Mom Always Said, "Never Trust a Man Wearing Mascara!"

In general, I don't think that I am a very difficult person to please. (Mike, you are not allowed to comment on this post.) I just feel like things should be done a certain way; the right way. When the "right" way is not achieved, I think that there is a "right" way to handle that too. Case in point...

Yesterday, I decided to go and get my hair done. Back in the day, in a time before children, I had a regular stylist that I went to faithfully. I had my hair highlighted every few months and I was almost always happy with the results. However, once the kids were born and I stopped working, I decided that I should cut back on such luxuries and I stopped going to the pricey salon with the pricey, yet oh so nice highlights, and I opted for a more affordable salon and I started coloring my hair myself. But on occasion, I will go and get it colored professionally and yesterday was one of those days.

So I went in and scoped out the stylists that were working and let me say that I was less than confident in the prospects. There was the token twenty-something with the jet black hair and chunky bleached white highlights, and a thirty-ish woman who from behind looked more like she was pushing seventy because the blond that she chose for her hair was very blueish/grey blond and the cut was very short and unflattering. She also sported these really chunky, thick, dark-rimmed glasses that also did nothing for her overall look. From what I could tell, she looked like she should be named Madge with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth while she swept the floors.

So to say the least, I was a little nervous about turning myself over to one of these two.

After I signed in, "Madge" came over and started to ask me what she could do for me. I described the color that I was going for and she sat me down with some books to find a picture of exactly what I wanted. A few pages in I found this really great picture of a girl with a beautiful dark chocolate base and very sparse carmely, mildly reddish highlights. It was perfect and was definitely the way that I wanted to go. Anytime I get highlights, they are always blond, so I was really excited to see how this would look, especially since the highlights were so sparse, it wouldn't be too overpowering and it was going to be just the change that I needed to lift my spirits and make me feel pretty.

That WAS the plan until....

Madge says, "Well, it's going to be about a half an hour until he gets back from his break. Can you wait?" I was all, "He, who? I saw no "he" when I walked in. Just token black hair/bleach highlights and you Madge." Then, "he" came around the corner and my stomach flipped. Had I seen him when I walked in and realized that there was a chance that he would be my stylist, I probably would have ran the other way. I realize that what I am about to describe is going to seem, judgmental, possibly offensive, but hear me out. He was a tiny little guy, very thin, with hair very much like token black hair/bleach highlights except that the bleached hair was the entire front part of his head. He kind of looked light a black and white cookie. He was wearing more face powder than I was and a whole lot of mascara. When he walked, he walked with a sway that I feared may break one or both of his hips. Ok, with that being said, I know that his appearance has no effect on his ability as a stylist. How he presents himself is his own business, but I just feel that if you are in the beauty industry, your look should be very polished and when a client sits down at your station, he or she should feel confident that you can do the job. I shouldn't have been thinking, "Please don't make me look like you. Please don't make me look like you."

So I showed him the picture that I had originally showed Madge and he seemed to get it, but I was not confident. He didn't talk to me enough to assure me that we were on the same page and when he left to mix my color, a sense of fear and dread washed over me and I just knew that this wasn't going to go the way that I had hoped.

It took him a long time to mix the color, too long. At one point I heard him whispering with Madge about it and I had to fight every urge in my body to just get the hell out of there, but I ignored my instincts and stayed in my chair. Finally, he came back and we got started. He worked slowly and with a technique that I had never seen before. He explained that he was placing the foils the way that he was because it made the highlights less stripey. I was like, "Um, ok. You're the professional." Yeah, professional my ass.

So he finally finished and I started reading about what a douche Jon Gosselin is and suddenly my stylist starts to get chatty. He's talking about Lady GaGa and how much he LOooooves the Twilight series, and yada, yada, yada. Then he starts questioning the color that he used...out loud...to me...with the possibly incorrect color stewing on my head. He was even giggly about it and said, "Well, we'll see." Tee hee, giggle, giggle.

Forty minutes later he announced that it was time to rinse and I knew by his reaction that the results were not what we had originally discussed because he more or less kept trying to cover his ass for when the shit hit the fan and I got to see my results. When he turned me around in the chair I wasn't instantly horrified, but I was pretty confident that I was not going to be thrilled. The carmely/reddish highlights had a very orange look and the base color looked pretty close to the light brown that my hair was originally. There were only supposed to be a few random highlights, but it seemed like the entire top of my head was the highlight color. Did he even try to make me look like the picture? Still, I held on to hope that once my hair was dry something magical would happen and everything would be ok. But everything wasn't ok.

The whole time that he was drying me I kept trying to go over in my head what I was going to say when I saw my finished product. I decided that there was no way that I was going to pay for it if it looked as bad as I had feared. When he turned me around, my carefully thought out plan went out the window and I didn't know what to say. I had been in that chair for two hours by that point and my final result was my original color with orange highlights. To make matters worse, when I started running my fingers through it to really see what we were dealing with, I found that I had two pink streaks on each side of my head. He had carefully combed it so that I wouldn't have seen that part unless I did some careful inspection. Finally I was like, "My hair is pink." He actually moved in for a closer look and acted all surprised, like he hadn't seen that when he was drying my hair. I told him that this really wasn't what I wanted and what were "we" going to do about it? He goes, "Well, do you want to pay for it now and come back tomorrow to get it fixed?" In my head I was screaming, "Um, what now? You think that I am actually paying for this nightmare? I sat in this chair for two freaking hours when I could have been looking around at Target, or shopping at Sephora, or anything else that I wanted to do whilst I was child free. Um, pay for this? I think not!" What I actually said was, "Well, I'll pay for the cut, but I just can't pay for this color." I asked him when he worked the next day and told him that I would try to get back there to have him fix it. I paid for the cut, left no tip, and headed out the door to call Mike and cry about what the incompetent man did to me and how he wasted my two child-free hours turning me into Carrot Top. That bastard!

This is what I was talking about when I said that things should be handled a certain way because when he saw that what he had done was nothing, NOTHING like we had talked about, his first response should have been a sincere apology and an assurance that he would make it right at no charge. Can you believe he actually asked me if I was on a medication that might affect how my hair took the color? I don' think that is any of your business buddy!

So now I'm stuck. Stuck and pissed off. Do I go back today to have him "fix" it? To do that would mean that I have to get my mother-in-law to take the kids which I know she would have no problem doing, but I just hate to put her out, especially for something that I should not have to do. If she is going to take the kids, I'd like to get something done that I really need to do like grocery shopping or cleaning or laundry. I feel like just doing what I should have done originally and go get myself a box of color and do it myself, but am I a bitch for not going back to give him the chance to fix his mistake? Either way, I don't think that I could let him touch my hair again. I would have to get one of the other girls to do it. I don't know. All I do know is that this look is only going to fly until Halloween is over and then I am going to have to do something about it.