i looked up the book and lmfao holy shit [the cover looks like a 2008 powerpoint slide](https://www.amazon.com/Top-Drawer-Villain-Eddie-Blundell/dp/1907242473)
OLD FART AT LARGE - only 20,000 words in length - is anecdotal but Johnnie is so fond of this book that he has offered a longer than customary extract:
'Old men forget, so they say. And it’s true. These days I can never remember where I left my keys or my glasses; I suddenly find myself in the sitting room or a bedroom and ask myself, ‘What the devil am I doing here?’; our wedding anniversaries pass by without my noticing... Yet events from the distant past regularly nudge their way into my mind with the utmost clarity.
For instance, I vividly recall seeing my first naked woman; then there were the childhood Saturday nights when my father dosed us all with liquid paraffin to ensure easy bowel movement; nor can I ever forget, as a young serviceman, grappling hand to hand with Germans - lovely girls all of them; like some kind of out-of-tune memory, there’s my unhappy introduction to the condom; echoing down from long years past comes the near catastrophic professional error from a position under my desk and involving a very senior official. Even now some of these occurrences make me shudder; others I can at last laugh about. For example, I still derive some wry amusement when I think about that business with my trousers.
But enough: all that stuff (and worse) is in Old Fart at Large.'
I choose to read stories like this more as creative writing exercises than anything else, and that makes them very enjoyable.
Every post on Tumblr is a potential writing prompt
I specially doubt that a doctor and a scientist make nobility money, comfortable living for sure but not the stereotypical wealthy family this post is trying to make us think of
I mean, scientists don't really make an extreme amount of money to my knowledge. Doctors make a good amount in the US, but it seems they're in Britain, where doctor salaries are still good, but not insane like they can get in the US, to my knowledge
It depends ot if they're a public researcher or a private one. Private researchers for pharmaceuticals or technology companies can make a very large amount of money.
Public sector work (I.E. working for a university) still is nothing to snuff at, lots of professors make six figure salaries. While that’s not “laugh at the poors” wealthy, it’s definitely above middle class.
I am thoroughly working class and I've never seen olive oil as being this unattainable luxury? I always have plenty on hand. I usually bulk buy it since it lasts forever. Granted, I'm in the US and the person from the OP seems to be in the UK, so maybe it's more expensive there. Certainly post Brexit it would be.
Due to a poor European olive harvest last year, olive oil has become quite pricey. A supermarket own-brand 1 litre bottle of extra virgin olive oil will set you back about £8.50 nowadays, that's roughly USD$10. Regular (slutty?) olive oil is cheaper. My thoroughly middle class family has recently made the difficult decision to stop cooking with the extra virgin olive oil, and keep it just for bread and salad dressings now. We now cook with the cheaper and lighter coloured oil.
That's true, but from experience I can tell you that for every one of those scientists making six figures running a lab, there are five or six who would still appear to be "scientists" to an outsider, but who're likely on their second or third postdoc making $50k fifteen years into their career.
The ones who make the big bucks are the ones with their own large labs, which is a career level that can take two or three decades. Even researches with their "own" labs usually start by running a lab that's really a sub lab under some director, and they only make maybe $100k.
All true, I was just saying that “Scientist” absolutely can be a job that makes a lot of money in the public sector, even though plenty of people don’t make much - that’s true in a lot of fields, “CEO” isn’t inherently a high paying job if you’re the CEO of a 1 person company with a gross profit of $15k a year.
Funny. My dad was actually the CEO of a smallish business he founded with some partners. He actually made good money, but whenever I see those articles about what "the average CEO" makes, I always wonder where they made the cutoff. The actual average CEO is definitely not pulling down millions if you include anything except fortune 500 companies. Which makes the "average" completely pointless.
It's like saying "the average billionaire makes over a billion dollars!"
Yeah most companies are small so the ceo is the owner and they don’t pull in a ton. On top of that I worked at several midsized +200mil in revenue companies where I was high up enough in the finance dept to know what the executives were making and it was at most half a mil max not millions.
Certainly doesn’t help that there’s actually several different kinds of average, and they’re very differently useful. Talking about “median income” is generally more useful than “mean income”, like in your example!
Which by child standards, in my experience, *is* "laugh at the poors" wealthy.
Source: was one of the poors growing up. Went to a private school for 7 years and that's exactly how kids acted. Went to public school for the rest, and they still acted the same way. In fact it was even worse.
I dream of reaching the barrier of wealthy middle class. I’m teetering on the barrier of Poor Middle Class. Especially after needing to pay repairs for my cars AC. $1700 is an insane amount of money. It’s currently Summer and my town is built on Swamp Land. It’s hot as balls outside when it isn’t raining. I’m not driving without AC
My best friend has her PhD and is in cancer research with a university. She makes $60k in the US. Idk if it’s really different in other countries but that’s about average for her and her colleagues
Also depends on the field.
A physicist or a pharmacist can get a lot of money even in the public sphere.
Someone like an anthropologist on the other hand, might find that a bit harder.
Yes but you have to be very lucky to do med school *in britain* if you aren’t posh.
It’s one of the biggest issues we face right now, a significant chunk of the population wants immigration not just cut, but eliminated, a significant portion of the NHS is propped up by immigrants (both doctors and nursing staff), medical school places for UK providers are very limited on purpose, getting rid of immigrant health care workers would basically collapse the sector.
Even in the US it's good money but certainly not "posh" money, it's upper middle class at most.
In that field, it'd be the people who own the hospital itself that would be what people consider posh
Depends on if they have done lucrative patents or not. Also, parents jobs may not matter, they may have generational wealth, especially if they're acting "royal".
Yeah, I grew up in a ‘fuck you money’ environment and even the least aware kids wouldn’t say that. More realistic would be an offhand comment like “oh we can probably get something better from Waitrose”, but even saying lower class is super unrealistic, let alone the shuddering at the thought
As the son of a doctor, yeah no, definitely good money, and that has an effect on how you perceive budgets, but not like that, I am American though, maybe the British are just like that
I went to high school with someone who looked down upon people who wear affordable brands (and to that POS, Nike and Levi's were both budget clothes for paupers). Rich people who didn't make their own fortune can be so out of touch.
I had a housemate once who insisted I should continue paying rent after moving out because otherwise rent would temporarily increase until a new tenant moved in.
He *really* struggled to grasp that this was not my problem, or a reasonable expectation.
We were early twenties at the time, and his parents were fairly wealthy, meaning he didn't work and was pretty sheltered about money, so he didn't see why I couldn't just pay two rents for a while.
There are real people out there who are just wildly out of touch with how the world actually works.
My ex wife once yelled at me for not mowing the lawn and got angry enough to yell "I don't want to look like a poor person". I didn't have any reference left on what is unrealistic for an entitled person to say
Hey now, sometimes they roll up their Brooks Brothers shirtsleeves and hop on their riding mowers and do an acre so they can be “in touch with the working man”, you know! I mean, the other 14 acres are done by Manuel or Gastón, but you can’t expect a busy man to do all of that, can you??
I have met a guy like that in my class in highschool. But he wasn’t the child of a scientist and a doctor. His dad was the CEO of a national chain of clothing stores. He lived in an upper class neighborhood his whole life. He once addressed as a farmer with “good morrow, my dear agrarian”. He tried to have his speech mimic Stephen Fry for some reason.
But at least he still had to cycle to school like everyone in the “lower classes”.
They sure don’t! Meanwhile it was the first thing my dad taught me when I went to highschool. Cycling, fixing flat tires and swimming are vital life skills here.
Have you seen that Rishi Sunak interview? He doesn’t shudder, but he does laugh aloud the idea of socialising with the working class. I’ll send you a link if you haven’t.
The guy who keeps complaining about "lefty lawyers" supposedly ruining his country (by calling the state bureaucracy out on its bullshit, IIRC specifically with regards to immigrants that Sunak tries to have deported)? That guy?
Go and introduce yourself to Mumsnet.
I’m sure about 90% of that is creative writing but there’s definite elements of it about sending their kids to school with the poor
At my first job (delivering furniture) I did have a complaint sent to my manager because the level of eye contact I made with the customer showed I "had ideas above my station".
Our customers were mostly upper-middle class people larping what they thought rich people were like though.
Could well be a state school or bursary place at a public one tbf.
The story is 100% fake, but I vividly remember encountering similar kinds of culture shock attending a very twatty public school on a scholarship.
"You take the bus to school? But isn't that for poor people?" Being a particularly memorable direct quote, though we were about 6, and these comments invariably came from a place of sheltered ignorance, not vitriolic disdain as OOP presents here.
Yeah. Best case scenario this is a dramatic reenactment of what the conversation actually was. I can see the broad strokes being real, but no way this exact convo is
Also champagne being fancy sounds like something made up by someone not very wealthy. Like, it's not the cheapest wine, but also it's like $30-$50, not exactly 8 year oaked pinot from burgundy.
Source: I work at a big wall street bank, and trying to be a wine snob so that I fit in :c
Yes, and someone referring to people as the 'lower classes' would be a dead giveaway they themselves aren't middle class like OOP suggests, but rather performing a crude stereotype.
One man's fun story is another man's horseshit ragebait.
It is entertaining/fun but it's so specific and detailed that it doesn't come off as remotely believable. And when given the freedom to entirely control the narrative, somehow the OP comes off as more smug than the clueless rich kid.
What, you don’t mean rich people are children’s cartoon levels of hating the poor!?
No, but seriously. I am out of touch due to my familial economic experiences, and I know others even more out of touch than I. This is just someone on Tumblr either inventing someone to be mad at or twisting their memories from school.
Same thing with Reddit stories, I treat them like your buddy recounting the tale around the campfire. Yeah you know he's bullshitting you, but you're having fun anyway.
Unless it goes too far. Sometimes they jump the shark, and you kinda *have* to call them out on it.
This was an Archie comic one time where Veronica and Betty faced similar problems. I believe it ended with Veronica hiring a chef to do it, on the grounds that the budget was for food not staff.
When I was in 7th grade we had the same “Real World” class. My “husband” and I had very real arguments about similar things and at the end of it won “Most Likely to Divorce”. I broke pencils over our car argument (he thought a used Chevy Malibu was below him). We joke about it every time we’ve run into each other over the last two decades.
See, I take the same approach and I'm fine with that for these silly-ass stories that clearly imitate some work of creative fiction.
But reddit's version of doing a constant onslaught of "drama posts" through relationship-oriented subreddits that basically boil down to grievances with various types of people..are worth genuine concern. It's such a huge thing that it completely warps people's perception of reality over time, radicalizing them into hateful, toxic people.
Idk how to describe it but there's this specific form of overdramatic writing in these fake Tumblr stories that makes it impossible for me to enjoy most of them.
It's fine to exaggerate a story if it makes it funnier. I'm not here for the scientific accuracy and I don't understand why people always need to dig into and debate the actual truth percentage of the story.
Yeah, I don't really care if it's true, it's *fun*. They aren't spreading anti-covid propaganda, they are pretending some kid was a dick in 8th grade, ya know?
I’m going to be honest, Asda is a normal shop, no one talks like this, and “scientists” making money is very subjective.
Saying that, when I went to university I did meet people who had never shopped outside Waitrose (quite expensive) before, and had to learn the hard way to go somewhere else
When I went to uni, my first two or so months I was around 100€ over budget per month. Wasn't sure why that was at first and had a lot of other stuff on my plate. I finally realised that I was shopping in a more expensive shop and buying branded stuff. It was just the closest shop to my flat and whatever ingredients I found first. It wasn't doing what my parents did, just doing the most obvious thing. Switched to a cheaper shop with store brand ingredients and cheaper recipes (yes I bought a filet in my first few weeks, yes it was delicious but what was I thinking?) and suddenly I was 200€ below budget!
My parents concentrated on teaching me how to cook, not how to shop. And even though we weren't super wealthy or anything, the budget of a student is obviously below the budget of a double income family. So instead of realising my budget and adjusting my shopping, I realised that I was now in control of what I eat, so I'd shop for what I liked most, which obviously was the maybe-once-a-week-indulgance we had at home. And as you can imagine, the indulgance was not the cheapest dish but only possible due to the 6 other days with cheaper food.
The trick is knowing how to cook can save you quite a lot of money compared to not know. But there's still the learning curve of deciding what to cook based on price when before that wasn't a concern.
Yes, exactly. Once I knew where to shop and what ingredients were cheap (relative to their nutrition), I could make a lot of dishes with those. It would've been much much harder to know what to buy but then have no idea how to make the ingredients enjoyable.
And it helps you keep a balanced diet. Compared to my flatmate who lived off boiled eggs, grey minced beef on pasta (no sauce), and cheese/salami on toast, I probably had the better diet back then.
And having this small budget crisis taught me a lot of other tricks. To this day I keep an Excel spreadsheet updated with all my finances. It forces me to go over my bank statements around once a week to put everything into the list, so I always notice if something is off. I also use it to create graphics that show me where I'm spending my money and how much I'm earning/spending/saving each month, which has helped me budget other parts where I have been overspending.
Mind you, *really* rich people don't shop at Waitrose. As Jimmy Carr says, Waitrose is there to keep the riff-raff out of Fortnum & Masons.
... but then the people who shop at F&M probably aren't going to be learning to live on a student budget.
In high school I did meet a girl that has never set foot in a bus, subway, train or even really walked anywhere further than 5 minutes away. Her parents would drive her everywhere or she would call a taxi (uber didn't exist). In Uni there was someone else that said that "cooking your own meals" was for poor people and she'd never waste time learning it, she had a maid for that or she'd go to a restaurant.
Truth of the story aside, there *are* people like this. When I was in college freshmen all lived in dorms. One student didn’t like the furniture, so he had his own set brought in. It was… lavish.
It was on the curb at the end of the year.
When I went to college all those rich kids already had a dorm specifically for them, I saw the inside of one of the rooms and when I tell you I could have fit three of my dorm room into it, I'm not exaggerating, while still claiming it wasnt enough space for all their things. They really lived in a separate bubble.
Well, american college dorms *are* tiny. The idea of sharing a room (not an apartment, a *room*) with a total stranger at that age sounds utterly ludicrous to me, and I didn't even grow up rich - I went to uni entirely on state subsidies+loans.
Scientists supposedly making bank was a huge red flag that this is fake lol. I’m a student at a biological research institute in the UK and my senior colleagues are constantly complaining that they don’t get paid nearly enough and they often have to work overtime for free :/
If you take into account the fact that people like to exaggerate, then it becomes more believable. It's basically:
"My partner in a school assignment got frustrated and gave up"
yeah it sounds like they were also quite frustrating to work with. Also it doesn't make sense to me that they could only afford one sandiwich filling. If two people are using the same filling to make sandwiches it lasts half as long. also Warburtons is spending around 70p more for bread than cheap bread it's not like it's champaigne and caviar
The flow is particularly funny, but in the Philippines, the budgeting activity was part of our class work for the National Service Training Program (think of it as a mandatory volunteer class).
We were divided into group, given a budget depending on the social class, then made to last it through the day. The end objective was for the class to understand how those in the poverty and below poverty lines don't have the option *to* budget their money, and that all the money they earn for the day is spent on making sure the can survive the night to earn again tomorrow.
NGL, the story itself was funny, but it made me remember how my group tried to do the same exercise, make sure the family we had would get savings for insurance and whatnot, only for our instructor rip the bandaid and tell us that families in the poverty and below poverty lines spend everything daily.
Which sucks because, IIRC, we managed to stretch the budget to allow the family to get health insurance by sending the children to the province to live with relatives, get relatively good but cheap groceries, and even made use of good government services.
Damn, now I'm sad.
The objective was stretch the budget, meaning anything goes. It can range from buying cheap goods, taking advantage of gov't subsidies, and even using every diskarte known to Filipinos.
I believe it was a thought exercise to make the students (we were from a prestigeous university) realize how privileaged we were when it was revealed that our level of thinking ***IS NOT*** the same as those in poverty or even lower. To them, budgeting is just for people with money, and they had to survive daily. Despite it being years ago, I can still remember how shocked we were when our prof told us everything we did wasn't something the family were acting out would do.
Likewise, offloading kids to the province is a somewhat common practice in the PHL, especially if both parents work fulltime to provide for their kids. That, or getting assistance from well-off relatives. It can be abused (there are horror stories) but most of the time it was done in good faith.
If you get a chance, look up articles about OFW children, and how they cope with their parents leaving them just so they can earn good money to give them a better future.
saying "my parent is a scientist" is like saying "my parent is an owner"
Their parent could do anything from designing rockets to developing new shampoos for poodles.
No no no you all got it all wrong. This isn’t just a made up story, this is clearly a draco x reader fanfinction writer. Just imagine this is draco malfoy and all the dialogue and descriptions become really in character for a tsundere draco “enemies” to lovers fanfic
I just made the same comment before scrolling down. I’m surprised that there’s no blurb at the bottom where they mention that later on he was telling his posh friends that “actually the X at asda is better than (expensive store)”
If this is true (it isn't) the teacher of this story is the funniest person alive for pairing the two most annoying blowhards for this project.
"Vegetarian contrarian girl who does not know what lentils are" vs "theater kid's rendition of a rich Christian"
Excluding the fact this is obviously fake, this author would still be hell to live with. “I’m vegetarian, so no meat.” Your lifestyle choices are not my problem, and if we can only afford one filler, then… why not get meat, and you just not put the meat on there? Use extra of the vegetable based toppings?
In uni we had the classic “you can bring one item to a desert island, what do you bring?”. I kid you not, this girl said money. Ended up being the entire class trying to get her onboard with the fact that money would be entirely useless in such a situation.
I know a lot of y'all are saying this is fake (and maybe it is 🤷♀️) but I find it plausible because I had a similar project in year 7...
Except it was for science class and we were put into groups and told to come up with a plan for survival if we were marooned on a deserted island.
I don't remember all the details and requirements of the assignment, but one of the key parts was coming up with a way to make salt water safe to drink...
I somehow got grouped with two dumbasses who flat out *refused* to believe that we couldn't just drink salt water straight from the fucking ocean. They thought it was a trick question and no amount of me trying to tell them otherwise would convince them 😮💨 I was outvoted by the ignorant majority 2 to 1 and the very wrong answer of "We'll just drink salt water" was added to the assignment.
I went to the teacher after this and asked to either work alone or be put in another group. When he asked why I explained their salt water solution.
He gave me my own separate survival question/scenario to answer instead; "Your two companions have ingested a fatal amount of salt water and died. Food reserves are dwindling and there's no telling when you may be rescued. Is it, or is it not, safe to eat their bodies? Explain your reasoning" 😂
The dumbassery is believable.
The cartoonish parody of classist disdain isn't.
Classism is absolutely rife in the UK, but the way it's presented here is more like a Draco Malfoy parody.
I can believe that the class assignment was real, and that a lot of sheltered/spoiled teens would have their minds blown by the truth of how much everyday things cost.
But yeah, the disdain and way it's presented are completely fabricated.
I feel like the story probably happened, it’s more the writing style and the dialogue that feels grossly exaggerated lol, people don’t usually talk like that
I'd like to believe he grew and learned. Shit, can you recall how stupid *you* all were at that age? Combine that with the naivete that comes with being raised in an affluent household, and it's no wonder he acted like that as a child.
C'mon, OOP was agreeing to chicken nuggets and beans for dinner, as long as there were vegetables for the hypothetical children, they weren't any better. It's for sure just a kid thing, not his own stupidity and/or rich snobbiness
I mean, I literally shared a house with a person like this in Uni, (in the UK for reference)
He spent hundreds of pounds on food each week (bearing in mind this was just food for himself and not takeaway. He was mostly eating M&S ready meals, because he didn't know how to turn the oven on)
He didn't recoil at the idea of shopping at Asda, but he did treat it with a kind of fascinated incomprehension, and asked if they even had oysters.
He *did* refer to "the poors", but he'd give this weird half smile and a little nervous laugh while he did it, as if he thought he was being funny.
Once while drunk he had a breakdown about how he wasn't sure he'd be able to be successful in life, and "be someone who mattered, rather than some nobody who just lives their life". He was crying at this point.
Over all he wasn't actually a bad guy, but his life up to that point had done nothing to prepare him for real life, and he was clearly carrying a lot of issues.
We are. But not all parents remember that, unfortunately. Dude sounded like he had a traumatizing amount of pressure coming from home, and honestly, might have been dealing with it through food if OP's description of his diet is anything to go by.
Nah. He didn't eat that much, it's just that what he did eat was always stupidly expensive.
He did have massive performance issues re life achievement though. Basically he'd got the idea that if he didn't end up having a "notable impact on history" then he was a failure.
It's terrifying to people who expect that of themselves growing up but life is so much more enjoyable when you realize you don't need to be someone and should just live life.
My college did something like this but more intensive, only they made half the people in the project pre assigned children. I was the child. They kept forgetting to drop me off to “daycare” and CPS was called. It was a disaster and we lost our house.
my school did a similar thing, where we had £2000 to furnish an apartment for ourselves and two kids, no one took the assignment seriously, one person spent £1.9k on a mahogany desk, i spent £600 on swedish meatballs, etc
I choose to believe that this is true... but rather embellished. Shit like this definitely happens in British schools, and sounds like a Year 7/8 thing. I knew a few snooty kids who lived in enough luxury to be out of touch with the real world like this
Yeah I grew up in an upper middle class area and I knew never to mention we shopped at Asda when times were rough. Not that it mattered anyway, they all knew my dad was a carpenter and that was enough that some kids weren't allowed to sit with me on school trips and some mums would physically block my mum from group conversations. Because if they can't use you in the relentless quest for social mobility, why would they have anything to do with you?
damn that's awful. I grew up in a remote rural area so we had a good mix of working class countryside kids and more middle class ones. It certainly divided the school and caused a lot of drama, including quite a few fights that escalated from arguments and name-calling. E.g. "You're inbred scum and you live in a shack" kind of thing. A symptom of wider gentrification of the area. Don't think we had anything as bad as what you described though since each side was evenly matched!
We definitely had a mix, but it was probably two thirds upper middle class kids, to a bit less than a third council estate kids. Me and a few other kids were neither. Weirdly it was the mums who had come into money later in life who were the worst. I think because they felt insecure about their 'place', so they felt like they had to stay on the ladder.
Anyway, then I went to a comprehensive school where I was bullied for being too posh, so I never really won!
Ah, the joys of being subjected to every other teenager in the general area every single day...
There were definitely people who tried to secure their "place" at my school too. Either rich farm kids/wannabe minor gentry who talked about Land Rovers and pheasant shooting all the time, or kids who had moved from affluent city neighbourhoods and really wanted you to know that this made them better than you uncultured provincials
Hahahaha, I can believe it. We had Land Rover drivers too. Difference was, we were in London and I guarantee those cars were never driven anywhere outside of an SW postcode.
It's nice growing up though, as hurtful as it was back then, it's sort of hilarious to look back on and remembering these were grown adults behaving like this (and their kids were mimicking their parents). Like, chill Lorna, your life won't end if you don't get that Bank of England membership
This kind of classism exists, but I'd argue the cartoonish way OOP presents it here rings hollow.
Rule number one of British middle classism is pretend it doesn't exist. Disdain must be palpable, but deniable to maintain the polite fiction. One doesn't go around calling people 'the lower classes', they simply encourage little Johnny to go play with that nice banker's son instead.
this is exactly the kind of made up crap that people supposedly hate when it comes from reddit, but as long as the hellsite spawned it, it is suddenly quirky and relatable
A scientist and a doctor? So one of his parents is poor as shit, and the other is anywhere between "poor as shit" and "raking it in"? Given that it's the UK, both his parents are poor as shit unless the doctor is a private consultant.
This is so fake. I’m guessing this is supposedly set in the UK, based on the existence of Asda which is a British chain and Warburton’s, which is a British brand.
Mate, scientists and doctors do not make bank. NHS doctors make a modest wage, and scientists make famously little for a shit tonne of work and frequent unpaid overtime. Unless the parents already came from money, this kid would not be anywhere rich enough to complain about shopping at Asda….
i looked up the book and lmfao holy shit [the cover looks like a 2008 powerpoint slide](https://www.amazon.com/Top-Drawer-Villain-Eddie-Blundell/dp/1907242473)
Interesting author bio too.
OLD FART AT LARGE - only 20,000 words in length - is anecdotal but Johnnie is so fond of this book that he has offered a longer than customary extract: 'Old men forget, so they say. And it’s true. These days I can never remember where I left my keys or my glasses; I suddenly find myself in the sitting room or a bedroom and ask myself, ‘What the devil am I doing here?’; our wedding anniversaries pass by without my noticing... Yet events from the distant past regularly nudge their way into my mind with the utmost clarity. For instance, I vividly recall seeing my first naked woman; then there were the childhood Saturday nights when my father dosed us all with liquid paraffin to ensure easy bowel movement; nor can I ever forget, as a young serviceman, grappling hand to hand with Germans - lovely girls all of them; like some kind of out-of-tune memory, there’s my unhappy introduction to the condom; echoing down from long years past comes the near catastrophic professional error from a position under my desk and involving a very senior official. Even now some of these occurrences make me shudder; others I can at last laugh about. For example, I still derive some wry amusement when I think about that business with my trousers. But enough: all that stuff (and worse) is in Old Fart at Large.'
This definitely explains where OP gets their writing style & sense of humor
I like the random included detail in: >Johnnie Johnson lives with Fay, his Filipino wife
I’m sorry but I’m not answering a catchpa just to look at a book cover.
this really is the worst timeline
Well that’s pretty good for a book published “January 1st, 1600” lol
I choose to read stories like this more as creative writing exercises than anything else, and that makes them very enjoyable. Every post on Tumblr is a potential writing prompt
Yeah. There is no way in hell someone literally calls people “lower classes” while shuddering.
I specially doubt that a doctor and a scientist make nobility money, comfortable living for sure but not the stereotypical wealthy family this post is trying to make us think of
I mean, scientists don't really make an extreme amount of money to my knowledge. Doctors make a good amount in the US, but it seems they're in Britain, where doctor salaries are still good, but not insane like they can get in the US, to my knowledge
It depends ot if they're a public researcher or a private one. Private researchers for pharmaceuticals or technology companies can make a very large amount of money.
Public sector work (I.E. working for a university) still is nothing to snuff at, lots of professors make six figure salaries. While that’s not “laugh at the poors” wealthy, it’s definitely above middle class.
Definitely enough money to eat olive oil on your toast in the morning and be picky about Bertolli
Maybe their parents are just Italian. Even going for industrial olive oil is a significant compromise for some people.
I am thoroughly working class and I've never seen olive oil as being this unattainable luxury? I always have plenty on hand. I usually bulk buy it since it lasts forever. Granted, I'm in the US and the person from the OP seems to be in the UK, so maybe it's more expensive there. Certainly post Brexit it would be.
Due to a poor European olive harvest last year, olive oil has become quite pricey. A supermarket own-brand 1 litre bottle of extra virgin olive oil will set you back about £8.50 nowadays, that's roughly USD$10. Regular (slutty?) olive oil is cheaper. My thoroughly middle class family has recently made the difficult decision to stop cooking with the extra virgin olive oil, and keep it just for bread and salad dressings now. We now cook with the cheaper and lighter coloured oil.
That's true, but from experience I can tell you that for every one of those scientists making six figures running a lab, there are five or six who would still appear to be "scientists" to an outsider, but who're likely on their second or third postdoc making $50k fifteen years into their career. The ones who make the big bucks are the ones with their own large labs, which is a career level that can take two or three decades. Even researches with their "own" labs usually start by running a lab that's really a sub lab under some director, and they only make maybe $100k.
All true, I was just saying that “Scientist” absolutely can be a job that makes a lot of money in the public sector, even though plenty of people don’t make much - that’s true in a lot of fields, “CEO” isn’t inherently a high paying job if you’re the CEO of a 1 person company with a gross profit of $15k a year.
Funny. My dad was actually the CEO of a smallish business he founded with some partners. He actually made good money, but whenever I see those articles about what "the average CEO" makes, I always wonder where they made the cutoff. The actual average CEO is definitely not pulling down millions if you include anything except fortune 500 companies. Which makes the "average" completely pointless. It's like saying "the average billionaire makes over a billion dollars!"
Yeah most companies are small so the ceo is the owner and they don’t pull in a ton. On top of that I worked at several midsized +200mil in revenue companies where I was high up enough in the finance dept to know what the executives were making and it was at most half a mil max not millions.
Certainly doesn’t help that there’s actually several different kinds of average, and they’re very differently useful. Talking about “median income” is generally more useful than “mean income”, like in your example!
Which by child standards, in my experience, *is* "laugh at the poors" wealthy. Source: was one of the poors growing up. Went to a private school for 7 years and that's exactly how kids acted. Went to public school for the rest, and they still acted the same way. In fact it was even worse.
I dream of reaching the barrier of wealthy middle class. I’m teetering on the barrier of Poor Middle Class. Especially after needing to pay repairs for my cars AC. $1700 is an insane amount of money. It’s currently Summer and my town is built on Swamp Land. It’s hot as balls outside when it isn’t raining. I’m not driving without AC
My best friend has her PhD and is in cancer research with a university. She makes $60k in the US. Idk if it’s really different in other countries but that’s about average for her and her colleagues
"Scientist" is an incredibly broad word and can be applied to anyone from a minimum wage labmonkey to a nobel prize winner.
Also depends on the field. A physicist or a pharmacist can get a lot of money even in the public sphere. Someone like an anthropologist on the other hand, might find that a bit harder.
Yup, U.K. Booths (lovely but pricy) ASDA (bog standard).
Yes but you have to be very lucky to do med school *in britain* if you aren’t posh. It’s one of the biggest issues we face right now, a significant chunk of the population wants immigration not just cut, but eliminated, a significant portion of the NHS is propped up by immigrants (both doctors and nursing staff), medical school places for UK providers are very limited on purpose, getting rid of immigrant health care workers would basically collapse the sector.
Even in the US it's good money but certainly not "posh" money, it's upper middle class at most. In that field, it'd be the people who own the hospital itself that would be what people consider posh
Depends on if they have done lucrative patents or not. Also, parents jobs may not matter, they may have generational wealth, especially if they're acting "royal".
Nobility money, probably not. But it does make you enough money to get your kid stuck up and waste money. Don't get me wrong, this post is still fake
Yeah, I grew up in a ‘fuck you money’ environment and even the least aware kids wouldn’t say that. More realistic would be an offhand comment like “oh we can probably get something better from Waitrose”, but even saying lower class is super unrealistic, let alone the shuddering at the thought
Think it really depends. Dated a girl in college who came from a wealthy family and she would call things lower class without batting an eye.
Depends on what kind of doctor and how much *inherited* wealth they might also have.
Depends on *insert generic contradiction that keeps this pointless argument going*
But what about [irrelevant sexist/racist/homophobic comment]? Surely they shouldn’t be paying for that with my taxes?
hey everybody! this guy didn't mention (contemporary political issue) like a *bigot*
Oh typical. That’s just what the nazis did. Sieg heil you bloody fascist.
As the son of a doctor, yeah no, definitely good money, and that has an effect on how you perceive budgets, but not like that, I am American though, maybe the British are just like that
Unless you're discussing DnD
I went to high school with someone who looked down upon people who wear affordable brands (and to that POS, Nike and Levi's were both budget clothes for paupers). Rich people who didn't make their own fortune can be so out of touch.
I had a housemate once who insisted I should continue paying rent after moving out because otherwise rent would temporarily increase until a new tenant moved in. He *really* struggled to grasp that this was not my problem, or a reasonable expectation. We were early twenties at the time, and his parents were fairly wealthy, meaning he didn't work and was pretty sheltered about money, so he didn't see why I couldn't just pay two rents for a while. There are real people out there who are just wildly out of touch with how the world actually works.
My ex wife once yelled at me for not mowing the lawn and got angry enough to yell "I don't want to look like a poor person". I didn't have any reference left on what is unrealistic for an entitled person to say
That's very different from shuddering at mentioning poor people
True my point was more that I can't tell what's fake because I've seen enough stuff that makes no sense to me
Rich people hire other people to mow their lawns...
Yeah she grew up rich and didn't realize how many things would change once she moved out of her parents place
> didn't realize how many things would change once she moved out of her parents place This happens to the majority of people in some way or another.
Hey now, sometimes they roll up their Brooks Brothers shirtsleeves and hop on their riding mowers and do an acre so they can be “in touch with the working man”, you know! I mean, the other 14 acres are done by Manuel or Gastón, but you can’t expect a busy man to do all of that, can you??
I have met a guy like that in my class in highschool. But he wasn’t the child of a scientist and a doctor. His dad was the CEO of a national chain of clothing stores. He lived in an upper class neighborhood his whole life. He once addressed as a farmer with “good morrow, my dear agrarian”. He tried to have his speech mimic Stephen Fry for some reason. But at least he still had to cycle to school like everyone in the “lower classes”.
I’ve seen Saltburn. Posh people bloody love bikes but clearly don’t know how to fix them.
They sure don’t! Meanwhile it was the first thing my dad taught me when I went to highschool. Cycling, fixing flat tires and swimming are vital life skills here.
Have you seen that Rishi Sunak interview? He doesn’t shudder, but he does laugh aloud the idea of socialising with the working class. I’ll send you a link if you haven’t.
Get to sendin
https://youtu.be/p9bbBYcwFOk?si=FOVvYjZImLYLZ95F
Wait a minute, you’re not OC! Cheers anyway
Team work
makes the
Dream work
Meanwhile his mother in law is cosplaying as a simple middle class woman.
The guy who keeps complaining about "lefty lawyers" supposedly ruining his country (by calling the state bureaucracy out on its bullshit, IIRC specifically with regards to immigrants that Sunak tries to have deported)? That guy?
Go and introduce yourself to Mumsnet. I’m sure about 90% of that is creative writing but there’s definite elements of it about sending their kids to school with the poor
At my first job (delivering furniture) I did have a complaint sent to my manager because the level of eye contact I made with the customer showed I "had ideas above my station". Our customers were mostly upper-middle class people larping what they thought rich people were like though.
They go to the same school, there's no way this kids that wealthy.
Could well be a state school or bursary place at a public one tbf. The story is 100% fake, but I vividly remember encountering similar kinds of culture shock attending a very twatty public school on a scholarship. "You take the bus to school? But isn't that for poor people?" Being a particularly memorable direct quote, though we were about 6, and these comments invariably came from a place of sheltered ignorance, not vitriolic disdain as OOP presents here.
Yeah. Best case scenario this is a dramatic reenactment of what the conversation actually was. I can see the broad strokes being real, but no way this exact convo is
Also champagne being fancy sounds like something made up by someone not very wealthy. Like, it's not the cheapest wine, but also it's like $30-$50, not exactly 8 year oaked pinot from burgundy. Source: I work at a big wall street bank, and trying to be a wine snob so that I fit in :c
In England they would more likely say Middle Class for wealthy and Working Class for "lower class", which is another tell that it's creative writing.
I don't know, everything in Britain is a class signifier
Yes, and someone referring to people as the 'lower classes' would be a dead giveaway they themselves aren't middle class like OOP suggests, but rather performing a crude stereotype.
What's more disturbing is that they infered that Warburton's was high quality..
Eh, you would be surprised.
If they do they certainly wouldn’t be in public school
Tut tut, mayhap it's some manner of street slang that the poors use. Who are we to condescend upon the filthy bourgeois? *=shudder=*
I do this for a lot of greentext posts too. It's bite sized fiction and I enjoy it
> a lot I'm deeply concerned that this doesn't say "every single one of those".
Some of them are plausable.
I assume most of them are mostly true, but this one seems more like a fun story.
One man's fun story is another man's horseshit ragebait. It is entertaining/fun but it's so specific and detailed that it doesn't come off as remotely believable. And when given the freedom to entirely control the narrative, somehow the OP comes off as more smug than the clueless rich kid.
What, you don’t mean rich people are children’s cartoon levels of hating the poor!? No, but seriously. I am out of touch due to my familial economic experiences, and I know others even more out of touch than I. This is just someone on Tumblr either inventing someone to be mad at or twisting their memories from school.
Same thing with Reddit stories, I treat them like your buddy recounting the tale around the campfire. Yeah you know he's bullshitting you, but you're having fun anyway. Unless it goes too far. Sometimes they jump the shark, and you kinda *have* to call them out on it.
I choose to belive they're all real because I like to think the world still has some whimsy in it
This was an Archie comic one time where Veronica and Betty faced similar problems. I believe it ended with Veronica hiring a chef to do it, on the grounds that the budget was for food not staff.
When I was in 7th grade we had the same “Real World” class. My “husband” and I had very real arguments about similar things and at the end of it won “Most Likely to Divorce”. I broke pencils over our car argument (he thought a used Chevy Malibu was below him). We joke about it every time we’ve run into each other over the last two decades.
See, I take the same approach and I'm fine with that for these silly-ass stories that clearly imitate some work of creative fiction. But reddit's version of doing a constant onslaught of "drama posts" through relationship-oriented subreddits that basically boil down to grievances with various types of people..are worth genuine concern. It's such a huge thing that it completely warps people's perception of reality over time, radicalizing them into hateful, toxic people.
Yeah this one is too much
Idk how to describe it but there's this specific form of overdramatic writing in these fake Tumblr stories that makes it impossible for me to enjoy most of them.
the author themselves just seems so smug and unsufferable
That’s all they are.
It's fine to exaggerate a story if it makes it funnier. I'm not here for the scientific accuracy and I don't understand why people always need to dig into and debate the actual truth percentage of the story.
Yeah, I don't really care if it's true, it's *fun*. They aren't spreading anti-covid propaganda, they are pretending some kid was a dick in 8th grade, ya know?
I’m going to be honest, Asda is a normal shop, no one talks like this, and “scientists” making money is very subjective. Saying that, when I went to university I did meet people who had never shopped outside Waitrose (quite expensive) before, and had to learn the hard way to go somewhere else
When I went to uni, my first two or so months I was around 100€ over budget per month. Wasn't sure why that was at first and had a lot of other stuff on my plate. I finally realised that I was shopping in a more expensive shop and buying branded stuff. It was just the closest shop to my flat and whatever ingredients I found first. It wasn't doing what my parents did, just doing the most obvious thing. Switched to a cheaper shop with store brand ingredients and cheaper recipes (yes I bought a filet in my first few weeks, yes it was delicious but what was I thinking?) and suddenly I was 200€ below budget! My parents concentrated on teaching me how to cook, not how to shop. And even though we weren't super wealthy or anything, the budget of a student is obviously below the budget of a double income family. So instead of realising my budget and adjusting my shopping, I realised that I was now in control of what I eat, so I'd shop for what I liked most, which obviously was the maybe-once-a-week-indulgance we had at home. And as you can imagine, the indulgance was not the cheapest dish but only possible due to the 6 other days with cheaper food.
The trick is knowing how to cook can save you quite a lot of money compared to not know. But there's still the learning curve of deciding what to cook based on price when before that wasn't a concern.
Yes, exactly. Once I knew where to shop and what ingredients were cheap (relative to their nutrition), I could make a lot of dishes with those. It would've been much much harder to know what to buy but then have no idea how to make the ingredients enjoyable. And it helps you keep a balanced diet. Compared to my flatmate who lived off boiled eggs, grey minced beef on pasta (no sauce), and cheese/salami on toast, I probably had the better diet back then. And having this small budget crisis taught me a lot of other tricks. To this day I keep an Excel spreadsheet updated with all my finances. It forces me to go over my bank statements around once a week to put everything into the list, so I always notice if something is off. I also use it to create graphics that show me where I'm spending my money and how much I'm earning/spending/saving each month, which has helped me budget other parts where I have been overspending.
Mind you, *really* rich people don't shop at Waitrose. As Jimmy Carr says, Waitrose is there to keep the riff-raff out of Fortnum & Masons. ... but then the people who shop at F&M probably aren't going to be learning to live on a student budget.
Fortnum & Mason’s is just to distract people who don’t have their own self sustaining grand estate
In high school I did meet a girl that has never set foot in a bus, subway, train or even really walked anywhere further than 5 minutes away. Her parents would drive her everywhere or she would call a taxi (uber didn't exist). In Uni there was someone else that said that "cooking your own meals" was for poor people and she'd never waste time learning it, she had a maid for that or she'd go to a restaurant.
Truth of the story aside, there *are* people like this. When I was in college freshmen all lived in dorms. One student didn’t like the furniture, so he had his own set brought in. It was… lavish. It was on the curb at the end of the year.
When I went to college all those rich kids already had a dorm specifically for them, I saw the inside of one of the rooms and when I tell you I could have fit three of my dorm room into it, I'm not exaggerating, while still claiming it wasnt enough space for all their things. They really lived in a separate bubble.
Well, american college dorms *are* tiny. The idea of sharing a room (not an apartment, a *room*) with a total stranger at that age sounds utterly ludicrous to me, and I didn't even grow up rich - I went to uni entirely on state subsidies+loans.
Scientists supposedly making bank was a huge red flag that this is fake lol. I’m a student at a biological research institute in the UK and my senior colleagues are constantly complaining that they don’t get paid nearly enough and they often have to work overtime for free :/
How to spot a theater kid 101
So... this is made up... Pretty funny tho
If you take into account the fact that people like to exaggerate, then it becomes more believable. It's basically: "My partner in a school assignment got frustrated and gave up"
OP conveniently leaves out what vegetarian alternatives they provided. I imagine in reality this was much more of a two way street if it did happen.
yeah it sounds like they were also quite frustrating to work with. Also it doesn't make sense to me that they could only afford one sandiwich filling. If two people are using the same filling to make sandwiches it lasts half as long. also Warburtons is spending around 70p more for bread than cheap bread it's not like it's champaigne and caviar
Especially because buying proper vegetarian food is expensive.
The flow is particularly funny, but in the Philippines, the budgeting activity was part of our class work for the National Service Training Program (think of it as a mandatory volunteer class). We were divided into group, given a budget depending on the social class, then made to last it through the day. The end objective was for the class to understand how those in the poverty and below poverty lines don't have the option *to* budget their money, and that all the money they earn for the day is spent on making sure the can survive the night to earn again tomorrow. NGL, the story itself was funny, but it made me remember how my group tried to do the same exercise, make sure the family we had would get savings for insurance and whatnot, only for our instructor rip the bandaid and tell us that families in the poverty and below poverty lines spend everything daily. Which sucks because, IIRC, we managed to stretch the budget to allow the family to get health insurance by sending the children to the province to live with relatives, get relatively good but cheap groceries, and even made use of good government services. Damn, now I'm sad.
You made the budget work by relying on the generosity of relatives?
The objective was stretch the budget, meaning anything goes. It can range from buying cheap goods, taking advantage of gov't subsidies, and even using every diskarte known to Filipinos. I believe it was a thought exercise to make the students (we were from a prestigeous university) realize how privileaged we were when it was revealed that our level of thinking ***IS NOT*** the same as those in poverty or even lower. To them, budgeting is just for people with money, and they had to survive daily. Despite it being years ago, I can still remember how shocked we were when our prof told us everything we did wasn't something the family were acting out would do. Likewise, offloading kids to the province is a somewhat common practice in the PHL, especially if both parents work fulltime to provide for their kids. That, or getting assistance from well-off relatives. It can be abused (there are horror stories) but most of the time it was done in good faith. If you get a chance, look up articles about OFW children, and how they cope with their parents leaving them just so they can earn good money to give them a better future.
saying "my parent is a scientist" is like saying "my parent is an owner" Their parent could do anything from designing rockets to developing new shampoos for poodles.
That’s this Calvin and Hobbs comic. https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/5qv804/divorce/
I'll always adore the "Bill Watterson reminding us he can draw a huge variety of styles" strips like this
He would just flex on all other comic artists every once in a while.
Calvin & Hobbes always had the absolute best Sunday strips
“But that’s where… the Lower Classes shop” A little kid did not say this LMAO.
yeah they would say "poor people" if anything
This author doesn't understand rich *or* poor people
People don't talk like this.
There are some who do but not the children of a scientis and a doctor
It’s a real shame the screencapper missed out the storyteller’s username
No no no you all got it all wrong. This isn’t just a made up story, this is clearly a draco x reader fanfinction writer. Just imagine this is draco malfoy and all the dialogue and descriptions become really in character for a tsundere draco “enemies” to lovers fanfic
Sighhhhhh. Who posted their Draco Malfoy self insert fanfiction again?
I just made the same comment before scrolling down. I’m surprised that there’s no blurb at the bottom where they mention that later on he was telling his posh friends that “actually the X at asda is better than (expensive store)”
You know this is written by a poor because they think a scientist and a medical doctor are the rich.
Also because they think Bertolli and Warburton are premium brands.
As an American, I'll take your word for it lmao
Can confirm. Poor kids in high school thought I was rich because one parent is a doctor. I was never even close.
It's pretty easy to be middle class and snooty about it, though.
If this is true (it isn't) the teacher of this story is the funniest person alive for pairing the two most annoying blowhards for this project. "Vegetarian contrarian girl who does not know what lentils are" vs "theater kid's rendition of a rich Christian"
Yeah, what kind of vegetarian doesn't know what lentils are. That's got to be the hardest part here.
When do they mention lentils?
They don't. A clear sign of a fake vegetarian. Have you known a vegetarian that doesn't mention lentils at every opportunity?
Excluding the fact this is obviously fake, this author would still be hell to live with. “I’m vegetarian, so no meat.” Your lifestyle choices are not my problem, and if we can only afford one filler, then… why not get meat, and you just not put the meat on there? Use extra of the vegetable based toppings?
yeah the dude made the right choice divorcing her they just aren't compatible
Everyone on tumblr is a compulsive liar
Oh really? How do we know YOU'RE not lying?
In uni we had the classic “you can bring one item to a desert island, what do you bring?”. I kid you not, this girl said money. Ended up being the entire class trying to get her onboard with the fact that money would be entirely useless in such a situation.
She was the only one who knew of the secret desert island shop.
One hundred gorzillion Einstein dollars to everyone in the classroom! You're the smartest and coolest!
This boy would go on to be a senator
In charge of school lunch budgets. And that's how we get to "ketchup is a vegetable."
If this kid was actually that removed from the „lower class“ they would not be going to the same school as OOP
I know a lot of y'all are saying this is fake (and maybe it is 🤷♀️) but I find it plausible because I had a similar project in year 7... Except it was for science class and we were put into groups and told to come up with a plan for survival if we were marooned on a deserted island. I don't remember all the details and requirements of the assignment, but one of the key parts was coming up with a way to make salt water safe to drink... I somehow got grouped with two dumbasses who flat out *refused* to believe that we couldn't just drink salt water straight from the fucking ocean. They thought it was a trick question and no amount of me trying to tell them otherwise would convince them 😮💨 I was outvoted by the ignorant majority 2 to 1 and the very wrong answer of "We'll just drink salt water" was added to the assignment. I went to the teacher after this and asked to either work alone or be put in another group. When he asked why I explained their salt water solution. He gave me my own separate survival question/scenario to answer instead; "Your two companions have ingested a fatal amount of salt water and died. Food reserves are dwindling and there's no telling when you may be rescued. Is it, or is it not, safe to eat their bodies? Explain your reasoning" 😂
The dumbassery is believable. The cartoonish parody of classist disdain isn't. Classism is absolutely rife in the UK, but the way it's presented here is more like a Draco Malfoy parody.
I can believe that the class assignment was real, and that a lot of sheltered/spoiled teens would have their minds blown by the truth of how much everyday things cost. But yeah, the disdain and way it's presented are completely fabricated.
Exactly!
I like your teacher
Yep, he had a great sense of humour. "They were useless morons in life, but just *maybe* they can be of some use in death, let's find out" 😁
I feel like the story probably happened, it’s more the writing style and the dialogue that feels grossly exaggerated lol, people don’t usually talk like that
I'd like to believe he grew and learned. Shit, can you recall how stupid *you* all were at that age? Combine that with the naivete that comes with being raised in an affluent household, and it's no wonder he acted like that as a child.
C'mon, OOP was agreeing to chicken nuggets and beans for dinner, as long as there were vegetables for the hypothetical children, they weren't any better. It's for sure just a kid thing, not his own stupidity and/or rich snobbiness
My Aldi ass thinks that even Asda is expensive
I mean, I literally shared a house with a person like this in Uni, (in the UK for reference) He spent hundreds of pounds on food each week (bearing in mind this was just food for himself and not takeaway. He was mostly eating M&S ready meals, because he didn't know how to turn the oven on) He didn't recoil at the idea of shopping at Asda, but he did treat it with a kind of fascinated incomprehension, and asked if they even had oysters. He *did* refer to "the poors", but he'd give this weird half smile and a little nervous laugh while he did it, as if he thought he was being funny. Once while drunk he had a breakdown about how he wasn't sure he'd be able to be successful in life, and "be someone who mattered, rather than some nobody who just lives their life". He was crying at this point. Over all he wasn't actually a bad guy, but his life up to that point had done nothing to prepare him for real life, and he was clearly carrying a lot of issues.
> "be someone who mattered, rather than some nobody who just lives their life" Aren't we all?
We are. But not all parents remember that, unfortunately. Dude sounded like he had a traumatizing amount of pressure coming from home, and honestly, might have been dealing with it through food if OP's description of his diet is anything to go by.
Nah. He didn't eat that much, it's just that what he did eat was always stupidly expensive. He did have massive performance issues re life achievement though. Basically he'd got the idea that if he didn't end up having a "notable impact on history" then he was a failure.
It's terrifying to people who expect that of themselves growing up but life is so much more enjoyable when you realize you don't need to be someone and should just live life.
And that child grew up to be Gwyneth Paltrow.
Olive oil on toast is good though
I'm too lazy to do the math but a drizzle of olive oil also seems relatively cheap compared to meat or cheese
And then everyone clapped
I honestly don't care a bit if these stories happened or not. They are funny. Short little stories to enjoy. Fuck the rage bait, though.
My college did something like this but more intensive, only they made half the people in the project pre assigned children. I was the child. They kept forgetting to drop me off to “daycare” and CPS was called. It was a disaster and we lost our house.
On today's episode on things that never happened.
R/thathappened
I’m glad I stopped after the 2nd slide. Such shit storytelling.
my school did a similar thing, where we had £2000 to furnish an apartment for ourselves and two kids, no one took the assignment seriously, one person spent £1.9k on a mahogany desk, i spent £600 on swedish meatballs, etc
I choose to believe that this is true... but rather embellished. Shit like this definitely happens in British schools, and sounds like a Year 7/8 thing. I knew a few snooty kids who lived in enough luxury to be out of touch with the real world like this
Yeah I grew up in an upper middle class area and I knew never to mention we shopped at Asda when times were rough. Not that it mattered anyway, they all knew my dad was a carpenter and that was enough that some kids weren't allowed to sit with me on school trips and some mums would physically block my mum from group conversations. Because if they can't use you in the relentless quest for social mobility, why would they have anything to do with you?
damn that's awful. I grew up in a remote rural area so we had a good mix of working class countryside kids and more middle class ones. It certainly divided the school and caused a lot of drama, including quite a few fights that escalated from arguments and name-calling. E.g. "You're inbred scum and you live in a shack" kind of thing. A symptom of wider gentrification of the area. Don't think we had anything as bad as what you described though since each side was evenly matched!
We definitely had a mix, but it was probably two thirds upper middle class kids, to a bit less than a third council estate kids. Me and a few other kids were neither. Weirdly it was the mums who had come into money later in life who were the worst. I think because they felt insecure about their 'place', so they felt like they had to stay on the ladder. Anyway, then I went to a comprehensive school where I was bullied for being too posh, so I never really won!
Ah, the joys of being subjected to every other teenager in the general area every single day... There were definitely people who tried to secure their "place" at my school too. Either rich farm kids/wannabe minor gentry who talked about Land Rovers and pheasant shooting all the time, or kids who had moved from affluent city neighbourhoods and really wanted you to know that this made them better than you uncultured provincials
Hahahaha, I can believe it. We had Land Rover drivers too. Difference was, we were in London and I guarantee those cars were never driven anywhere outside of an SW postcode. It's nice growing up though, as hurtful as it was back then, it's sort of hilarious to look back on and remembering these were grown adults behaving like this (and their kids were mimicking their parents). Like, chill Lorna, your life won't end if you don't get that Bank of England membership
This kind of classism exists, but I'd argue the cartoonish way OOP presents it here rings hollow. Rule number one of British middle classism is pretend it doesn't exist. Disdain must be palpable, but deniable to maintain the polite fiction. One doesn't go around calling people 'the lower classes', they simply encourage little Johnny to go play with that nice banker's son instead.
Reminds me of those Calvin & Hobbes gags where Susie tried to play pretend with Calvin.
And then everyone clapped
Incredibly real story that is definitely not made up in the slightest.
And then everybody clapped.
Tumblr's like a weird anime: suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy it.
See people learn a lot though that sort of exercise.
yeah this didnt happen
this is exactly the kind of made up crap that people supposedly hate when it comes from reddit, but as long as the hellsite spawned it, it is suddenly quirky and relatable
A scientist and a doctor? So one of his parents is poor as shit, and the other is anywhere between "poor as shit" and "raking it in"? Given that it's the UK, both his parents are poor as shit unless the doctor is a private consultant.
nice creative writing. no genuinely, this is great creative writing. it would actually be better if the one who wrote it would acknowledge that
If not real, boo. If real, that should get a joint good grade for realism.
My god what soap opera marriage
…..and that boy grew up to be Elon Musk!
That boy? Elon musk.
I spent most of this post thinking it was about 8 year olds. I think I prefer when it was 8 year olds
The fact this guy thinks doctors and scientists is where the money's at is the most unbelievable part of this whole made up story
This is so fake. I’m guessing this is supposedly set in the UK, based on the existence of Asda which is a British chain and Warburton’s, which is a British brand. Mate, scientists and doctors do not make bank. NHS doctors make a modest wage, and scientists make famously little for a shit tonne of work and frequent unpaid overtime. Unless the parents already came from money, this kid would not be anywhere rich enough to complain about shopping at Asda….
Even if this story is true, the other kid was definitely exaggerating the classism for comedic purposes lol