How do you define being a Snob!

nanaChrissy - yes, she is! I have always known that there were areas where other people were much more proficient or learned than myself, but I have my own areas of expertise so I am always happy to acknowledge the superiority of others in certain subjects (cooking, botany, astronomy, engineering, IT, needlework....etc etc etc...) This never makes me feel they are superior human beings, and similarly I never think anyone is inferior to me if they don't share my skills in certain subjects. I grew up in a working class family in the back streets of Salford and I retain a faint Salford accent, which is not very attractive but is part of me. I used to be mildly annoyed when some Sloaney airhead tried to patronise me but I learned just to shrug it off. I felt I had achieved more than they had without help from anybody except the wonderful free higher education system which was available to me as a mature student in 1967. (How much harder it would be for me now).
I have always been very self-confident, which I attribute partly to nature and partly to nurture - my mother, siblings and teachers always lavished praise on me - but overweaning self-confidence is not necessarily an attractive trait! Events have taught me my own limitations - I am a sadder but more self-knowing person.

What I enjoyed most about the young men calling me Ms. B. was their bounciness and cheekiness in doing so. Now I think about it, I didn't always get the same impression from the young women. For me it's about the sense of affection I feel I am receiving from being called whatever - not the name itself.........if that all makes sense.
Closer to home, I've always really enjoyed your nick-name for me bagitha, and am aware I've never shortened yours to bags, simply because, for me, it expresses my affection for you.

I had good teachers, chrissy, at home, at school, at uni, at work, at my hobbies. My kids taught me a lot too.

Oh Baggy that has made me think. I have often felt inferior to others but I like your view that it is snobbery. You are, in my opinion, a very wise woman.

I'm beginning to wonder if that's what it is too, greatnan. Use of my first name does not intrude into my life. It's just who I am. The surname is just by the way, a bit of punctuation, if you like.

I found a difference between the tutors at Teacher Training College, who usually wanted to be called by their surname, especially if they had a doctorate, and my university lecturers, who were nearly all happy to use forenames. A question of self confidence?

I think my attitude started at my parents' home. We knew our parents' colleagues by their first names. My university lecturers and tutors all asked to be called by their first names and so on. It's just what I've always done. Why should I expect anything different from anyone else?

Gbun and butty, I hope what I want to say applies to both! I found both your replies interesting, in part because they illustrate how different people feel about formality and what it means, how it is perceived, and so on. Perhaps there is something about me that just invites people to use my first name? On initial introduction, my surname is often used, but it doesn't last. I don't think that's any sign of disrespect towards me, but rather my lack of feeling superior or inferior to anyone whether their 'station' is traditionally thought to be below me or above me. It's not a simple lack. I've worked on it. I refuse to feel inferior or superior to anyone because, for me, feeling either of those things is the definition of being a snob, which I don't want to be. Most of my relationships with people are about exchanges of knowledge and experience. There are inequalities, obviously, but only as the result of the accidents of birth, education and experience. As far as relating to other people on a personal level goes, we're all equals in my view.

The end result is that it doesn't bother me one jot which way people choose to address me, so long as they are polite. I don't regard the use of my given name by anyone to be impolite. It seems some people do mind being called by their first name. So be it, but I'm glad I don't. Something else I don't need to worry about. Shrug.

This is surely a cultural matter - I have had people I regarded as friends in France who would not use my first name or address me as 'tu'. In contrast, a man friend went to work in the USA and was mortified to be put down sharply by his boss for being over-familiar - he had assumed that the informality of using his first name implied the same level of relationship that he had found in England. And, of course, there are tribes where your forename can be used against you in witchcraft!

I have worked with hundreds of teachers and only one insisted on being called by his surname in the staff room - he was a man in his 50s who had never been promoted in nearly 30 years of teaching and we all felt he needed to shore up his self-esteem by being addressed in this way.
I didn't let my pupils use my first name but I used their first names rather than just their surnames, which I found an unpleasant way of addressing the boys.

When my daughters were teenagers their boy friends addressed me as 'Mrs B' but their girl friends used my forename. Later, I became 'NanaC' (my forename).
I find it amusing that men who have attended public schools go on referring to each other as 'Smith' or 'Jones', no matter what their degree of intimacy.

I can understand why old people object to being addressed by their forename by young carers,nurses, etc. unless they have been asked if they mind. It seems that it often goes alongside a patronising assumption that all old people have reverted to childhood.

bagitha,i find the use of the first name intrusive. it takes a person from a respectful distance into intimacy. that's why it feels inappropriate to me for anyone i don't know to use my first name.

i address my colleagues with the same formality i expect them to use towards me. i address pupils by their first names, usually but not always; 'mr awan' works well when i know the family but can't remember which sibling i have before me!

i don't equate informality with 'equality'. rather the opposite. only a person who presumed superior rank or status would use the first name without invitation.

When I worked for the Youth Service, there was an interesting difference in how I was called by the teenagers. The young women called me by my nick-name, and the young men, almost without exception, chose to shorten my surname and called me Mrs.B.
bagitha I think the young men were more comfortable with the bridge between the closeness of equality and the distance of formality........ which is a great way of explaining it.

BTW, those two Jacks are women.

The only person who doesn't call me by my first name is my child's class teacher and that's her choice. Everyone else from the Cubs I lead and DD's friends to my MP and MSP call me by my first name. Why would I object? It's my name. I can't think of anyone whose first name I don't use either, though I may add their surname if I speak of them to someone else, for clarity. That's what second names are for, isn't it? — to distinguish Jack the postman from Jack the cobbler and so forth.

It seems that some people do not like the 'closeness' of equality and prefer the 'distance' of formality. There are occasions when formality is useful, I suppose, but not in ordinary everyday life, at least not in my opinion. My relationship with Cubs, for instance, is not formal even though I have a certain authority in the role of Cub leader. Likewise when I was teaching.

The mother of one of my sons school friends came to clean for me many years ago. I could hardly call her Mrs R, and she could hardly call me Mrs W. We were equals. I just happened to pay her for doing a job. Had she so wished, she could well have paid me to, for example, tutor one of her children.

Annika How lovely of your former employer sounds,I don't understand all the problems with the different types of work that people do every one has to earn a living and as long as collegues are polite it wouldn't bother me if I was called by my first name or not.I went through my working life with a wee bit of advice from my darling Grandpa,"Every job is Noble" and I have never gone wrong in remembering that bit of advice.

When our DC were younger I used to clean for a lady, she was always known Mrs H and I was known as Mrs C but written on the christmas card she always gave me was my first name and she signed it with her first name !
I on the other hand never felt I could put her first name on a card from me to her. She was a lovely lady.
It was happy days working for her

well, no, i don't know all my colleagues. i have over 200 colleagues in the workplace. working together does not mean they know me or i know them. i became deeply irritated by 22 year olds bouncing up to me and addressing me by a diminutive of my first name and expecting a warm response. i find that when they approach with 'mrs ****' i can smile and be welcoming. that works better for us all.

Presumably you know your colleagues, though, granbunny?
Effective or not, it seems rather preremptory.
Each to their own, I suppose.

well, its effective in that they do it. i appreciate that.
i first became conscious of, and particular about, this when the gas company wrote to me by my first name. i found that shocking. i don't think people should use my first name unless i know them.

I prefer to be addressed as Mrs harri, as my mother used to say " familiarity breeds contempt "

I employed a cleaner as soon as I started teaching - we used forenames and she became a good friend.
I am not keen on being addressed by my forename by young people in call centres but if they ask 'May I call you X' I always say 'Yes', on the grounds that they have been polite enough to ask.
When I joined the Inland Revenue as a tax inspector, the rules were that all the people in lower grades had to call me Miss X, but when I went out to the pub with them it was forenames all round. However, I was not their line manager.

You said 'I make...'

anagram, i don't ask, i just let it be known that i prefer...they find it mildly shocking but they go along with it...

Quoting Charlotta - "not even a woman who cleans for you".

Lowest of the low is she?

Yes! I'm too disabled to do it myself!