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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to think people are jealous?

327 replies

cherrypieandcheese · 26/03/2020 00:15

NC for this one!

I work very hard running an online business that has helped a lot of people and gained a lot of traction. I tend to keep it very quiet. I take a very small salary thats not enough to pay bills and I hope one day in the future I can go full time. In the mean time I work part time. I scrape by every month. I try and not tell everyone what I do on the side because I'm a little embarrassed and I find people at my work are put off. If they ask me if I have another job and I tell them briefly about my side hustle, the conversation goes dead, so I change the topic.

Everyone at work seems really friendly and I think people like me. I still feel new, been there just over a year, but get along with everyone. Yet I am still not invited to parties. There are group chats I am not apart of, but people who have started working there in the past three months have been welcomed into. I am the only one. I held my own party and no-one from work came, despite all being invited. Others from outside work came so it wasn't a flop. I am the same age and have a lot on common with these people.

We have all just been put on unpaid leave. Three of my colleagues have posted on Facebook tagging every singe colleague at my workplace on how sad they are that they are no longer working together, except me. Again. Theres no-one I am close enough to ask about it without being worried everyone will find out my concern.

Everything went well in the first two months and only happened when people found out about my side hustle. I don't know if people feel as if we're too different because of my side hustle? I have opened up to a friend who has told me I should be so proud of how many people I have helped, but I am not. I am embarrassed. I feel the side hustle makes people feel as if they have nothing in common with me.

I have received a couple of sly comments about it from people at work. Someone suggesting I am going to leave as soon as my side hustle takes off, so i'm not really loyal to the company, another saying I must not have time for friends and family because I work so hard juggling two jobs and dont have the right priorities Hmm Just comments I can ignore in the moment but felt really off. This has happened from 5-6 people.

I really don't think there is anything wrong with my personality. I get involved, I am friendly and outgoing. My friend said my colleagues are jealous. Could this be true? There is nothing to be jealous of because what I do is very lonely, hard work, and I have thought about giving in a million times. Or is there likely another problem with me?

I have never had any problems in any other work place. This is the only job I have had since starting my side hustle and the only one I have trouble integrating. If anyone could shed some light it would be appreciated, thank you.

OP posts:
SparklesAllOver · 26/03/2020 16:04

OP, pleeeease tell us what it is you do Smile

TwoKnocks · 26/03/2020 16:08

But isn't it far more likely that the OP's colleagues don't like her (for whatever reason, justifiably or not) than that they are envious of a hobby business that doesn't bring her in enough to live on, and which she says she's 'embarrassed' by and 'keeps very quiet about'?

I can honestly not conceive of a side business that is strange or controversial enough to 'make people feel they have nothing in common with 'her, as she suggests, yet is something that 'helps people' and has garnered a lot of FB compliments.

Unless the OP works PT as a clown who does children's parties and brings her costume to work to change into? That would probably freak enough people out... Grin

Alonelonelyloner · 26/03/2020 18:21

@DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG I haven't finished reading the full thread but wanted to say thanks for the reading ideas and your post!

DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG · 26/03/2020 20:18

Thanks Alone
It’s disappointing when people see disagreement as attack and get defensive, I like being challenged and having to think critically about how I arrived at my conclusion. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m wrong enough to have to radically rethink everything. Both outcomes are fine.

I realise emotions are heightened at present though.
Weird times to be living through.

Thekindofwindowsfaceslookinat · 26/03/2020 20:21

Omg. I know you IRL. Why would you post such identifying information? Are you showing off about having fingernails again, bitch?

Grin
OutlandishBird · 26/03/2020 20:33

Every time I read "side hustle" I wanted to scream, so for that alone YABU.
If you call it that at work and that frequently they may feel the same!

They are being nasty though and deliberately excluding you which isn't nice, so the ABU too.

firesong · 26/03/2020 20:38

Some work places are just weird, OP. I've always got along with people at work and had lots of friends... this one place, though, they ignored me and behaved really rudely. One lunch time I popped to the pub with a book, and they all arrived and sat at the next table. They didn't acknowledge me. I didn't want to sit with them by that point, that ship had sailed. But I could never imagine doing that to someone I work with Confused Just ignore it. Maybe over time you will make more friends there, or you will find somewhere better to work!

TwoKnocks · 26/03/2020 21:01

‘Side hustle’ is growing on me from this thread, though I can’t help but hear it in a sort of ‘Get Shorty’ accent.

Idontwantthis · 26/03/2020 22:07

Op do you know what a mlm is?

ThePawtriarchy · 26/03/2020 22:33

The only thing more irritating than saying ‘side hustle’ 6 times, I’d the hundreds of posters now going on about it.

Anyway - medium / healer / reiki or reflexology? Otherwise - alienating helping people by selling them younique mascara and an imaginary career in a box?

Mittens030869 · 26/03/2020 22:44

I don't think the OP will be back, not exactly surprising after the abuse she received early on.

SwerfandTurf · 27/03/2020 01:16

None of these suggestions (MLM or woo stuff) remotely fit OP’s description.

ThePawtriarchy · 27/03/2020 02:51

@swerfandturf well that told us. Stand down people Wink

Lynda07 · 27/03/2020 03:41

The op did say early on in the thread that she only coined the term 'side hustle' on here and didn't say it in real life.

I hope she comes back, I haven't read all the thread but at the beginning all was OK.

KatherineJaneway · 27/03/2020 06:05

I hope she comes back

Don't think that will happen Grin

Weirdomagnet · 27/03/2020 07:51

Wow. I've only read up to p6 but what a lot of immature bullies on this thread! Just like bitchy little school girls, all piling in with each other like unthinking sheep.

OP, the only thing you're doing wrong is giving a shit what others think. Take this sorry lot for example- all wanting the 'funniest' dig.
Don't be them.

HelgaHere1 · 27/03/2020 08:27

That's why you believe the OP when she thinks colleagues are envious - the responses on here are ridiculously like playground bullying because some girl got above herself (in their gang mentality).

NiteFlights · 27/03/2020 08:31

@HelgaHere1 you’ve got a good point there, perhaps the colleagues are as stupid as most of the posters on this thread. Hmm

AJTracey · 27/03/2020 08:38

Cam work or MLM 100%

TealWater · 27/03/2020 09:02

@NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace For those of us with one, what you would like us to call it?

Um how about 'second job', 'side job', 'part-time job'?

TealWater · 27/03/2020 09:09

I think that the OP is too cowardly to return and say what it is (or even what it isn't) is quite telling. What do they have to hide if it is all innocent, and she is just an obscure nickname on an anonymous forum?

For those who are trying to re-define the word, sorry, but it doesn't work like that. Just because you are young doesn't mean you can come in, dismiss the decades of meaning and create your own meaning. You can't do that and it doesn't work that way. Side hustle does mean something dodgy and nefarious. It does. It always has.
That is a fact, it is what the term means. You can't re-write the term. You can't say evil means good or up means down, just because you are young. Terms have meaning. That's it.

YesItsMeIDontCare · 27/03/2020 09:22

@TealWater

That's not strictly true. The word "nice" has changed meaning more than once over the centuries.

Weirdomagnet · 27/03/2020 09:45

TealWater 🙄

www.nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/evolution-shakespeares-words/

CandyLeBonBon · 27/03/2020 09:45

You can't say evil means good or up means down, just because you are young

Sadly I think you'll find the word 'sick' now means 'good' in youth parlance. The English language is always changing. It's a thing.

Mittens030869 · 27/03/2020 09:55

@TealWater As a trained linguist, I can tell you that you're quite wrong about language. Otherwise, the word 'gay' would really still mean 'happy'. A lot of us took a while to get our heads around that change of meaning.

Should we say that a young people who reveal to they're parents that they're 'gay' are really just saying that they're 'happy'?