Two absolutely true tales about Netto from my days as a teacher back in the 80s when Netto first came to prominence. Sociologists would have a field day extrapolating the perceptions of social status amongst certain classes from them.
1. One day, as I was looking forward to a free period, the headmaster dragged me from the staffroom to cover a lesson for an absent lady colleague (a not uncommon occurrence). This was one of only two classes in the school which I had never taught and whose pupils were unfamiliar to me. Not only that, but the subject on their timetable was one of which I had absolutely no knowledge.
I handed out the written work kindly supplied by another colleague and they settled down to it whilst I sat at the teacher's desk to get on with my own work. For 15 minutes there was absolute silence as they scribbled away and I remember thinking, "What a nice well-behaved class this is!"
Just as I was about to fill in the answer to 25 across in the Times crossword there was an almighty crash. I looked up to see two desks overturned and two 13 year old girls in a catfight, hair tearing, eye gouging, the works. I was forced to physically intervene to separate them. When I asked, "What's the cause of all this?" one of the girls truculently replied, "she started it!" On enquiring just exactly how she had "started it", she told me, "She said my mam shops at Netto's!"
I'll save number 2 for later.