Barbering can be a boring occupation at times. When I was a kid, barbers used to be big in Play Boy magazines and such for the regular customers. For “special” customers they used to privately develop b/w pictures and exchange them. It made their days quite memorable. In recent times a sort of cult has developed among barbers who belong to secret Elvis impersonation society. I don’t understand how it works because those same barbers often do not have sideburns themselves. Maybe they use fake sideburns or something. Anyway, if you are not a member, they have a protocol that demands they remove any sideburns as the first procedure in a cut or style. Failure to do this could mean expulsion from the society. There have been talk of shills going in to shops, much like mystery shoppers, and reporting back to the society as to whether the side-burn removal protocol has been executed.
Don’t mean to be snarky, but when you look in the mirror, the angle is such that you are seeing your sideburns edge on, and they might look more ‘plush’ (for lack of a better term) than they might be from 90 degrees above.
If you angle the mirror, and duplicate the view of the hairstylist, is it apparent that sideburns are there?
Yeah, I hate it. I’ve gone in with a full beard and asked if I wanted my sideburns and only my sideburns cut (well… at least they asked first).
But yes sparky! this annoys the hell out of me too. When I get my hair cut without a beard, just sideburns around ear level, they ask (sometimes ask, sometimes just do) if i want my sideburns trimmed, and sometimes I stupid oblige even when I should know better.
The end result is always having to go home and fix them myself, as they are almost always half an inch or more off. No matter where I go, too, its not just one person. I don’t know how or why this happens me off but it sure does piss me off.
Sideburns are not generally considered the prefered hairstyle nowadays. So if you don’t say anything, the barber is going to assume you want them cut. If you want him to leave your sideburns alone all you have to do is ask.
When I sit down in the barber chair, the first thing he does is to ask me what sort of cut I want. So presumably this would be the time for you to say that you’d prefer him to leave the sideburns alone.
My problem is that I never know what to say to the barber. I want it short, but not too short. Not so short that it looks like I’m joining the army or so short that my bald spot starts to show through. There was a barbershop in the student union in college that had a nice system. When you went for your first haircut as a freshman, they’d write up your haircut on an index card, and then whichever barber you got from then on could refer to the card so they’d know what to do for you.
I always say not to touch the sideburns, except for those times that I forget and they shave them off.
Again, I shave my sideburns myself, just like I would my mustache (if I had a mustache). If I get a haircut and don’t say otherwise, don’t go and shave the mustache off at the end.
I wonder if I can start a billboard campaign? Who’s in?!
When I was about 20 years old, I went to a Cost Cutters or similar place for a regular, short haircut. At some point, the woman asked if I wanted her to cut my sideburns. I didn’t have sideburns.
“Uh, sure,” I said, figuring she would just shave down my faint whiskers there or something like that. So, as she’s cleaning up around the ear near the end of my haircut, all of a sudden she shaved into my head a solid 3/4 inch above the line where the arm (?) of glasses would go, if I wore glasses. I couldn’t figure it out. Those aren’t sideburns! She shaved about halfway between the temple and the top of my would-be sideburns. Granted, my hair was really short anyway, so these completely shaved areas weren’t horribly noticeable, but I wasn’t too pleased. That was my last trip to that place.
I now have a regular barber, so he knows what to do, though I’ll remind him if he’s talking a whole lot during a haircut just in case he forgets.
I’m a woman, so I don’t have sideburns…instead, what I get is some stylist who is DETERMINED to shave the back of my neck if my hair is a couple of inches below my shoulders. Nope, don’t need that, and I hate the sensation. I always have to make it very clear that I don’t allow neck shaving before I even sit down. I suggest that you make it clear that you want to keep your sideburns, and ask why everyone tries to remove them. I’d think that it would be fairly easy for most guys to remove their own sideburns in the course of a normal shave.
What barbers should do without asking is remove ear and nose hair. Who wants to keep those nasty hairs?
I didn’t have sideburns.