I try only to use Yelp to praise businesses I love, because I know how detrimental bad Yelp reviews can be for a small business, and even now I'd like to give this establishment 1 star, but I can't bring myself to do that - there might actually be a few good nail techs working there that I unfortunately did not get the day I walked in.
I'm in Denver for a work trip this weekend, and I decided to treat myself to a mani-pedi. I found Paris Nails on Yelp - it was close to my hotel and had a 4-star rating, which is good enough for me, since I don't need anything fancy - just a decent nail grooming.
The place looked very messy and not too sanitary, but I'm a pretty laid back person and like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I chalked it up to a busy Saturday.
The woman who did my nails was very, very nice and social. I wasn't really paying attention to what she was doing to my feet, since I don't normally get pedicures, though I did notice she totally missed my pinky toe when applying the topcoat, but I'm not too fussy about my toes so I didn't even mention it. When she started doing my fingers I realized she was totally rushing and not even trying to do a good job. She put the cuticle softener on my fingers so fast that she totally missed a few, and then just went through the motions of pushing back my cuticles. I often do my own nails, and even though I'm not trained as a manicurist, I can do a better job than she did with my cuticle clipping.
She did the same with the entire nail process, just wiping each nail once with a file and buffer - she wasn't even looking at my nails half the time, she was looking up at the counter at something else, and she even left me mid-process several times to do something up front. They weren't that busy. One of the times she walked away I looked at my fingers and she had completely missed chunks of my old nail polish. When she came back and saw me inspecting my hands she asked if something was wrong - I pointed out one of the chunks of nail polish, and she wiped it off, showed me, and then continued on with the process. Never mind how shitty my nails were filed and my cuticles looked awful. I wasn't quite sure how to tell her that the entire manicure should have been redone, and to be honest, if she thought what she had done so far was adequate, then she just doesn't know how to do nails, so I'm not sure if it would have helped for me to tell her this.
The weirdest thing was when she asked me to get up and wash my hands after she put lotion on my hands and gave me the standard hand/arm massage. I've been to at least a handful of nail salons, and I've never had them ask me to get up mid-manicure and wash my hands before applying the polish. Normally they just dab a cotton ball in alcohol and wipe your nails to remove the residue of the lotion before painting.
In the end my nails looked like I had given myself a rush paint job. When I take my time and do it right, which I normally do, even I can make my hands look better than this woman did. My cuticles look messy, and she left paint on the skin around my nails on several of my fingers. My impression was that she was just rushing to get it done so she could take the next walk-in. Bad strategy. Take a few extra minutes and do the job right, then maybe you'll get some return customers. read more