I bought a coupon off of Group On for a hair cut, and this is the second salon that I've had a terrible experience at using their coupons. Maybe paying full price gets you better treatment?
I would like to start out by saying that the woman I had my hair cut by was perfectly nice and sweet, and it seemed like she was stressed/overwhelmed by the volume of customers due to wedding season and her coworkers being out, as well as the early hour. So maybe this explains some of the trouble I experienced.
When I arrived to the building, it took me a few minutes to figure out where the business was, due to a lack of signage. You need to walk in the building and up the stairs, and you'll find the door on your right. The state of the front door was my first warning sign- the blinds were broken and askew, with smears all over the glass. As someone who has worked in retail for over a decade, it made a bad first impression. The state of the salon was similar- the layout was nice, but the room seemed a bit dirty and unkempt. The stylist greeted me warmly, and we started.
Since I keep my hair short, I'm usually in a salon once every 3 months, so I'm used to communicating effectively with a stylist to achieve what I have in mind and 9/10 never have any issue.
She starts by washing my hair, and I wish I had said something to her while I was in the chair. She plopped my neck down on the edge of the sink with no padding, and I decided to tough it out for the few moments I expected her to take to wash my very short hair. I kept expecting her to be done at any moment- but she kept going.
Next, came the hair trim. I had a short straight bob with straight across bangs, and I asked her to take a little off. I had to take off my glasses, and when she asked me to put them back on, I was confused. She had given me a 90s mom mullet. The front was extremely short and disjointed from the long duck tail in the back. I asked her if she could even the two out, as what I was looking for was a shorter version of the straight plain cut I had walked in with. It took us four rounds like this, where she trimmed a few hairs, and then I had to keep asking her keep evening the front and back out. Finally another customer came in, and I felt exhausted and embarrassed to keep asking her to trim again and again, so I just agreed the last time, even though I felt it was still a little off. By the end of the haircut, the stylist also seemed out of patience and irritated, although she was never rude.
Because of how short she first cut the front of my hair, my "trim" ending up taking 3 inches off my length. Luckily it'll grow out fairly quickly to a more suitable length, so I'm not too mad about it. The only irritating thing I had to deal with were my bangs- which were so uneven I had to go to another salon afterwards to trim all the strays. My overall grievance was that it shouldn't have taken an hour for the whole process, nor such back and fourth. The salon could definitely use another person on staff at the same time, as my haircut was constantly being interrupted by phone calls, and to keep the place cleaner. read more