Thankfully, this trip was finally the one that convinced me never to go there again. When I walked in, the two women there were arguing loudly in Chinese. After about 2-3 minutes of this, the older of the two women turned to me and said, “Just minute.” Then they went right back to yelling at each other until the younger one stormed out, at which point the older woman gestured for me to sit in one of the chairs. I would soon find out that she gestured to the chair instead of telling me to have a seat because English was not her first language. I think it was probably her fourth language behind Mandarin, sneering and gesturing. This would make the next fifteen minutes all the more entertaining.
I sat down and she asked me, “How you want hair?” So I gave her my usual spiel: Number 4 around the bottom and trim the top, please. (Note that if you ever ask for this at D.J. Leathers in The Castro, it means something entirely different. You should still do it, I’m just saying it will be an altogether unique experience.) She repeated this back to me and then turned around to clean the clippers. Then she said again, “Number 4 clipper?” I said yes. She put the number 4 attachment on the clipper and again said, “Number 4 clipper?” I nodded. She cut a little swath of hair off of the side of my head then turned the clipper off and again said, “Number 4 clipper?” I forced a little smile and said, “yes” through clenched teeth.
She mercifully finished with the clippers after a few minutes and pulled out the spray bottle. She began spritzing all around my head and even managed to get a little bit of the water on my hair. When she was finished, my face looked like I had just run the whole way there – it was red and wet with little wisps of steam emitting from my forehead. I squeegeed off some of the water drops with my hand and flung them to the ground to communicate in the most passive-aggressive way possible that she might want to work on her spritzing skillz.
Once I was nice and dripping wet, she pulled out a pair of scissors and said, “Trim on top?” I said, “Yes, please.” She cut off a tiny bit of hair and said again, “Trim on top?” Again, I forced a smile and said, “Yes. Trim on top.” She cut a bit more and said (I promise that I’m not making this up), “Trim on top?” At this point, I started to think that there was something funny going on, so I said, “Okay, where’s Ashton Kutcher hiding?” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Trim on top?” Why did she keep asking me if I wanted a trim on top after I had already confirmed this several times? She clipped a bit more off and then (I swear I’m not making this up! Except for the part about Ashton Kutcher. And the flinging water droplets to the ground was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Also, in a minute, I’m going to make the fingernail thing out to be a bit worse than it really was, but I thought it was important for comedic effect. You’ll see when you get there.) she asked again, “Trim on top?” My mind raced with the possibilities:
Just when my efforts to figure out what was going on had sent me into a deep state of catatonia, the stylist woke me suddenly by jabbing her fingernail into the back of my head. I mean literally “into” the back of my head. I couldn’t tell if I was bleeding profusely or if it was just the water that she sprayed all over my head dripping down the back of my neck. Apparently, she wasn’t confident enough in her English to say, “Look down please,” when she wanted to trim along my neckline. So she did the next best thing – stuck her Fu Manchu-like talon into the back of my head and shoved it forward until I was looking down, presumably for sutures to sew up my gaping head wound.
This would become the theme for the remainder of my hair cutting experience as she was extremely keen for me to tilt my head in a number of directions. She was whipping my head around so much that you’d think the Saw dude just told her that the pin to her mouth grenade was hidden in my scalp. I again tried to communicate my displeasure with her by using my best passive-aggressive gesturing, which mainly entailed jerking my head away from her and reaching up to my head to check for open wounds. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to do that with my hand trapped underneath the apron that she put on me.
Thankfully, my sadistic stylist was actually very fast with the scissors, so she wrapped things up quickly. As soon as she finished, she walked around in front of me and said, “You okay?” I said, “I should be fine. It’s probably just a couple of small scratches.” She looked confused and pointed at my head and repeated, “You OKAY?” It was then that I realized that she wasn’t asking how I was doing, but if the haircut was okay with me. There was no way that I would subject myself to one more minute of her hair “styling” so I said yes and sprinted toward the cash register. I probably should have let her take off the apron first.
For those of you who are wondering what I ended up doing about this situation, let me assure you that I wasn't just going to stand idly by while the Supercuts lady gave me such bad service. So I did what any other red-blooded American would do under these circumstances: I left her a moderate tip and headed straight home to write about her in my blog. In just 4-5 weeks, I hope to be telling you all about my fun new experiences at the Great Clips over by Lucky Supermarket. Stay tuned!
1 comments:
Maybe you should fly yo momma to San Fran to cut your hair. If
memory serves me correctly, it was Douglas's ear that got in the way of the scissors that afternoon; and
that was just tomato sauce dripping
on the floor. Really!!
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