I walked in asking for a mani/pedi on a friday afternoon. There were about 4 or 5 other women already being serviced, so they told me about a 30 minute wait. Ok, cool, they had tons of magazines, so I automatically sat down to kill about 20 min with a few issues of Cosmo.
About 10-15 min later, I was approached by the male who works here. He didn't smile or say hi, just asked what I needed and looked at my hands. I told him I was interested in getting a nail design, he said they had the designs on a card somewhere (ok thanks?). I had gel polish on from my last manicure at a different location, so he sat me at a station and gave me a very small stainless steel bowl of acetone to soak my fingers in. Looking inside, I saw what I initially thought were lavender bath flakes or something and thought "huh. odd."
A couple min later, bored of staring around the room, I looked back into the bowl to check my nail progress. I realized those were NAIL POLISH flakes. The man had given me a bowl of acetone he had used on another customer. Ew!! I'm sure that acetone kills bacteria to a degree (I hope..) but that's just disgusting and really cheap to me.
Anyways, I ignored this since my nails were almost done, and what was done was done. A woman came over to check my nails. I guess they had cured enough for her liking, so she grabbed a metal tool (I think it was the cuticle pusher...) and scraped the crap out of my nails. I surveyed my nails: uneven surfaces, thinned like crap from the scraping and acetone, and there was still some gel polish bits. So back my fingers went to the acetone. I had a really bad feeling at this point that I shouldn't have strayed from my new favorite nail place, but stuck it out, doing a quick prayer to the Nail Gods.
So the woman comes back. She seems a bit quiet despite my attempts to coerce conversation. That's okay with me. She proceeds on with the normal cut, file, soak, cuticles, etc. The hand and forearm massage wasn't bad (+1 star). It was weird though, because after she finished, she ordered me to walk across the room to wash my hands. Not that I have a problem with walking at all, it just surprised me because usually the techs just clean the nails for you and get to work. Well, whatever. I let her know at this point I hadn't picked out my color since I'd expected a long waiting time, so I run over (annoying customer that I am I guess) and quickly pick out a nail color, praying she wouldn't spit in my nail polish.
Anyways, back to the table. I asked again about the designs. Do you do them? They do, but she doesn't know offhand where the card is that displays them, and she doesn't bother to search. I do appreciate that she demos one design on my hand. It actually looks really cute, so I accept it to be done on both of my ring fingers.
The paint job looks pretty bad. I blame in part the scraping of my nails done by another tech, which made them uneven and therefore a bad base for nail polish. But my new tech didn't do so hot either, I watched and saw places that were missed on the nail on the first coat. Then she would take care of them on the second coat, creating a crack (that's my best description) in the color when dried :(. The design came out really cute (+1 star), even if uneven.
Pedicure next- it wasn't too terrible. It was pretty subpar and probably would have given the business another star if 1. the massage didn't hurt so badly I winced or 2. the tech used some kind of automatic file on some parts of my feet, then tossed it back in the drawer without sanitizing it before or after use? Ahhhhh! Spare me, oh bacterial hoardes.
They don't take cards, but they do have a generic atm with the lowest fee ($1) I've ever seen. I dropped a decent tip because I try to be a decent person, but all in all, I will definitely not be returning. read more