T.S.Dawson -Author

​You Get What You Pay For

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Feeling a bit Rapunzel like on Tuesday, I decided it was time for my biannual haircut. There was no time like the present since I was headed back home this weekend for a huge catering job at the Hunt Club. Even though I was the hired help for the day, I didn't have to look it.  As they say, "When in Rome, ...".  To fit in, I needed to look my best in all of my white trash snobbery.

I have a picture of me from when I went to Nashville and stayed at the Opryland Hotel. There I am with my fresh, spunky little haircut sitting up on a railing of the balcony looking so cute there at my $260 a night hotel. Let me clarify...there are not many pictures of myself that I like, so I'm going to brag a little and say that this one was actually good and it made me look like I belonged at the pricey hotel.  This was just the style and feeling I was going for on Tuesday as I rolled up to the Fantastic Ma’am’s: the de-franchised version of a similar salon.  Honestly, the salon of the blind and dim-witted.  They really should put that in their ads you know!  If only I had known that going in.

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"I would like for you to take about three inches off of the back and slope it to the front so that it is a bit shorter in the front and wedges around to the back. And, make it flip under a bit." I have been giving hair dressers over at Super Cuts this line for about three years now and it is usually good enough. I should have brought in the picture, damn!
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"Ok," said the older lady with the dyed burgundy soap opera whore colored hair.  Just something to think about in the future...if they do that to their own hair, what will they do to yours???
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Apparently at Fantastic Ma’am’s they really keep their cost to a minimum because she did not even take out the handy stale water bottle and give me two squirts to wet the ends;  let alone the whole soak you down in the special sink treatment. It was just out with the scissors and away she went. From the beginning, the lack of stale water was an indication that there was something amiss, but she was obviously older and perhaps she had done this a million times and did not need the water.
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Anyway, CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! She did take the time to pin groups of it up and CHOP a little at a time, a sign that the others are usually starting the whole flipping under business.  Not this hedge trimmer wielding freak.
Finally she gets around to the front, "Now I am going to cut the length and then shape it up. How far up do you want it to come in the front? Up to your nose?" she asked as she stepped a little back from me as if she were already inspecting the damage.
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"NO!”  I shrieked.  Perhaps I should have specified that I knew what bangs were and I did not want them. 
I tried to get a hold of myself and continue, “Not higher than my chin.”  Again, perhaps I should have specified my second or third chin as apparently I had more than one and she was confused. 
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All the while the other ladies in the shop are commenting on what pretty hair I had. 
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My hair was parted on the side that day when I came in, so she straightened the part still on the side and then cut an upside down "V" clear up to my left cheek toward the part. I am sitting there looking puzzled because this is not the way it is usually done at all. Meanwhile she whips out something of the straight razor sort, the likes of what one Floyd might have used to shave Andy or Barney, and away she HACKS!
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She hacked up my hair with a razor! I was mortified! I tensed up and she noticed.
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"It will make your hair look softer."  She pulled it down to the side.  "See, softer."
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NO, NOT SOFTER, RAT GNAWED MAYBE, BUT NOT SOFTER!  Idiot!!!! IF I WANTED TO LOOK RAT GNAWED I COULD HAVE CUT IT MYSELF, FOR FREE, WITH NO INVESTMENT IN BEAUTY SCHOOL EITHER! 
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She started hacking at it again. "You don't want chopped off hair, looks too blunt, this is softer."
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"Look, you are going to have to stop that," I said very politely, but on the verge of tears as I started to realize, dear Lord, this is what happened to Frenchie from Grease.  Beauty school drop-out, OMG!
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She stepped back away from me and just looked at me like I had two heads.  If only, so I could put this one away and not have to wear it in public for the foreseeable future.
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"Call me an old fogy or whatever, but I want it to slope to the back and flip under. That's all I want."
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"What do you mean?" Fine freaking time to ask, if she did not know!!!
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"Usually," I said as I pushed my hair to the front over my eyes, what was left of it.  "They push it forward like this.  I don't know how much they pull forward, but then they cut like a long bowl cut and it gently slopes around. You know like Joey Lawrence, but long, very long.  And they use scissors."

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She put away the razor and started again, but it was too late.  It is now so short that I could not get it all back in a ponytail. And when it is not in the pony tail, it looks all gapped up!  I look as if I had been gnawed on by a whole pack of rats.

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I paid $13 and tipped her $5 and thanked her for trying.  Then I assured her that I would be fine as I ran for the door. I think I actually felt bad for her at that moment. However, I did not feel bad for her anymore when she told me that I only felt that way because it was freshly cut and once I washed it and dried it I would be fine. It is not FINE and will not be FINE after I wash it!  I could have gotten a better hair cut from a log splitter!

Lesson learned; never go to the off brand version of the cheapest hair care place in town, you get what you pay for.