AIBU to think people are jealous?

[cherrypieandcheese]

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 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.

Of course meaning changes over time, but it happens gradually.

Now things are appropriated from other countries and cultures via the internet, so a word can be used completely different by two people in the same city of the same age, depending on what websites they use and what musical genre they listen to.

Using a word that a large percentage of people associate with petty crime to describe your business activity is shooting yourself in the foot.

Using it 6 times in the same one pager makes you look weird, to say the least.

DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG

Using a word that a large percentage of people associate with petty crime to describe your business activity is shooting yourself in the foot

Using it 6 times in the same one pager makes you look weird, to say the least

-Are you usually very literal?

• Do you usually like to kick people when they're down?

You might not be their cup of tea op. Not nice to feel excluded. I wouldn't waste time thinking of the why's and focus on other friendships and relationships.

@Weirdomagnet

These posters are probably playground bullies who never grew up and can now get away with it because it's anonymous and they justify it because 'well it's AIBU'.

I've conversely never heard any petty criminals describe their activities as side hustles, maybe I am just mixing in the wrong circles.

People are going to be nasty to you on here OP. A lot of Mumsnetters can be just as bitter as your colleagues.

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.

Side hustle is a completely normal, accepted phrase in the US FIRE community, as per my earlier post, and as language tends to do, it’s spreading into wider use. The fact that you are unaware of this does not means it is not happening.

The reason the word ‘hustle’ is used rather than ‘job’ or whatever is, as I said earlier, because it refers to any money-making activity, with formal employment less likely than other money-making enterprises such as small self-employment or gig economy type jobs, eg Uber, Deliveroo, making & selling things, tutoring, photography, blogging.

‘Hustle’ is used in the sense of hard work, self-motivation and getting ahead.

It’s not all that complicated.

I’m in my mid 40s btw.

OPs can't win. If they're SAHMs to school aged DC they're lazy, if they do all they can to make money, like this OP, in a climate where that's hard to do, they must be doing something dodgy.

All because these posters don't want to accept that the workplace bullies must have a justifiable reason for taking against a colleague.

The OP left because she was bullied so badly just because people dislike that she used a slang term, not because she’s secretly a tarot card reading hooker who flogs vitamins on the side.

A large percentage of people do not think “side hustle” means something dodgy, and “side hustle” does not and has never meant nefarious.

A large percentage of people do not think “side hustle” means something dodgy, and “side hustle” does not and has never meant nefarious.

This is nonsense. It’s been around since the 50s, way before Uber was a thing. Language can change but history denial is bonkers.

maybe I am just mixing in the wrong circles.

Hustle has meant ‘grift’ since the 1920s.

‘side hustle’ originates in 50s African American culture.

It also means other woman/other man in Hip Hop culture (a 19 year old told me that yesterday.

So yes, probably different social circles!

Chambers only lists "hustle" as referring to illicit activities. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Some of you need to learn what the term “bullying” means. It is not synonymous with “disagreeing with someone” or “finding a post ridiculous”.

A thread over the course of 200+ posts will meander from the original subject and people will talk about other things. Coming in at the end of a long thread to bleat about bullying, without reading the context, makes you look daft.

People have been horrible to the OP on this thread, telling her that her use of language is wrong, saying she’s not someone they’d want to associate with, saying she’s exploiting vulnerable people, a sex worker and other things intended to hurt her feelings. She didn’t do anything to deserve it. She’s been bullied all right. Luckily it became so unpleasant so early she probably hasn’t seen most of it.

I’ve worked amongst the young and disaffected for over 20 years, I’m yet to meet one that refers to their activities as hustling and I’m pretty sure if I made reference to their ‘side hustle’, they would look at me like i’d just stepped off the ark.
Some young people may refer to their gf’s/ fwb as side hustles, but it’s pretty clear from the op what she was meaning.
The op was also describing a work place scenario that sounds quite unpleasant, with covert bullying. It’s kind of not very nice to carry the bullying onto an online forum, by ridiculing their choice of language, especially when they apologised for it a several hundred posts previously.

@squirrelsbizaar

Exactly. It's not cowardly to hide a thread that has turned so venomous. Why should an OP, who is already upset by covert bullying in her workplace, put up with more of the same online? It's not as if she owes anonymous posters online the opportunity to attack her choice of words, is it?? What else was she supposed to say anyway? If she'd told you what her sideline was, you probably would have found a reason to attack her for that anyway.

I have followed the whole thread, so I know what the deleted posts said and they weren't nice. (I didn't report then myself.)

The response to the accusation of bullying is always denial, shush is a classic bully's tactic. There's nothing wrong with strongly disagreeing, but attacking the poster as 'unpleasant', 'stuck-up' (she didn't sound like that, she sounded upset), and then suggesting that she was 'dodgy', even after she denied it, and also a 'sex worker'!

Maybe you don't like her use of words, but the point is she wasn't using it in that way, so it wasn't what she was saying.

If all that isn't bullying, then what the hell would you say does?? Bullying accusations have been thrown in for very trivial matters, and I've disagreed strongly with those accusations in the past. This isn't one of those.

I've never seen any poster hold their hands up and say, 'Yes, I'm a bully and I apologise.'

especially when they apologised for it a several hundred posts previously.

And several hundred posts ago it became a more general discussion ¯\(ツ)/¯

Pharrell Williams - Show You How To Hustle (2009)

Extract:

‘this that shit make you wanna hustle,
carry square guns shootin metal wit muffles,
trunk full of cash wit a couple of duffles,
so we can sip wine and eat a bundle of truffles’

m.youtube.com/watch?v=qxKWgNYyAIE

In 10 years we’ve gone from ‘Hustle’ referring to activities that necessitate muffled guns in the boot of the car to Good Housekeeping using it to suggest their readers offer web design services from their at-home office 😂

This is why ‘white people’ memes get made.

Pink - Hustle (2019)

Extract:

‘Don't hustle me, don't hustle me
Don't fuck with me (hey), don't hustle me (yeah)
Don't hustle me (don't hustle me), don't hustle me (hey)
Don't fuck with me, don't hustle me
Don't hustle me, don't hustle me
Don't fuck with me, don't hustle me
Said don't hustle me, don't hustle me
Don't fuck with me, don't hustle me’

m.youtube.com/watch?v=uyNlcLNentw

Song is about not forgiving a cheater.

The word definitely still has nefarious connotations.

You're contradicting yourself. On the one hand your quoting song lyrics to support your argument that the expression has underhanded connotations, therefore the op's business is dubious.
Whilst also quoting the good housekeeping interpretation of 'side hustle' Given that we're on parenting forum which interpretation do you think the op was using.
Perhaps you could employ your 'critical thinking skills' on that one.

I’m using rap to say it’s not an age difference thing!

Have you skipped a few pages?

Hustle is still in use as a negative for across age groups.

I have never accused the OP of actually doing anything nefarious. Just pointed out the word has long standing negative connotations.

And that it’s been culturally appropriated from hip hop by big business who use it to con people into believing that working extra hours without proper workers rights is cool and glam. Instagram/MLMs have jumped on the cool part of the bandwagon, and in turn that gets reflected back at them via glossy titles.

But it’s still a word with negative connotations.

It’s a consistent argument. You might not like it, but that’s not informing how I’ve arrived at my conclusion.

Oh, @gingersausage

You're being daft. Might be a good time to quit.

Even in kids' film Zootopia, which is barely 4 years old, hustle is still used as a con, a swindle - and that's American.
media.giphy.com/media/pjMNTWyJqr6lG/giphy.gif

Musing: perhaps the side business was originally called a side hustle because they didn't pay tax on their side business, so they were hustling the tax people? I don't know this, I'm musing.

@Thumb

Even in kids' film Zootopia, which is barely 4 years old, hustle is still used as a con, a swindle - and that's American.

No one has said that ‘hustle’ has lost its original meaning. People have just said that ‘side hustle’ is now used to mean working hard at a second job, to make ends meet, do something you love but that doesn’t pay all the bills.