A 24-year-old has gone viral thanks to her rather unusual choice of career – which people online are horrified by.
Rachel Maroun is a head lice technician, spending hours a day removing nits from children’s and adult’s hair.
The young woman has spent the past few years operating a head lice clinic and has built up a following of over four million people on TikTok, sharing videos of her craziest cases.
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She doesn’t wear protective gear like hairnets or gloves, which followers have branded her “crazy” for.
Unsurprisingly, she says this wasn’t the job she had planned on having – but says she “loves” the work.
“I’ve really found my calling,” Rachel, based in Sydney, Australia’s Northern Beaches, told What’s The Jam.
“I had applied as a part-time retail worker in a pharmacy that unknowingly to me, had a lice clinic inside of it.
“I decided to give it a go and go through the lice treatment training and ended up realising I loved it.
“I know that when I was younger I always wanted to work with animals or children – I guess I ended up doing both in a totally different way than I imagined.
“My parents were terrified when they first heard I was going to be a lice technician.
“My mother started hiding all her hair brushes after I told her what I was doing at work.
“They are much more used to it now – but my dad still refuses to watch any of my work videos.”
Rachel’s worst client case took a whopping 17 hours, and it’s not unusual for her to treat infestations of millions of bugs.
Despite the squeamish nature of the work, Rachel is unfazed.
She said: “During the more serious cases I treat, I can sometimes have lice crawling on my hand and arms.
“It isn’t gross to me anymore but definitely not my favourite part.
“Knowing that I can make the whole process of removing lice something fun and comfortable for children and adults is very rewarding to me.
“I know it is a sensitive topic and experience for a lot of younger kids so being able to make it all a little easier and get them feeling better is the best part of the job.”
In her latest TikTok, Rachel filmed herself working on a client’s hair, which is seen crawling with nits.
Rachel uses a comb to remove the lice, ‘popping’ them to death on tissue paper, and applying treatments to the hair.
The post was viewed 3.6 million times and garnered 288,000 likes.
“Girl how can you do this job?” one user asked.
Another viewer wrote: “No gloves?”
“NO GLOVES IS CRAZYYY (I’m scared of lice),” commented someone else.
One person said: “Nooo now my hair is tingling.”
“I’d cry,” someone else said.
“No gloves is CRAZY work,” another user agreed.
Another viewer commented: “I would be so paranoid that I’d get infected I would start imagining it and my head start to itch.”
“I would actually burst into tears,” someone else said.
Rachel previously said: “I don’t expect many people to like my job.
“I’m very used to the ‘grossed out’ reaction I receive for doing what I do. At one point I was the only technician in Australia since no one wanted to do treatments.
“But I couldn’t see myself in any other career so maybe it was made for me. My job, although I never imagined myself doing it has been the biggest blessing.
“It makes me happy every day knowing that I can change someone’s quality of life in such a short period of time.
“The one thing I adore about what I do is being able to turn a negative experience into a positive one for every one of my clients.”
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