Frettin'...and We Ain't Talking About Guitars

R-E-L-I-E-F

Beautiful, blissful, freeing relief.

That's what Ifelt last night as I left work later than usual (or not, depending on how you look at it).

Remember the client that got her hair/extentions cut by someone else and was unhappy? Here's the background:

One stylist in our salon does extentions, having gone to a special class to learn to do so.

Extentions in the hair is a compeltely new ball of wax. You don't cut that the same way you would a typical head of hair because it could gap easily.

My client got extentions. Loved them. She's trying to let her hair grow from a short cut and this is a way to help and have some instant gratification. She liked it so much, this was her second go around with extentions.

Extentions are not cheap. (Well, they can be, but you don't want those. That would be a "weave" and a bad one at that.) First, you purchase the hair (100% human hair). That's about $350.00. Then you pay our highly trained stylist to install them on your head at $100.00 an hour. A full head of extentions can take 7-8 hours. Yeah.

Miss Priss (and she is) has done this twice. The first time around, she had me trim her up at one point. Which I did with great fear and trembling. And moaning. "I don't know what I'm doing!" But I did it. Carefully. It worked. She loved it. Great.

This time, Miss Priss was a little impetuous. Wanted a hair cut. Today. (Friday) I don't work on Friday. "Do you think so and so can do it?" Of course. I'll tell her what I did. It will be fine. And it was. But not. Technically, there was nothing wrong with the haircut, it was just layered more than I had done and a little shorter and now, it didn't pull up like she wanted. There were "pokey ends" sticking out of her ponytail now. It wasn't smooth like when I had done it. It's too short.

Crap.

AND...It's her daughter's 1st birthday and she was going to do a mother/daughter portrait and now her hair was awful. What can we do to fix this?

We considered adding extentions, for thickness,but would she have to pay to have those put in? Would that even work? Not fair to that stylist not to get paid. Not fair to the client to have to pay to get more when it was done right the first time, now it's just too thin. Should the stylist who cut it pay for it? Do we cut it? What's the point in having extentions just to cut them all off?

At one point Miss Priss (who has been a longtime client and turned into a friend) said she just wanted to take them out, have me cut a short little bob and then go somewhere else and start over because she felt there would be a strain in everyone''s feelings from now on.

Great.

I didn't make the mistake, but I'll be the one hurt when my income walks out the door. Thanks.

I fretted all day long.
Maybe if Iwere shown me how to do it, I could do it. And if the salon would pay for the extentions...
Miss Priss called later in the day and said, let's just cut it short and see what happens. I was afraid the extentions would be short and stubby and it wouldn't look good. "Well, then we'll take them out. I just can't stand it like it is."

You think I prayed on the side of the road in Florida? I beseeched and pleaded this go round.
I cut it, again moaning about not knowing what I was doing (that's what happens if you're my friend AND client. If you're just a client, I skip the moaning--it's not so professional.) I cut. She told me to cut it some more. I cringed, but did it.

IT WAS PRECIOUS. PRECIOUS!

She didn't like it, she loved it.
The doxology was playing in my head to beat the band. (Or maybe that was the band beating it out in my head.)

It was such a relief for that burden of concern to roll off my mind. I felt redeemed! Recently, it has seemed like there's been some issue of someone being unhappy about something . Or maybe, it's just something I've noticed, a little color bled here, a little too much red there. Something! It's kinda been wearing on me.

I find it so important, psychologically speaking (for myself) that if things are discouraging me, my self-confidence is strengthened knowing when I did something well.

I spell that: R-E-L-I-E-F!