Hairdresser’s panic!

In the work of a hairdresser, there are endless days, with stress peaks equal to those of the surgeon during a heart surgery while he escapes from going to the bathroom! The hard part of working in a salon is learning to recognize the early stages of an emotional tsunami that is going to overwhelm your boss.

For example : I’m doing the color to a client who has tried the “do it yourself” reading on the internet of a “homemade” coloring made with coffee grounds, spirulina algae and hydrogen peroxide, and now her hair has the colour of lettuce left in the salad bowl for a month; in the meantime, the 17-o’clock customer arrives 30 minutes early complaining over the phone about the wait; the child in the other room has escaped and now runs to the salon looking for an escape and ending up bumping into the glass like flies, just as my colleague, she went to a coffee break but at a distance of 800 meters because only the cappuccino is made with soy milk in a large, warm cup with raw cane sugar and a sprinkling of Ecuadorean cocoa.

In all the fuss the only thing you can do is look at your boss with a half-smiled smile: “it will pass, quiet will pass ” and at that moment I realize that it is making the cut with the fingers using them as if they were a couple of blades, while he looks at me desperately, asking me with my eyes: ” but where the hell did I put the scissors ?? “. Only then did I notice that our work counter is slammed like an Ikea piece of furniture mounted with instructions in Swedish. But I recognize a twinkle under a pile of combs, plates and brushes.

It is in these moments that the action must be rapid, casual, effective:

I hiss ” shhht “.

He looks at me.

I look at the counter distinctly.

He senses.

Our movements will have to be synchronized but we need a diversion…

I turn on the hairdryer in tropical typhoon mode and fly a group of quickies around the room, creating havoc among the customers who remain bewitched by those brightly coloured streamers, meanwhile my head with a perfect “pas de bourree” pulls out the scissors, back in position, cut and fold in the record time of 46 seconds and voila! All finished.

Meanwhile, my colleague has returned, the child has been found, the client served and the salad dye is now a very sweet cocoa butter. All is well that ends well, even if the shop looks like a square after the New Year’s concert.

A successful salon must have two important characteristics to work well: professionalism and flexibility. Furthermore, we must always find excellent solutions to keep the instruments in order, it is obvious like as good salon has no a hair dryer stand.

Organizing your workplace is as important as knowing how to interpret the cuts of the moment, also because inspiration is weak: sometimes it takes just 30 seconds to look for a brush or a pair of scissors and at the moment you start cutting again… puff disappears!