I got a terrible hair cut at Not So Great Clips last Spring.
Their slogan should be: “Come in and get a terrible hair cut! It will only cost $12.00”!
Disclaimer: I’m sure there are many stylists who work at the discount hair cut places that are very good at their job. I’m just saying, that I have not met any of them yet.
The girl who gave me my terrible hair cut spent the time telling me about her 14 year old son and his girlfriend. I have no idea why I remember this. She must have been really into her own story because she whacked a section of hair much shorter than the rest.
I didn’t notice.
I went back to Not So Great Clips around three months later and a different girl cut my hair. She was holding my hair in her hands and said “Please tell me you didn’t come here the last time you got your hair cut”.
She told me that my hair was completely uneven and offered to even it up. My hair reached my shoulder blades. Okay, shoulder blade. She would have had to taken 4 inches off to completely even it up. No way a $12.00 hair cut girl was fixing this shit. I told her to just trim the ends and then I went back to ignoring my uneven hair for a few more months.
Randy is sweet. He tells me every day how pretty I am. We’ve been together for nearly 19 years and he never lets a day pass without him complimenting me. What’s not to love about that? It was just 2 weeks ago that he said to me while I was getting ready “Hey, did you know your hair is really uneven”? He might find me gorgeous, but he obviously doesn’t look too close. I figured if he noticed that it was time to stop ignoring my fucked up hair and do something about it.
I have a love/hate relationship with Groupon. I’ve gotten some great deals. I also have a permanent scar from a laser hair removal treatment that I got from Groupon. My suggestion to you is this: don’t get cut rate anything if it involves lasers.
I found a Groupon for a hair cut and conditioning treatment. Yesterday was mine and Randy’s 17th wedding anniversary…so in honor of this momentous occasion, I took a day off work and got myself all evened up.
You know, I probably should have let my boss know that I was having a three day weekend. He’ll probably give me shit about that on Monday.
I braved the cold and the icy roads and made the trek to the next town over to get my new look. I had all the confidence in the world that I’d get a good haircut. The hairdresser’s name was Alyssa. I don’t think it’s possible to get a bad haircut from a girl named Alyssa. I also think that is true of Alicia, Alexis or Aria.
I sometimes (always) have some anxiety when meeting new people. Especially when that person is going to actually be touching me. So, I stopped for a water and Xanax break along the way.
I should have taken two.
This place was like an office building and each stylist had their own room. These were not big rooms. Alyssa was not alone. She had a person in a chair with a head full of hair coloring solution and a magazine in her hand. So, I was going to be touched by a stranger and there was another human being in a chair less than 4 feet away.
The room had two windows, so lots of natural light! Yay!
These were my thoughts between the time I put my coat down and took two and half steps to sit in her chair.
Fuck, my coat is covered in hair. According to my coat, I should be bald.
I should have worn eyeliner
FUCK! Is that candy stuck to my shirt? Blue candy? It looks like the Breaking Bad meth. It’s not meth. When did I have blue candy? Why was this shirt hanging in my closet like it was clean?
Please just cover me up quick with that big plastic bib.
Alyssa was quite chatty and asked rapid fire questions. I could hear my voice reverberate off the walls, it sounded so huge and a little bit like I had a cold. I was aware that hair-dye girl could not help but hear the conversation and it felt a little bit like I was standing in the room in nothing but mismatched underwear. I so much dislike chatting with strangers about myself. Which is pretty fucking funny considering the personal shit I choose to write about on this blog.
She worked fast and did a good job. My hair is even now and not too short. No more dead ends. I like it. The Not So Great Clips Disaster of 2013 had been rectified.
I don’t know that I’ll go back to Alyssa or not. I’ll probably just buy another Groupon deal the next time I need to get my hair cut. Next time, however, I will be prepared if the stylist is overly chatty. I’m going to make shit up. It will be funny and interesting and it’s so much easier for me to be around strangers when I can pretend to be someone else.
I’ll let y’all know how that goes.
“So, I stopped for a water and Xanax break along the way.”
I am *so* glad to know I’m not the only one who needs to be medicated to interact with strangers.
Please, please tell me that making shit up next time is going to involve something terribly inappropriate. Like having a prosthetic vagina or being the reincarnation of Elvis or having an argument with the voices in your head about how many inches the stylist should chop off.
No..you are not alone. I have so much anxiety when I have to interact with people I don’t know. Although, it’s the anticipation that’s the worst of it..not the actual interaction. Unless I do or say something awkward..which is likely.
I don’t know what I will talk about…probably not vagina, though. I’ll wing it. It’ll be a while. I don’t get my hair cut all that often.
I am so glad that I’m a dude for this very reason. If my hair gets fucked up, I just cut it all off and start fresh. I’m more pissed about the $12 I spent than the fuck up in the first place!
Randy sounds so nice tho. I would’ve come right up to my wife and said something. He probably noticed it before but forgot because he didn’t want to be mean. I think about that sometimes but I’d rather let her know and ridicule her for it haha (aren’t I such a nice husband?). It’s all done in those tho 🙂
Glad you got it fixed and happy anniversary to you 2 crazy kids!
No, I really think he didn’t notice..he has no problem telling me when something is off…
And thank you! We’ve had a lovely weekend so far.
The important thing is that the hairdresser was not a total psycho who anesthetized
you with chloroform as you sat down in the chair, and proceeded to turn whatever
is growing out of your head into a black, oily toilet brush with two inch bristles.
Or a Sinead O’Conner look-alike buzz cut made with a Fusion, 5-blade safety razor
you would need a microscope to see ANY hair growth 10 or 15 days later.
You didn’t suffer the look of shock on your hub as he might have assumed if you came
home with the oily toilet brush, and heard him say, “What the fuck were you thinking?”
So all-in-all I think you scored in the “win-win” category, Ms.
well..when you put it that way
I am contemplating a haircut here myself, though BF will be extremely unhappy about it. I’ve worn my hair long (for him) for 4 years and I still hate it. Every day I want to chop it all off. Thinking I’m going to say the hell with his opinions and get it hacked off to shoulder-ish length on Monday. Its most of the way down my back now.
It’s your head, sister…
Randy likes my hair long, too..but I like it as well..as soon as I don’t like it, I’ll cut it.
I went in yesterday and had somewhere between 8 and 10 inches cut off. Its now shoulder length, layered, and at the moment, put up in the world’s perkiest pigtails. BF even managed to say it looked nice without it killing him. :p
YAY! Do you love it?
LOL Ten years later I come back to finish this little conversation. :p
I do love it! Wish I did it much sooner!
YAY!!! that is awesome!
I feel like followers/readers are at least a few steps above stranger, so sharing whatever on your blog is nothing like talking to a person you just met IRL.
…says a fellow blogger who now wonders if she should rethink her priorities….
you’re exactly right! Very well put.
And good luck with the priorities thing
Is your hair as red as the picture at the top of the page? Not trying to be creepy here, just curious.
Ha. no. That’s not my hair. My hair isn’t red at all.
One of the reasons I rarely go get my hair cut is the awkward small talk. Like you, I hate talking about myself with strangers. I wonder why we feel like we can share so much on our blogs, but face to face is so challenging? Well, cheers to letting our hair grow out to avoid people! 😀
Well, for one thing, no one that reads my blog is physically touching me. Also, we CHOOSE what to share. We aren’t being asked. At least I suspect that is why we do it..although, really…I could be full of shit.
I’ve come to the belief that any discount haircut chain that calls themselves “Great” or “Super” are just waiting to fuck up the unsuspecting clients who walk through their doors. But what is crazy is that we go — get the horrible haircut — and then GO BACK! You know that feeling of desperation, where you JUST CAN’T STAND THIS HAIR for one more fucking second — and since making an appointment somewhere reputable would require waiting more than one second (not to mention costing 3-4x the cost) — we just bite the bullet and make a run for “Great” or “Super” — thinking that SURELY this time it won’t be so bad. Arrgghhhh!
I’ve found the solution — I now never cut my hair. It’s gone from being super short to hitting the middle of my back. There are still days I want to hack it off — but I just eat a lot of chocolate and then I start to obsess about my weight instead.
HAHAHA….yes!!!!!
That’s why mine went so long uneven…I just chose to not care anymore…and I’m so good at obsessing about my weight.
My PTSD has left me where I also need to take meds to talk to strangers. One thing I do in a situation like you had, I tell the person I am deaf in my right ear (which I am. Thanks IED!) and they usually keep the chitchat to a minimum.
Okay, it sucks that you have that issue..but it would be nice to have that built in excuse…
Yikes! And I was just thinking maybe I should go someplace cheaper to get my hair cut this time… maybe I’ll just wait a little longer and save up some money to go to my regular hairdresser. And, one thing I do when talking to her is to make sure to ask her plenty of questions to take the focus off me.
I think you’re better off saving up…I just have never had a good experience at the discount places. Good idea, asking questions..although I feel awkward doing that as well. I’d rather they just not say anything.
LOL! Another reason why I wish Greg came in a handy travel size. I’d box him up and send him to you. But you’d have to send him back cuz Lord knows I can’t dry all this hair myself. 😉
I miss my old hairdresser..but it’s 3 hours away…I just can’t do that anymore
Best haircut I ever got was $6…I was lucky enough to live near a beauty school
Oh…that works! You must have gotten a good student and not one that was going to end up at not so great clips
Hair Cutting Schools:
We got hair cutting schools in Eastern Kentucky, all right.
You kin tell a graduate by their monogrammed spit cup
and their alligator hide-covered dog clippers.
hahahah
“My suggestion to you is this: don’t get cut rate anything if it involves lasers. ”
I often have people give me a hard time about the amount of money I spent on my laser eye surgery. I usually get a comment like, “You spent HOW MUCH? You know you can get it done for, like $400 and eye now, right?”
To which my reply is generally something along the lines of, “We’re talking about my VISION, not a haircut. You kind of only get one shot when it comes to your eyes. Not really something I want to bargain hunt for, y’know?”
Sorry about the haircut jab but I’m sure you’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.
oh hell yes…when it comes to ‘you get what you pay for’ you don’t want to fuck around if it’s your eyes.
Just like the other comments above, I don’t usually talk with strangers. I want them to just focus on their job.