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It's not just jealousy

QuartzCrystalMoonBeam
Community Member

I work in a small salon with another woman who is of similar experience/skill level as me. We have equal roles at work and it's a small salon so it's just us most of the time.

Every day I have to endure going to working and listening to customers drool over her. They constantly tell her she's amazing and she did such a good job etc. There's always emails saying "I came in last week and saw Sarah* (who was AMAZING btw)..." and then constant phone calls from people making bookings "I saw Sarah last time and she was really great can I book in with Sarah?" And we're always getting reviews on Google saying how "awesome and amazing and wonderful and beautiful Sarah was" people literally take selfies with her all the time. It's insane.

*obviously not her real name

it's not even just customers. All our co workers love her, all our peers from other salons love her. Everyone loves her. She's one of those people who has that magical charm that makes everyone suddenly want to be her friend and think she's super cool and funny.

At first of course I was jealous. Jealous that all our customers liked her so much but didn't really seem to care for me. But I feel like confusion and even anger took over at some point. I try my best not to hold it against her, she's not doing anything wrong but it's just SO HARD every single day to be around that. It never ends. I never get a break from it. Day after day my soul is crushed.

i have no idea what to do. I love my job and the salon I work in, and I find myself wishing that she would get a job offer and leave so I don' have to face this every day but I know she wouldn't ever leave- but it' getting to a point where it's making me want to quit but I worked so hard to get to where I am today and i definitely dont want to leave this salon. I don't know how to deal with my feelings. I know I have my own admirable traits and qualities but that doesn't help these constant feelings of...I'm not sure. I don't even know what I feel...

i don't know what to do anymore. This is getting me down so much I feel awful constantly. I don't even want to go to work anymore.

Please Help Me 😞

3 Replies 3

james1
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi QuartzCrystalMoonBeam,

Welcome to the forums and I'm sorry to hear you are struggling a lot at work. It is very natural to make comparisons and even though people say it's bad, jealousy is actually a very normal feeling.

Jealousy often brings lots of different feelings like anger, sadness, fear, humiliation...it's a very powerful and complex emotion. From what you've told us about how people talk about this other woman, it sounds very demoralising for you.

This is very clearly causing you a lot of distress at the moment so perhaps it is a good time to look at your options. Broadly, you can either try to confront these jealous feelings by continuing to work with this other woman and working to redirect these feelings into something more positive, or you could leave them aside and try to avoid situations where they will arise.

What would you like to do?

James

I just think I don't know what to do because I don't know what I can do. All I feel is this awful indescribable feeling I get when someone walks in and asks for Sarah. I really do not know what to do 😞

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear you feel so helpless against this feeling.

Often these come up because of some insecurity we have - don't worry, we all have insecurities and so different things will seem incredibly hard for different people.

The good thing is that we can work on those insecurities so what used to bother us doesn't anymore.

For example, I used to be pretty self-conscious about my height. I probably still am a bit to be honest, but I've come to just accept that I'm on the shorter side and that's okay. Dating was hard for me because the stereotype is that the men are taller, so it took a lot of effort on my part to keep putting myself out there. In the end, it really helped to reduce that insecurity.

So that's one way you can take, and is probably the best for you in the long term.

The other is to remove yourself from the situation altogether and find a different place to work or different shifts. I think that'll be quite complicated though and you'll be missing out on a good opportunity to really develop as a person.

I am sure you must be doing a good job there otherwise you wouldn't have a job. But you do. Perhaps there are things that Sarah does better than you, but equally there will be things that you do better than her. It sounds like you can't see those, and perhaps they wouldn't even matter because no one else pays attention. I understand that. I don't want to push you into either way, but I do think it would be helpful for you if you had a think about what you're good at and why it doesn't feel enough.

James