I arrived Friday afternoon at DB Nails with some friends to get our nails done for a gala we were to attend the next day. I was greeted warmly and seated quickly. I then proceeded to wait 10-15 minutes for a manicurist to attend me. This gave me ample time to scrutinize the rather unclean station I was sitting at, which had a healthy dusting of the previous customers nails as well as ample time to develop a distinct sense of dread at having to rest my arms on said table to receive my manicure. The manicurist that attended me was polite, although appeared to question my sanity (or chintzy-ness, rather) in opting for a regular old French manicure rather than a shellac manicure. I was happy with the work that he did, though he seemed distracted and abandoned me mid-work on multiple occasions to tend to new customers as they arrived (this place could benefit from a having a single employee solely dedicated to being the receptionist). I was happy with my manicure and would have given them a three-star review were it not for what happened next.
Saturday evening (a little more than 24 hours later), I noticed my nails looked a little dingy. This was confusing because all I had done since the manicure was eat a couple of meals, get drinks, sleep and walk around TTU campus and the First Friday Art Trail. By Sunday morning my nails had a distinct crack-addict-yellow-green tinge to them. I went back into the salon where they insisted on redoing my nails about as much as they insisted that I had messed them up in the first place. The things they said that might have been the culprit were as follows: 1) I must have tanned and just refuse to admit it to them now (this being said to a girl who is so white she practically glows under the fluorescent bulbs in their shop. Needless to say, I do not tan or even use self-tanner). 2) My makeup did it (because I would totally put something on my face that is toxic enough to stain their cheap-ass nail polish on contact). 3) I must have done dishes or cleaned or something (No cleaning for me. In addition to being a liberated woman, I was also on vacation at the time).
None the less, I appreciated that they were willing redo the manicure (albeit while speaking Vietnamese right next to me with the only English words being "top coat", "make up" and "tan". Nothing like knowing you're being talked about without the courtesy of discreet whispers to make you feel like you are in a real-life Anjelah Johnson joke). But after spending some time in the dryer and being shooed on my way I got the opportunity to note that every nail had air bubbles in the polish and a few nails even had chunks of dust stuck to them. 24 hours later, the polish is already beginning to crack. I will admit, this is a remarkable improvement over the crack-addict-green nails, but since I also suck at painting my nails, I think I will just save $20 and 45 minutes of my time and deal with the less-than-desirable outcome of doing it myself next time.
After doing some research, I found that the symptom that I will continue to refer to as crack-addict nails is most often caused by using a cheap top coat that reacts to UV light. I guess in addition to tanning, toxic makeup and casual cleaning I was also supposed to avoid sunlight and the outdoors...mah bad, yo. read more