Yesterday, I went to my salon and got a much needed haircut. There was a guy sitting next to me getting his haircut as well and the two stylists were chatting away, not really paying attention to what they were doing (apparently).
The poor guy next to me requested a haircut which consisted of #2 clippers on the side and back, and #5 on the top, and a #7 on the front. Well, the stylist got a bit carried away and accidentally used a #2 clipper on the top. She apologized profusely to the customer and the customer was actually very cool about it. She ended up giving him a close cut all over and didn’t charge him for the haircut.
I made a mental note to never let this stylist cut my hair. It reminded me of the time when my good friend was in beauty school. He was desperate for practice and I volunteered to come in one day and let him cut my hair. The haircut took 2 hours and didn’t look good at all. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his teacher. It was an okay haircut, I just didn’t like how it looked on me.
The worst that’s ever happened to me was getting more bang for my buck, literally. I wanted wispy bangs, even brought in a photo to copy from, and ended up with bangs so thick they doubled as sunblock.
Diane had done my hair for years but she was arguing with the Pepsi guy over a key she gave him, no, she didn’t, yes, she did, look on your keyring, isn’t that it, no, that’s not it.
Then she gasped.
Then she said “oh, sh*t”.
Two things you never want to hear from anyone cutting your hair or anything else important to you.
You know when kids cut their bangs? A big chunk, right in front, about an inch from their foreheads?
She didn’t charge me. She blended what she could. She gave me a ton of free hair products.
I was MOH at my sisters wedding, and booked a huge block of time at her favorite salon the day of the wedding for the whole hair and nails package. She got an updo and I got a trim and those were fine, but then things went awry.
I’m getting a pedicure and she’s getting a manicure and my lady is talking to her lady and not paying attention and instead of smoothing away the calluses on my feet, she somehow sliced a 3 inch gash into my insole. I sorta squawked in shock and it was my sister who looked over and saw the blood and started yelling.
Spent the entire wedding reception not wearing my Very Cute Shoes and limping around.
Dyed my naturally mousy brown hair Very Dark Brown in college. My mom handled purple streaks and skunk stripes like a champ, but this was very, very ugly to her. Decided to get it all returned to “normal” as a Mother’s Day present. Stylist stripped my hair three times (bizarre color), dyed it (came out orange), and frosted it (to tone it down.) Wasn’t the right color at all, but better to my mom’s eyes. Unfortunately, my hair started falling out and breaking off within days about an inch from my skull. Not pretty. My stylist ended up having to chop it all off, and I single-handedly kept the V05 hot-oil industry in business that year.
I have always had sideburns that just reach my earlobes. The day before my current wife and I got married, I went to get a haircut. The gal that cut my hair did not ask about my sideburns, she just whacked them off even with the tops of my ears. She said it was my fault for not telling her. I did not pay for the haircut and haven’t been back to that place since. I still grimace when I look at our wedding pictures.
It was my first haircut of college. I went to the cheapest salon in the area. And then the stylist gave me bangs without asking. And I have curly hair, so they were curly bangs! It was like my head was stuck in the 80s for months after.
A friends bride-to-be was two hours late for the wedding because of the hair stylist.
I was getting a haircut once when three teenage boys came in to get mohawks for their big soccer game. The stylist had no idea what a mohawk was. One of the guys had brought in a photo but it must not have been a good one because the first thing she did was clip off all the hair on the back of his head. A real punk-rock mohawk is supposed to go as far down the back of the head as possible. And she left such a wide strip on the top that the guy basically had a millitary haircut. I was gone before she did the other two guys. I hope she did better.
I once asked for a pixie-ish cut, I didn’t realize I couldn’t pull off that short of hair but it was compounded by the fact that it was basically a man’s cut she gave me.
I spent the next couple months being called ‘sir’.
ETA: I love my stylist now. She’s my best friend from high school and I get a hair cut and colour for about half of what I’d get in a salon (plus supper or lunch if it’s around that time) and it always looks good on me. She’s coming by tonight.
I once sat in the chair for a long time getting a near perfect scissor cut - it just looked totally great and was exactly what I had asked for and wanted. The stylist showed me and everything, and then said, “hold on, I’m not done” - thought she just wanted to do a few touch-ups and so on - then took the electric clippers and basically just blasted two swaths through it down each side of my head - it looked like military whitewalls.
I’m OK with foreigners cutting my hair, really, I am. Two of the best I’ve ever met are Hispanic and Vietnamese. Pablo and Sue. Scissor magicians.
But dear Og, I now understand the importance of finding someone who actually speaks the same language as me. If the person doesn’t understand the difference between “remove” and “preserve”, then you’re looking at several long months of growing it out again. It’s like the time when I asked the barber to cut off this much --> <-- of my pony tail, and afterwards he explained “I sorry, I thinks you says leave those much of the horsey tail.” :mad:
But the worst was the stylist who was far more interested in looking out the window for her friend than in making me look good. Mid-cut, she literally ran out of the salon to talk to someone. I ended up with a huge hole in my head. It looked ridiculous.
Made the mistake of trying out an unfamiliar salon one year in Noe Valley or somewhere very very white for a cut/straighten/style. The lady looked pretty waspy but I wasn’t nervous; I’ve had a number of white stylists who totally knew what they were doing so I didn’t expect anything bad. My hair isn’t ‘kinky’ - I am half Asian - it’s just very big, curly (though I wear it straight) and of course coarser than white people hair and needs to be styled aggressively.
I asked if she was comfortable working with naturally curly or ethnic hair and straightening it cleanly, and she said “of course!” and proceeded to coo over how beautiful my hair was when it was wetted down.
She didn’t, she wasn’t. After an extra hour of fruitless hairdryering, tangled up curlers and weaksauce flattening, I came out with a literal friggin’ rat’s nest. Lest anyone get annoyed at me harping over her whiteness, it’s just that I saw her looking progressively more confused/perturbed, and when she saw the final result I saw that she knew it looked terrible. But her casually resigned comments at that point implied pretty clearly that she thought that was the best I could reasonably expect from her. Bitch, you saw the hair I walked in with - did it look like a rat’s nest to you??
What kind of professional salon only carries kiddy-toy half-power flatteners anyway? I didn’t know complaining/not paying was an option at the time (and was pretty meek, too)…worst $60 I was ever charged.
When I was 17 and my hair coloured … let’s say it was red … like ‘use Dellie’s head for an emergency beacon’ red, I made the rash decision to get a perm. It’s okay, it was 1987. So to save a few dollars, I said ‘yeah, the trainee can do it’. I looked like Ronald McDonald and wore a hat for the next four months.
My son was less than a year old. He did not like having his hair cut.
We went off to the barber school down the block for a haircut. I explained that he did not like having his hair cut. How about if he sits on my lap or something?
“No, we don’t allow that. Sit him in the chair.” OK.
He did not like having his hair cut. So he started to cry. The barber tried to comfort him by giving him a rat. Not a cute, cuddly plush toy - a hard plastic, very realistic looking rat. Oddly enough, this did not help, and he did not stop crying.
“You’ll have to leave - you are upsetting the other customers”.
I told my son, “Don’t worry, I’ve been kicked out of better places than this.” And we went to the Cost Cutters about half a mile down the road.
Ruth was her name. I explained that my son did not like having his hair cut. She was an older lady, and she said, “Just go and sit over there. I will call you when we are done.”
Ten minutes later, she called me. My son was seated in the barber chair, clutching a fistful of combs in one hand, and a spray bottle in the other. Everything in a five foot radius was sopping wet, but his hair was neatly trimmed, and he was giggling.
Ten bucks for the haircut, twenty bucks for the tip.
I went in to get my waist length hair trimmed. I explained to the worker I wanted a trim, no more than two inches, all around. She proceeded to hack my bangs off to my chin. I just screamed “What the fuck are you doing?” She said “Oh, it’s going to look really good on you” and then plugged in the electric curling iron.
I said very softly through clenched teeth “If you put that anywhere near my hair, I guarentee you it will go up your ass.” She told me to leave, I asked for the owner or manager, he said “That looks awful. What happened?” I explained. The worker came over, agreed that I had told her “no more than two inches” but that “I thought this would look better.” She then went on about how I had threatened her. I told her to look at how she had done my hair. She told me “Well, it will look better.” I told her “I don’t care what if it looks better, it’s not what I want.”
“But it will look better.”
I said “That’s it. I’m going” and left without paying.
Back in the 70s I got my first spiral perm on my very long hair. It was pretty neat and I was going to be very conscientious about upkeep so when they told me to return in 6 weeks for a trim, I signed up. For whatever whacky-assed reason, the stylist decided to cut layers in.
Might have been a good idea for many people, but my hair was all one length. When she cut layers in, the top half was now released from gravity’s mighty hold and sproinged up to form a cloud on top my head. The lower hair was still clasped in gravity’s bosom and straightened out with some curly fringe. Yup, I looked like a well groomed french poodle.
What are bangs? It seems to be a purely American description. Best I can come up with is that it’s the fringe? The part of your hair which forms a row above your eyes?
