Saturday, January 21, 2023 experience from my 16 year old daughter who will NEVER go back. First, the Great Clips experience itself was decent in my opinion. I felt the waiting was a reasonable time and my hair got done pretty quickly. But as for my haircut?
It's absolutely terrible and looks nothing like what I asked for. Mindy was the hairstylist that cut my hair and literally from the beginning I had a feeling she didn't have any experience with natural curly hair. First, she untangled my hair while it was mostly dry. She was using a spray bottle to make it wet enough to detangle but even from me trying that on my own at home, my hair doesn't get wet enough from that. With curly hair, you aren't supposed to detangle it while it's dry because it'll mostly be frizzy and still be tangled. And in general, it isn't good to detangle curly hair while it's dry because it'll lead to a lot of hair being pulled out or "breakage." Again, she was wetting my hair with a bottle but it wasn't wet enough to start detangling.
Second, I could tell Mindy wasn't aware that naturally curly hair "shrinks" when it dries up. That's called shrinkage. Shrinkage is when your hair gets shorter the more it dries. My shrinkage is pretty short and you could tell from the beginning- just by looking at my hair and even after wetting it (because of how long it is compared to how it looks dry)- that I have a decent amount of shrinkage. Mindy was cutting my hair without even thinking about how it'll look dry. I feel that as her job as a hairstylist, she should think about the hair she's working with and try her best to make it look like the photo or haircut her client asks for. ALSO, cannot forget to mention that the website says "We look forward to giving you the haircut you want. To make it more convenient for you." She obviously, didn't make it "convenient" for me at all nor did she give me the haircut I wanted at all.
Third, she was cutting my hair short way too quickly and she was treating my hair as a barber or other hairdresser would treat a person with non-curly hair. She looked at the photo I provided once, and only asked if I wanted my hair to be cut over the ear. She didn't ask any other questions about the haircut which made me assume she understood what I wanted. She went straight to cutting super close to my head and cutting off a lot of my hair. If I were to say anything about her cutting it too short, it would have already been too late for me to say anything because of how fast she started chopping off my hair.
Fourth, I told Mindy that I wanted my hair to be on my eyebrows and it ended up being way over my eyebrows (more indication she has no idea how to cut curly hair) I also told her that I wanted my hair to be "poofy" on the top. She still cut it short even after saying that I wanted my hair to look a certain way. After she finished my haircut I told her "it looks really short" and her response was "welp, you're just going to have to grow that out." That was my experience with Mindy at Great Clips.
This was my second time in my life cutting my hair really short, but at a different salon. The first time I cut my hair short was by a hispanic woman, who told me what she was doing at every step in case if I didn't like it I could tell her how I wanted it styled. Example: she'd say something like "I'm going to cut it right here so then it'll look good/better." She also did a couple of other things to make the haircut look good when it dried. THAT is making the haircut convenient for me. She knew in the picture I showed her that it wasn't my hair type so she improvised and made it look better or similar for my hair type. Mindy at Great Clips was the complete opposite of the first woman that cut my hair. No experience, no saying what she was going to do, no asking to see the photo again if she wasn't sure, nothing. I am a Hispanic with natural curls and Mindy had no clue what she was doing. My haircut is atrocious Nothing like how I wanted it. read more
