Lets set aside this might not be the best place to get my hair cut. Im in my 40s, male and keep my hair short, so lets establish Im not some 75 year old blue-hair that needs a perm every other month.
What training is involved to be a haircutter?
As a middle aged male who just needs a simple haircut, when choosing a stylist, what should I look for when immediately walking into a salon before getting pounced upon by the rookie with no clients who frogmarches towards the sign in desk?
Ive often chosen and wrote on the sign in sheet the one who seemed to have the best haircut (I usually wait 90 days between cuts, and always lose the card or forget the name of the last haircutter who did a fantastic job on my lettuce), but experience shows that is not always the case.
Is there infighting and jealousy among the haircutters? I imagine it works like this: theres the Bitch who has over the years built up a clientele and the other girls resent her because about 75% of the client who walk in ask for her, and she’s #1 in product sales too. I sense this by the defeated reaction of the rookie haircutter who gets to the walk up desk too late to see me request said Bitch on the sign in sheet.
She’s one of the “newbies” the chain recycles and who won’t be there after another year after she washes out of the haircutting industry. I can also tell because if Im lucky enough to develop a client-haircutter relationship with someone who does a great job on my hair, then she quits, I notice the other haircutters barely mention her, and seem glad she has gone.
I imagine a lot of the income is tips + spiffs for selling extra services or products. What is the base salary? It cant be that high because the turnover seems high.
In a chain who is the manager? Is she one of the cutters? I never see a “manager” type at one of these places.
What about the employee backgrounds? For example at Holiday, while the ladies all seem very very nice, I suspect many of them are divorced single Moms, they smoke a lot, they all (an again, this my PERCEPTION, and admit I could be stereotyping) seem like in one way or another, “hard luck women”.
OK, Ill bite. What should I look for in a QUALITY non chain hair salon, as a guy?
As a middle-aged male who just needs a simple haircut (and who keeps his hair short) you do not need to choose a stylist at all.
You need to go to a barber’s shop. Shop around among the barber’s shops that are convenient to where you work or live until you find a place that you are comfortable with and that cuts your hair the way you like it. There’s really nothing to “look for”, since all that matters is how your hair looks once they’ve cut it, and the only way to find that out is to have them cut it.
This is the classic barber’s conundrum, a variant of the ‘barber’s paradox’.
In your case it is like the man who finds himself needing a haircut in a village where no one speaks his language. There are two barbers, so how does he choose the best? The answer is that he must choose the one with the **worst **haircut because, presumably, it was cut by the other one.
I have dated a couple hair stylists before. I’m from Illinois so the answers apply to around here (St. Louis area).
They usually go to one of the hair salon/beauty schools in the area. They do a few classes that teach them the basics of cutting and chemicals (for bleaching and things like that). After a couple weeks they start cutting hair on real people. Usually these are older or lower income people that like getting $2 haircuts from the trainees. They have to pass quizzes and tests, and eventually they pass a state (I think) exam.
I helped one of them study for their final exam and found that while I didn’t know all of the answers (haven’t brushed up my chemistry in a few years), they weren’t all that difficult compared to a college or AP high school course final. I was surprised that it was as comprehensive as it was, though.
After they pass their exam, they graduate, and go off to find a job cutting hair.
Yes. I think this has to do with a lot of the girls being dramatic in general, though. There was a lot of discussion of Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, or House Wives of Whatever during breaks.
They get paid pretty shitty at most places. They tend to work off of tips and a lot of places make them “rent” their spaces. So basically you buy your own supplies, “rent” a chair at the hair cutting joint, and then you’re in charge of how much you make there. If you can’t keep up with the chair rental fees then you leave. I’m admittedly pretty vague on this but I remember the renting a space thing to be pretty weird.
The ones I knew were mostly nice young girls a tad on the dramatic side and lacking many options. Hair cutting was a viable career doing something they like to do (style hair) and get paid for it. They always have amazing hair because they like to style hair. They do smoke a lot because it is one of the few things to do on break. A little under half were single moms.
I am one of those “poor” people who get their hair cut at the barber department in our local college. In fact, because I have a full beard as well, they actually phone me when they need someone so they can tick the boxes. They get a diploma at the end which most salons would see as an entry level requirement like food hygiene is for a kitchen worker. Apart from greybeards like me, most of their customers/subjects are other students. They learn how to do multi-colour work, plaiting afro’s, shaving styles, you name it. I would say that the genders are about 50/50 whenever I have been - My wife says it’s the same in the ladies salon where she goes to have a manicure and pedicure.
While waiting there, I think that the conversation is pretty much what you would expect from older teenagers. They generally saw hair-and-beauty as a cut above working in a shop or a factory and a chance to own their own salon at some time in the future.
The chair renting thing seems pretty universal. A stylist will rent a ‘chair’ - actually a work station, and will supply all the tools and pay the salon (who normally dictate brands) for materials. They share the takings on some agreed basis and I guess that at first it will be heavily weighted in favour of the salon. Having a popular stylist is important for them. Many ladies, and probably men these days, will follow a stylist that they like.
Stylists know that, contrary to logic, a customer who has no other preference, will tend to go for the attractive and well groomed. I guess that human nature. I remember a study that some university did to see why more people went to one counter in a busy store than another. It turned out that it was because that one was ‘manned’ by a young lady with big tits and a preference for low cut tops.
I suspect that the chain places like Supercuts or Fantastic Sam’s or whatever are sort of like the last resort in the hierarchy of places where hair stylists can work. I mean, the really good ones are likely to have their own places and own clientele, the good to middling ones are likely going to work for them, or work in higher-end places like say… the Aveda salons, where the clientele has more money for tips & haircuts, and the less skilled ones are going to work at the strip mall chain places.
That’s not to say that it’s a hard and fast rule, but many other similar industries have similar hierarchies.
When I was young ( late 1970’s) I used to go to the local beauty school to get my hair permed. The demeanor of the salon was ultra-professional, more so than a commercial salon and I had some great work done there really cheap. The girls would try out techniques -variations on spiral perms- that were really time-consuming but looked really great and would have cost a fortune at a commercial salon. And after my hair was rolled up a teacher would come over and inspect every curl and instruct the girls to redo some of them before the chemicals went on.
I had wonderful work done dirt cheap and I recommended it to everybody. Of course, that was a long time ago.
Thank you and Bob++ for your informative responses, it was a very refreshing rebound considering the idiotic ones initially to my very simple questions.
