Help! All of My Co-Workers Get Hit On. And Then There’s Me.

Dear Prudence,

I’m a 20-year-old woman, almost 21, and a junior in college. I’ve been working my first job as a barista for about three months. Before I started this job, I didn’t think I was ugly; not a 10 but at least a 6. But all my other young and youngish female co-workers get hit on and flirted with constantly by male customers, and this hasn’t happened to me once. It’s not because I’m shy or unfriendly (I’m not, and shy, pretty girls still get this). And it’s not that I can’t tell when a guy is flirting because I can tell when it happens to them. I’m a good weight with a good figure, I just don’t have the best face or hair. Even the overweight girls with pretty faces get flirted with. It’s making me feel so ugly and depressed that I hate going to work, even though the environment is pleasant, the work itself is not too hard, and the pay and benefits are good.

The worst is when my co-workers complain about all the guys who want them and how much they hate it. They don’t seem like they feel scared or traumatized or anything, they just seem to be competing to see who can humblebrag the hardest. I feel like a poor person listening to a bunch of rich people complain about how hard it is to have more money than they know what to do with all day. I have never dated or even had a guy seem interested in me, which before this I figured would happen eventually. But now I’m worried that I’m completely undesirable, or that guys care so much more about faces than bodies that I will need cosmetic surgery to ever attract anyone. I want to try to find a job where I don’t interact with the public, even if it doesn’t pay as much, but I really need the money (especially if I’m going to be saving for cosmetic surgery). What advice would you give me?

—Last-Place Loser in the Beauty Pageant

https://slate.com/advice/2025/01/co-workers-flirting-barista-work-advice.html