A Day at the Beauty Shop
The other day I went to get my haircut. I will be the first person to admit that hairstyles are a low priority for me. They should be higher--I am a professional woman and do care about my appearance. But I am very busy and do not want to have to make appointments, get touch-ups to color, or wait for long periods. Or pay much. So I go to a chain "budget salon" and get my hair trimmed every 6-8 weeks. It is what it is right now. No color, no perm, short, a little curly.
I need a haircut a few days back and went to said budget salon chain near me, where I always go. I usually get a different stylist, although in the past I used to ask for a certain woman who did a good job. My stylist today was a talker. Sometimes I get one who is as silent as the grave and my attempts at small talk go as flat as my hair (cliche day, I guess). I want to say to the mum ones, "Don't you know you're never going to make any money in this business unless you have some personality?"
My stylist the other day had personality. My hair was dirty so I asked for a shampoo. She started as she squirted the water on my head inclined into the sink.
"That woman who was just in my chair wanted to keep talking. She knew my brother from high school and she wanted to talk about people she knew from high school but I knew everything she talked about. She said her son had died but I already knew that. He was a drug addict. I told her the only thing that would fix that would be to get saved. I just said that straight out. If you are coming to me asking for sympathy about someone being a drug addict I'm just going to tell the truth. But she and her husband were both addicts and they were the ones who got the boy into the drugs. That would be a terrible thing to live with."
Now, I don't want to give the impression I didn't say anything. I affirmed her witnessing, indelicate as it may be; I also commiserated because these women only make money on volume and someone wanting to sit in their chair and talk takes away money. But I don't think she was listening all that much.
Then we went to the chair to get a cut. She knew what she was doing and I am happy with the cut. She started again. "I dyed my hair Sunday. It's red now, it was blonde before. I went to church that morning with my mother and this woman I didn't even know came up to us and asked if we were kin and we said we were mother and daughter and she asked who was the mother. Can you believe that? That is so rude. Church people can be so rude. Rude rude rude. So I went home and dyed my hair red and went back to church that night. She won't be asking that question again. I did look kind of washed out with that blonde hair, though, it needed a color job."
She got the stylist beside her in one this conversation. Then she changed topics.
"Talk about rude. My sister-in-law gave her sister a gift coupon to get her hair done at a salon and went to this other girl instead of me. And then the girl didn't do it right and they came to me for me to fix it. Then she asked what I would charge and I said nothing because I wanted her to feel guilty for going to that other girl in the first place." When I asked what salon it was, she said, "Oh, it's just that girl's salon. She got distracted by a phone call about her child and messed up on how long she kept the color in and I had to fix that and then the girl didn't finish cutting her hair, left a big part of it not cut. You'd think she would have noticed that."
I commented that the girl wouldn't be in business too long. "Well, they'll probably go back to her anyway because they said they wouldn't come to this salon because they didn't like the clientele. They didn't like the class of people here. Can you believe that?"
Well, actually I could. By now I was checking out, and I mentioned, since African-Americans come and work there, "You know, some people may not want to come here because black and Latino people do." "Well, those people just have to remember this is a budget salon, so we serve all kinds of people," she said.
I had to laugh that I go to a salon that doesn't serve the "right" kind of people. I get very prickly when people act like they are a better class of people than me based on the car I drive (the year of it) or some other superficial nonsense. These people usually have little education, although not always.
She was my character for the day.
I need a haircut a few days back and went to said budget salon chain near me, where I always go. I usually get a different stylist, although in the past I used to ask for a certain woman who did a good job. My stylist today was a talker. Sometimes I get one who is as silent as the grave and my attempts at small talk go as flat as my hair (cliche day, I guess). I want to say to the mum ones, "Don't you know you're never going to make any money in this business unless you have some personality?"
My stylist the other day had personality. My hair was dirty so I asked for a shampoo. She started as she squirted the water on my head inclined into the sink.
"That woman who was just in my chair wanted to keep talking. She knew my brother from high school and she wanted to talk about people she knew from high school but I knew everything she talked about. She said her son had died but I already knew that. He was a drug addict. I told her the only thing that would fix that would be to get saved. I just said that straight out. If you are coming to me asking for sympathy about someone being a drug addict I'm just going to tell the truth. But she and her husband were both addicts and they were the ones who got the boy into the drugs. That would be a terrible thing to live with."
Now, I don't want to give the impression I didn't say anything. I affirmed her witnessing, indelicate as it may be; I also commiserated because these women only make money on volume and someone wanting to sit in their chair and talk takes away money. But I don't think she was listening all that much.
Then we went to the chair to get a cut. She knew what she was doing and I am happy with the cut. She started again. "I dyed my hair Sunday. It's red now, it was blonde before. I went to church that morning with my mother and this woman I didn't even know came up to us and asked if we were kin and we said we were mother and daughter and she asked who was the mother. Can you believe that? That is so rude. Church people can be so rude. Rude rude rude. So I went home and dyed my hair red and went back to church that night. She won't be asking that question again. I did look kind of washed out with that blonde hair, though, it needed a color job."
She got the stylist beside her in one this conversation. Then she changed topics.
"Talk about rude. My sister-in-law gave her sister a gift coupon to get her hair done at a salon and went to this other girl instead of me. And then the girl didn't do it right and they came to me for me to fix it. Then she asked what I would charge and I said nothing because I wanted her to feel guilty for going to that other girl in the first place." When I asked what salon it was, she said, "Oh, it's just that girl's salon. She got distracted by a phone call about her child and messed up on how long she kept the color in and I had to fix that and then the girl didn't finish cutting her hair, left a big part of it not cut. You'd think she would have noticed that."
I commented that the girl wouldn't be in business too long. "Well, they'll probably go back to her anyway because they said they wouldn't come to this salon because they didn't like the clientele. They didn't like the class of people here. Can you believe that?"
Well, actually I could. By now I was checking out, and I mentioned, since African-Americans come and work there, "You know, some people may not want to come here because black and Latino people do." "Well, those people just have to remember this is a budget salon, so we serve all kinds of people," she said.
I had to laugh that I go to a salon that doesn't serve the "right" kind of people. I get very prickly when people act like they are a better class of people than me based on the car I drive (the year of it) or some other superficial nonsense. These people usually have little education, although not always.
She was my character for the day.
Comments