Cutting someone’s hair while you’re drunk is dickish behavior, but there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll recognise that they did something bad and try to make amends.
Trying to cause as much financial harm as possible in revenge for this act by getting the law involved or going to the most expensive salon you can find is also dickish behavior, but the person doing so is more likely to think it was justified.
I’d rather be friends with someone who was once an asshole than somone who is still an asshole.
Ah, so you’d rather be friends with someone who assaults someone while drunk and alters their victim’s appearance out of jealousy than someone who might consider attempting to get some sort of justified compensation for the time it’s going to take to fix the damage.
Knocking over a 7-11 while drunk or crashing your car into someone’s house when you’re drunk or beating someone up while you’re drunk are all dickish behavior. Do you believe in any of these instances that demanding compensation or getting the law involved is dickish behavior?
When someone harms you, they have an obligation to fix it and you’re perfectly within your rights to not give a shit how bad they feel about it. The person who did the harming is not the one who gets to decide what merits reasonable compensation.
I think there was maybe one person earlier in the thread who appeared to be joking about going to a more expensive salon. The OP even stated that Jen wouldn’t be accepting any money in any case, so I’m not too sure where this idea that someone is attempting to get revenge through going to an especially expensive salon comes from.
Most people just seem to be saying that paying the cost of the haircut, whether it’s $5 or $300, is the very least Susan should do and ideally should be preceded and followed by lots of groveling.
And speaking as someone who had hair extensions: those fuckers hurt. So to restore the friend to the state she was before, she’d have to spend an assload on extensions (you can’t just get four inch long extensions, she’d have to get extensions 4 inches longer than what her hair currently is-- just the HAIR when I got extensions was $200+ for 18 inch extensions) and suffer through the pain of having them. Then the upkeep- you have to get extensions touched up every 6-8 weeks or you’ll be in serious pain as they snag on things. That costs money- a lot. Then you have to use special hair brushes. Oh, then you have to pay through the ass to have the bastards removed. Good times.
So there you go- extensions, just restoring her to where she was before, would run probably $1500-$2000, depending where she got them done. And she’d be in horrific pain the entire time. I suppose she could get good clip in extensions, but those will run a solid $300-$500.
No, because as I have repeatedly stated in this thread, I place significantly lower value on my or anyone else’s hair than I do things like physical injury or destruction of property.
You have every right to decide how much your hair is worth. Your opinion on how much someone else’s hair is worth is worth even less than what you think your hair is worth. Yeah.
I have pretty nice hair that I generally wear long.
I can’t imagine how upset I would be. I don’t know if I’d cry or scream or turn purple and shake.
I think everything I think has been said, but I’ll back up some of the big points I agree with.
This is way beyond a dumb, drunken accident.
An apology requires an apology, not just some offer of restitution. It’s like that episode of The Office where the pornographic watermark went out and they had Angela doing customer service and she refused to say “I’m sorry.” She barked “I told you our official position is apologetic.”
The cutter should be banned from the bar and the victim and their mutual friends should cut (heh heh) ties with her.
If she really was horrified by her behavior and was too afraid to say she was sorry or anything, that could be communicated and maybe people could get past it if they believed her and this was her rock bottom, not just another crazy thing she did this week.
She needs to pay what it costs to make Jen happy. Sure, Jen shouldn’t take a private plane to Paris, but a couple hundred dollars isn’t unreasonable. Maybe she could save up the money by not drinking for a while.
I would consider this assault. I don’t know if I’d file charges, but it is way over the line.
I don’t think it’s as simple as how you’re characterizing it. You’re simply dismissing what we’re saying as if we’re being hysterical in our “outrage” or something. To further make it appear that we’re all crazy you’re using the silly “another planet” thing to wave a dismissive hand.
Essentially what you’re saying is “Even if I did something completely wrong and hurtful, I wouldn’t pay to correct my mistake if it meant I had to pay more than I deemed right based on how I feel about the item in question.”
You are assigning your value to hair and expecting your victim to feel the same way. That’s absolutely selfish, arrogant, and ludicrous. When you make a choice to harm someone else how you feel about their situation is irrelevant. You gave up the right to have a say so when you chose to assault another person.
I’ve always found your posts to be interesting and your point of view to be one I enjoy reading. I guess I’m disappointed (not that you care) to see that you would care more about your own ideals in a situation like this than the person you wronged.
…So basically, a person can get away with anything if they make it look like a simple error of judgment. What is Jen allowed to ask for in compensation? Does Susan get to decide? How much can Susan be inconvenienced before Jen becomes the bad guy?
Definitely! After all, my evening was going to be so boring - I needed an anonymous thread on the intarwebs to make my night complete! Now I can spend the rest of the evening thinking about nothing but this issue!
I’ve come to learn in this thread that my understanding of the emotional value of hair, a reasonable price for a good haircut and the limits of retribution are grossly out of line with the rest of the world. I still don’t “get” it, as my views obviously seem pretty reasonable to me. But clearly I am in the minority so I’ll just have to accept that at face value.
I don’t appreciate the personal attacks, but I guess people are clearly far, far more passionate about hair than I ever imagined.
No, the problem is that you don’t seem to respect other people’s choices. You don’t have to understand why someone would value their hair. You could accept it, though, with or without understanding.
This has nothing to do with people’s passion about hair and everything to do with your apparent inability to respect that other people have differing opinions than you do, and your opinions aren’t necessarily superior.
Wow, every time I think I see a topic that I think everyone will agree on…
First, I do take issue with Audrey’s OP… it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a guy, you don’t cut, damage, or touch another person’s body without permission. That’s just Living in Society 101.
Nobody gets to dictate how important any part of their person is except that person. Yeah, it’s hair. But as others have noted, it’s not like it’s weird for people to be really into their hair. Now if she broke a nail and went into conniptions we might agree that’s a little overstated. Even then, she’s got every right to be pissed off that someone violated her person in that way.
The cutter is kind of fucked in the head. The only normal reaction would be an immediate and profuse apology. The “I’ll pay for it,” like she’s an insurance adjuster, would make me want to punch her more than when she actually cut my hair.
Garden variety drunken shenanigans might be calling someone a name or yelling at them. That happens, and the usual, “hey, I’m sorry but we were all shitfaced” excuse might hold water. But this crosses a line. What if the scissors slipped and she accidentally stabbed her? It shows a malicious streak that’s a little more than normal.
I’m a guy. I don’t think getting a chunk of your hair cut during a stupid drunken barroom incident is that big of a deal in the scheme of things. (Shaving off hair or eyebrows while someone was sleeping was a typical teen-aged or even college-aged prank.)
However, I completely agree with this. As an adult, if I ever did something this stupid and reckless, I am not really in the position to decide what the value of lost hair is worth. I personally pay $12 for my haircuts, but $300 is hardly unreasonable for a major city salon to do this sort of work if it involves extensions, dyeing, or that sort of thing. It seems a little bit high for just a cut, but the salons I’m familiar with top off at around $150 for a plain cut with a top-level stylist. As mentioned below, one can easily make it to the $300+ level if any extra work is done, and it seems reasonable to me to assume in this case extra work of some sort would be necessary. If I offered to pay, and I valued the friendship, I wouldn’t hesitate to pay the $300 (nor would I be particularly surprised by that figure being way outside the expected range.)