To be honest I joined the makeup world because of an awesome experience with one specific MUA at the Lancôme counter. I decided I wanted to work in makeup because of the horrible experiences I had at Mac against the stark contrast of my good experience. I wanted to do makeup to make people feel good about themselves. To make them see their beauty they all too often diminish. The way they look into the mirror is what my aim was, not the money, not the status.
And working at Macy's showed me I was damn near alone in that value. These women can be absolute vultures. Fighting for their commission pennies. Selectively treating customers with respect - and disrespect. It was mortifying for me to witness how rude these girls would be, to for example, teenagers. Anyone who appeared to not have money. They just weren't worthy. The glares, the snark, the way they will completely ignore people. It was everything I was working there to stand AGAINST and I was surrounded in it.
A very long time ago I wrote a long paragraph about how I just don't understand why people are so hesitant to believe the stories of the horrible sales associate. When people are only after money they treat you as a commodity. Something to be manipulated in their favor. If you aren't of any use to them, or God forbid if they deem you "unfavorable" they have no problems showing that. Because with being an MUA there's this sense of status. This is also an allure of, say, being a "MAC girl". The illusion of glamour of it all. If particular nasty people who - for whatever reason - are hurting inside get this opportunity they take advantage of it.
It's not so ridiculous after all when you think about it. It's not always this case of entitlement or some crazy lie OP made up to post on Reddit. There are all types of people. All types of nasty people. They can work retail, they can be MUAs and sales associates. I've been subject to it as the customer and have bore witness as a colleague. Who they treated like shit as well might I add. Of course there are nice people out there but you can't disprove any anecdote of shitty people because you've only experienced the good. But uh, cognitive dissonance is strong I guess. And muacj seems to be very dead set on not believing any bad experience post. Meh. Whatever. Thought I would at least add my perspective