This morning I got the best Great Clips hair cut of my life. Well, the cut itself isn't that great, sort of a botched job of taking two inches off all the way around [Is there ever a time when you feel more ignorant about the metric system than when getting a haircut? Is an inch one hundred centimeters or ten?]. Really, I rarely bother to brush my hair, and I'm not too picky about symmetry and weird things like body, when considered in hair seems like a contradiction in terms. I have been rocking the same middle-part hairstyle in a variation of lengths for the past, let's say, 7 years and I'm widely immune to the screw ups of hair cutteries that start with Great or Super. But this morning was entirely different.
I entered the Great Clips with mixed emotions. On one hand I was feeling gleeful and self congratulatory, since I had managed while biking through the shopping center to get close enough to the Office Max to cause all 4 of their automatic doors to open as I cruised past. On the other hand (the hand that isn't so easily swayed by the good omens reliant on biking prowess and the fact that no one patronizes Office Max) my last trip to Great Clips yielded a particularly awkward experience.
During my last haircut, I was asked by my very chatty and petite [read: midget-y] hairstylist to stand up for the majority of my haircut, so that she could get an even cut. Though I was inclined to point out that my slouching posture was hardly more conducive to cutting majesty than the chair, which I was mildly certain had been designed for the cutting of hair, I tend to be very shy with protests [read: a sucker]. So I stood, and tried not to feel like Zordon from the Power Rangers movie after he gets attacked and it is revealed that when Zordon is not encased within his grandiose smoking pillar he looks like an old man with a wrinkly garbage bag on.
Alas, it gets weirder. After a few moments of tip-toeing and chit chatting around, the stylist then requested that I remove my lumpy sweater, to prevent its scruffy and uneven exterior from interfering with the precision of the cut. Again I should have protested, explaining that since I am likely to be always somewhat disheveled, that it would behoove her to just cut my hair in its normal habitat. But, because I am an utter pansy, I soon found myself feeling like quite the woman of scandal, as I presume that only a woman of scandal would choose to take her haircut standing up wearing an undershirt and a very uncomfortable expression. Hence my overall reluctance.
Today however, my hairstylist was marvelously indifferent to me. She yanked the comb through my hair without the slightest remorse and without asking whether it hurt. Instead of reminding me several times to "keep your head down, please," she simply nudged my head back into place whenever I got twitchy. And, best of all, she never asked me my major.
This is the sort of customer service that I desire. A vast, unfeeling indifference that expedites the process by removing the presumption that I want to leave feel like I've left behind both hair off my head and some emotional weight off of my shoulders. Having lived in a very small town, I always endured the chatting of haircut-ladies about my sisters and community sports and grades with a bleary eyed (I never get to wear my glasses during a haircut) good humor because I thought that chatting during a haircut was a mandatory event, like tipping or the no-charge-blow-drying that you have to brush down once you get in the car.
But today I was quite liberated from my provincial notions by stylist at station number 3, who never bothered to pretend that she cared about me, my finals, my ambiguous future, my political agenda or the shitty windy weather, in the least. And since I didn't care too much about my haircut, we got along marvelously.
[See how non-nostalgic and irrelevant I'm being? I've heard that I'm getting out of control with the weeping over old term papers and wearing my old dormitory T-shirt underneath all of my clothes. I didn't even mention that I'm getting this haircut because I fear people will try and take my picture at graduation].
I entered the Great Clips with mixed emotions. On one hand I was feeling gleeful and self congratulatory, since I had managed while biking through the shopping center to get close enough to the Office Max to cause all 4 of their automatic doors to open as I cruised past. On the other hand (the hand that isn't so easily swayed by the good omens reliant on biking prowess and the fact that no one patronizes Office Max) my last trip to Great Clips yielded a particularly awkward experience.
During my last haircut, I was asked by my very chatty and petite [read: midget-y] hairstylist to stand up for the majority of my haircut, so that she could get an even cut. Though I was inclined to point out that my slouching posture was hardly more conducive to cutting majesty than the chair, which I was mildly certain had been designed for the cutting of hair, I tend to be very shy with protests [read: a sucker]. So I stood, and tried not to feel like Zordon from the Power Rangers movie after he gets attacked and it is revealed that when Zordon is not encased within his grandiose smoking pillar he looks like an old man with a wrinkly garbage bag on.
Alas, it gets weirder. After a few moments of tip-toeing and chit chatting around, the stylist then requested that I remove my lumpy sweater, to prevent its scruffy and uneven exterior from interfering with the precision of the cut. Again I should have protested, explaining that since I am likely to be always somewhat disheveled, that it would behoove her to just cut my hair in its normal habitat. But, because I am an utter pansy, I soon found myself feeling like quite the woman of scandal, as I presume that only a woman of scandal would choose to take her haircut standing up wearing an undershirt and a very uncomfortable expression. Hence my overall reluctance.
Today however, my hairstylist was marvelously indifferent to me. She yanked the comb through my hair without the slightest remorse and without asking whether it hurt. Instead of reminding me several times to "keep your head down, please," she simply nudged my head back into place whenever I got twitchy. And, best of all, she never asked me my major.
This is the sort of customer service that I desire. A vast, unfeeling indifference that expedites the process by removing the presumption that I want to leave feel like I've left behind both hair off my head and some emotional weight off of my shoulders. Having lived in a very small town, I always endured the chatting of haircut-ladies about my sisters and community sports and grades with a bleary eyed (I never get to wear my glasses during a haircut) good humor because I thought that chatting during a haircut was a mandatory event, like tipping or the no-charge-blow-drying that you have to brush down once you get in the car.
But today I was quite liberated from my provincial notions by stylist at station number 3, who never bothered to pretend that she cared about me, my finals, my ambiguous future, my political agenda or the shitty windy weather, in the least. And since I didn't care too much about my haircut, we got along marvelously.
[See how non-nostalgic and irrelevant I'm being? I've heard that I'm getting out of control with the weeping over old term papers and wearing my old dormitory T-shirt underneath all of my clothes. I didn't even mention that I'm getting this haircut because I fear people will try and take my picture at graduation].
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