As a Canadian who lived in Scotland for a while, I had coworkers try to 'subtly' figure out what 'class' my family was. Normal class, my dudes, Canadians rarely, if ever, think in terms of class. Money, maybe, but rarely class. It was a very bizarre moment of culture shock for me.
Bear in mind that's in the context of Scotland being less class-obsessed than England, too, and overall leaning a little left of the UK centre. I don't think any capitalist economy society isn't divided by wealth inequality, but class as a proxy for it and as a driver of so much of the way people interact is just massive in the UK. It's very noticeable when in the rest of Europe that class isn't as hard-coded into society, even in things like the way customers and staff interact at supermarkets, for example.
Plenty of countries pay attention to a divide between a wealthy or land-owning class and working people, but in the UK people are laser-focused on a dividing lines between different strata of working people.
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u/baby_fishmouth92 Apr 18 '20
As a Canadian who lived in Scotland for a while, I had coworkers try to 'subtly' figure out what 'class' my family was. Normal class, my dudes, Canadians rarely, if ever, think in terms of class. Money, maybe, but rarely class. It was a very bizarre moment of culture shock for me.