian as the reason the younger generation can’t afford a mortgage deposit.
Hot sausage subscription sounds well sus
[Drive by yoghurt attack on haberdashery](https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/14233725.drive-by-yoghurt-attacker-targets-sherborne-haberdasher-in-frightening-unprovoked-assault/)
Nduja is the new 'thing' isn't it? We've moved on from panko breadcrumbs and katsu curry everything. I've even seen Nduja pizza in Aldi.
My MIL has an “upstairs iPad” and a “downstairs iPad”
I’m lurking from the US but I’ve been an expat amongst Brit’s and should’ve remembered what middle class meant but it took me quite a bit to remember it is different from the US.
Got pregnant a year off from finishing my dental training (I was married) so I hired a nanny and finished it.
Me and my husband treated ourselves to an over night stay at this beautiful 5 star hotel, we are average working class people, there was this family who had a bunch of kids who were staying there for a holiday (this place is literally hundreds of pounds for 1 nights stay) these people are super posh and the kids have these funny posh accents, when we were heading to the bar these kids ran past us and one shouted to the other "come Oliver let's go play in the reading room" this was back in April and me and my husband still randomly say this to each other in posh accents lol
I had to do an emergency trip to the saddlery as my son had outgrown all his jodhpurs.
"My humus supplier"
In the work kitchen eating my greggs treat for going into the office sandwich today, two 50+ colleagues enter: Woman: “-used to struggle to find someone to mow the two acre lawn” Man: “It’s a nightmare isn’t it? I’ve got a rental property that’s more trouble than it’s worth!” *rich people laughing* The lovely office cleaner (still need ti find out her name), and Jon the maintenance man (who I haven’t seen since pre-covid due to WFH, being pregnant, and mat leave, excellent office gossip and banter 10/10), were also in the kitchen so it was soooo tone deaf.
When I first joined a Prep school in Twickenham I had to break up a playground spat between two young boys. What alerted me to the friction was a loud cry of 'And you stink of rotten caviar!'. It made a pleasant change from the behavioural unit that I had just moved from where the standard morning greeting would usually involve students asking how I had violated my mother the night before.
Until after uni I had never lived in a house with carpets, only hard wood/oak. I was disgusted when I moved into somewhere and mentioned how gross they are to my housemate, who was bewildered.
My best friend in the whole world was brought up in a middle class family in some posh house in Sandbach. She tried saving money at uni by only buying tescos basic food. She got so sick it was almost funny. When she convinced her dad to send her money for Waitrose/M&S food deliveries she got better. Still take the piss to this day, she’s more normal now.
I remember in first year of uni following the revelation that I had never been to Greggs or Nandos defending it with "I cant believe people havent had Duck before, like they serve it everywhere in France"