I have been to Odango 5 times, have tried 3 of the stylists.
For my first appointment I arrived on their doorstep as a walk-in. Kayla was my first stylist.
Kayla has beautiful, long blonde hair that she wears under a baseball cap. As though her having long hair was somehow indicative of her inability to cut mine short, she assured me that she was good with short hair. I sat down in the chair and we talked a bit. She washed my hair and we began the cut.
Mid-cut, her cell phone rang. Kayla stopped cutting my hair and left me sitting there so she could field a phone call from her husband; he was at home and had misplaced a charger. The phone call dragged on for over 5 minutes, my half-cut hair evaporating as quickly as my patience. After chatting with her husband she returned to finish the hair cut. It was an "interesting" cut, but so vastly NOT what we had discussed. It was competent, though. So I decided to try her one more time, hoping this time was a fluke. It wasn't.
The second cut I got from Kayla was so terrible I was embarrassed to walk around with my head looking like that. It was uneven, choppy and weird. She only charged me $20 -I'm quite sure she knew how bad it was. I bleached it, hoping that a uniformly white color would hide the unevenness of cut, but it still looked awful...it was just awful and white.
The next time I tried Anna. Anna was my favorite of the bunch. She didn't cut it quite like I wanted it, but it still looked good. She was sensitive about the cut not being quite right, and suggested I try Ann next time. So that's what I did...
Ann: Wow. What a trip. The first time in her chair she gave me a great cut...it was too short, but that was because it was already too short from the previous cut. We discussed me letting it grow long enough to get the cut I'd been looking for all along.
And so began the many months of growing it out. After about 5 months, I returned to Ann with the longer hair she'd requested. We spent some time reconnecting and looking at cuts on her phone, and after awhile we felt we understood what was going to happen on my head. It started out OK. We talked about "art." She told me that I could take photos of my cats, run them through an app that would make them look like Van Gogh paintings, and print them on canvas... "poof!" Fine art. lol. And we talked about vibrant hair color since I've been coloring mine since the 80's. She'd never heard of the product I'm using, but no biggie.
As we spoke, my hair got shorter. And then it got even shorter. :/ Then I noticed it was looking backwards, so I stopped her and said, "are you intending for my part to be on the right? Because I part it on the left." I could tell from her facial expression that she believed I had misinformed her. But my part has been on the same side for 40 years, and the mistake was hers. I told her it was OK. That I would simply try wearing it on the right for awhile. "No no!!" She said - she wanted to do it correctly...and she began to re-cut it so that it would fall on the correct side.
I told her that it looked good the way it was, but she insisted on re-cutting it so that it would part on the left...all the while my hair is getting shorter, shorter, shorter . . . she says,
"Wow! This looks GREAT! You will be able to wear it *this* way, or *this* way!" And she flips my hair from side to side. Tells me how great it looks in the back. Then tells me how awesome it looks on the other side. Awesome! Beautiful! This looks great!
But then she tells me that though the cut is awesome, my hair color doesn't look very good with my skin tones. (I earlier told her I mixed the color myself) I say, "Oh, I like my color." So she repeats herself adding this little bit, "There's nothing wrong with this color, it just doesn't look good with your skin tones."
Really? This is what you say to your customer?
She finally gets done cutting my hair. Seriously, I'm bald as a goddamm eagle. And no, it doesn't look great; it looks like a half-assed rendition of the first cut she gave me. Soooooo glad I spent months growing it out.
I finally gave up on Odango. There are some things in life you just have to drive for. A decent haircut is one of them...I've returned to my original stylist, thank god for him. (I just wish he were closer.) read more