Ulta Employee Makes Bride-To-Be Cry After Learning What She’s Shopping For — ‘Now I Just Feel Really Insecure & Ugly'
No one should be made to feel like they're anything less than beautiful, especially by a stranger at Ulta.
ShotPrime Studio | Shutterstock You always hope that the customer service professionals you encounter will be kind and helpful, but that isn’t always the case. Some people are just downright rude and really have no business working in such a customer-facing job.
A bride-to-be came across one of those people when she was shopping for gifts for her bridesmaids. She was at Ulta, a store where all appearances are supposed to be celebrated and accepted. Instead, she was met with passive-aggressive comments about her looks by one of the actual employees.
The bride-to-be shared her story in an effort to make Ulta ‘be better’ after any employee made her cry.
TikTok user Kath Elaine explained in a post on the app that she felt “insecure and ugly” after her interaction with the random employee. “So I got engaged October 12, and I’m starting to, like, get my bridesmaids’ bags ready to ask them,” she said. Kath realized she had a couple of gift cards for Ulta, so she decided that would be a good place to start.
She continued, “So I have my bag full of some things that I wanna give to the girls, and this associate comes up to me, and she was like, ‘Oh, what are you looking for?’ And I was like, ‘I’m just looking around right now. Thanks.’”
That’s a perfectly normal interaction between a store associate and a shopper, but that wasn’t where it ended. The employee noted that she had a lot of the same items in her bag, so Kath felt forced to explain the fact that she was shopping for bridesmaid gifts. “She’s like, ‘Let’s talk about your skincare routine, because your skin is not looking amazing for your wedding,’” Kath said before dissolving into tears.
The employee then went on to criticize the bride-to-be's skin under the guise of helping her fix it.
“She, like, starts taking me through how to, like, make my skin better and everything,” she said. “And she’s like, ‘You have a lot of dark circles, and on your right side, it’s, like, all uneven and it’s breaking out.’”
Kath said she knows in hindsight that she should have walked away, but she was so shocked in the moment that she felt rooted to the spot. “Like, I know my skin’s not good,” she admitted. “I see my face every day. I don’t need you to point it out for me.”
“And then afterwards, she’s like, ‘So, do you wanna buy these products?’” she added. Now, Ulta sells some pretty great skincare products, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s not part of their staff’s training to point out all the flaws they perceive a customer has to encourage them to buy those products.
This doesn’t sound like the message Ulta claims to be committed to.
Commenters on the video were shocked and disgusted. “As a former Ulta employee, we were told to NEVER assume what people might be shopping for until they bring up what they may want or need … How disrespectful of her,” one person said.
Felix Mizioznikov | Shutterstock
Another TikToker shared, “I manage a Sephora store and we would NEVER treat a client like this!” She also revealed she is a bridal makeup artist and would happily do Kath’s makeup for free on her big day.
Ulta shared its DEI pledge on its website, and it sounds an awful lot like this employee violated it. “We believe beauty is for everyone,” they said. “We’re committed to creating a more inclusive world, using the power of beauty to celebrate the possibilities within all of us.” They added that “everything we do is designed to enhance the guest experience.”
No one deserves to be made to feel like they are anything less than beautiful, or to have their supposed imperfections pointed out to them. All of this happening at the hands of a stranger who is just supposed to tell you if they have a certain lipstick shade in stock makes the situation even worse. Kath is going to be a beautiful bride, and no one should make her feel otherwise.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
