We all have gone into a place, whether it is a hair salon, a nail salon, or a massage center, and seen that one person working you would give anything not to have. Whether he or she rips your hair out, cuts your nails till they bleed, or grunts while rubbing you down, you would do anything to have someone else. I am sure it has gotten so bad that often you have requested it. What you may have discovered through and awkwardly unsubtle communication is that its better to request someone specific than to request anyone but that one person.
When I was a kid my mom would take my brother and me to the local Supercuts to get our hair cut. There was this one lady working there at the time who was absolutely terrible. She was a big lady with fried curly blond hair that looked like it was suspended in a continual process of being died. She would pull your hair, rip through any knots with her comb, jerk your head from side to side, and she washed you hair like she was shampooing the fleas off of a dog. I would go home after getting my hair cut, style my hair, and all the lengths would be off. I wore my hair up at the time and it looked like my hair had been subjected to the San Francisco earthquake. Gaps everywhere, different planes every different height going every different direction.
At first I would just leave it up to chance. I would hope each time we went in that she had found a job somewhere else, or had the day off. When she was there, I would try to time it just right in deciding whether I or my brother was going to have our hair cut first. But there were the times, the terrible times, when I would get stuck with her.
One day I just couldn’t risk it anymore. I went in to Supercuts to ask how long the wait was and the woman told me ten minutes. She asked if I would like to put my name down. I politely said yes and gave her my and my brother’s name. At that moment I caught sight of the dreaded Supercuts Certified Hair Dresser. I just couldn’t do it. I motioned to the women running the front and when she came over I asked if there was any way she could make sure I had any other stylist but that lady. She said of course and feeling drastically relieved I walked outside and told my mom to park the car.
There they were, the little blue tickets sitting on the counter, ready to be plucked by the next available hair stylist. Mine was next, sitting at the edge and of course who just happens to finish right as my ticket is delicately awaiting anyone but her, she does. She walks right up to my ticket and just as she is about to call out my name, she reads the note underneath my name. She slowly puts the ticket down, picks up the next ticket, looks directly at me with a pale stare and calls out some other person’s name. Now I am thinking the lady at the front put a request for someone else, made a note that I liked a certain lady other than her, but as I walked passed my ticket on the counter after it had been called by a different lady, I notice in small handwriting the words, “anyone but Nancy”. She totally sold me out. It was so awkward. She knew I didn’t like her and every time I went in she would give me this look as if I was too good for her.
It was that day that I learned that in order to avoid that horribly awkward circumstance you have to find someone you like and request that person. It much better to request to a single person than to request anyone but a single person. I understand the difficulty of this in certain businesses, especially when requesting a nail technician, where in most cases their names sound so similar and are so difficult to pronounce. But trust me, make a mental note, take a Polaroid, do whatever it takes to save yourself from the uneasy feeling of having that person stare right at you, or even come up and talk to you, knowing that you think they are the worst person at what they do in the entire building.
Tags: hair salon, massage therapy, nail salon, Nancy, Supercuts, yelp
