Your very worst experience at the hairdresser's.

Join the club, G! The only reason I was at the mercy of Ms Snippy Scissors yesterday was that my "old" hairdresser has gone AWOL! He's apparently been swallowed up in a hole in the earth without a trace! I'm hoping The Worst hasn't happened. I mean, after years of running a very successful business, one day he just vanishes into thin air? The thought of finding, say nothing of training another one, just gives me the vapours!

Too cruel, Ellpus, too cruel!

I think the Australians have it down to a tee when playing these types of practical jokes.
My niece was at a party last Xmas (Perth), and one of the gang fell asleep on the couch after too much Swan Lager.
His mates took his trousers down, and completely covered the end of his willy in "correction fluid" that typists use (we call it Tippex in the UK...very apt in this instance). They then pulled his trousers back up and left him as if nothing had happened.
As you know, this stuff dries rock hard, and is difficult to remove.

Well, apparently he woke up about an hour or so later, dying for a pee ......

Erk, Ellpus!
(I suspect you made this up! :wink: )

Nope........unless, she (my niece) was making it up....but I have no reason to doubt her. Apparently there is a photo somewhere, although she wouldnt email her Uncle such a thing.

No.

And what about your hair, Ellpus? Who cuts it (it looks VERY impeccable!)
Ever had a bad experience?

Funnily enough, it also is connected with my Niece, in a roundabout way.

My sister is about ten years older than me (she was the first born, then three more.....and then ME!)

When I was about eight, my Sis started going out with about the coolest "rocker" in our town. He was my hero....a masculine version of the "Fonz".
I wanted a cool haircut just like his, and when it was time to be dragged to the Barbers, I asked him what his style was called, and he told me it was the "College Boy" look.
SO........I plonked myself in the Barbers chair (I'll always remember that Barber....ugly as sin and he had a glass eye that looked in a different direction....seriously), and in my most grown up voice, I asked for a College Boy style, imagining me with a moody look, a miniature leather jacket and all of my mates going "Wow".

He proceeded to shave my hair to about half an inch long, and made it finish on a line that passed the top of my ears, in a straight line around the back of my head.

Mortified, I went home, entered the living room and met with a wall of laughter.


No wonder I have grown up a bit strange..............

PS.....The "Fonz" boyfriend, is now my Brother in law, who is the father of my niece in Oz. They emigrated soon after my Sis Married him.
He now weighs about sixteen stone, and looks very much like Tony Soprano. Hah! Justice at last.

That was not fun, it was cruel

.....they were young, it was a summer of love and high jinx, the alcohol was flowing.....what can I say?

.......and they were Australian.

Yeah, yeah ......

But what I want to know is this, Lord Ell: Do you still have any oldphotographs of yourself with the college boy haircut? We'd LOVE to share! :wink:

Oh God...

I had to bring it up again. I just had the most horrific haircut I've ever experienced. I've been on the verge of tears all day

I asked for layers. She gave me Billy Ray Cirus.



...Only with curls.

I understand your pain.

<pat pat>

There there, Sanctuary.

I do know how you feel. It's happened to me, many times over the years.... Like the time I ended up with hair a half an inch, all over, after a botched haircut. It got progressively shorter with no more than TWO attempts (!) to fix the original cut. EeeeeK! My students told me i looked fantastic, WILD, in fact! Today I can laugh, but at the time: Mama mia, it was the end of the world!

And here's some good news from me: I got another haircut this Saturday. No, not Ms Snippy Of The Flashing Scissors again! Goodbye to her! I walked there this time. Five minutes from my home! Is that convenient, or what? No nonsense, he took a look & away he went! And you know, it doesn't look half bad! Sure, I still look rather like Harry Potter, though my hair is now shorter than his! But I figure if I keep cutting my hair short I'm always going to look like Harry ... It's something about my facial features & the fringe, you see!

Sanctuary, the good thing about hair is that it grows! And the good thing about hairdressers is you can change them! (AND blacken the names of the worst offenders to everyone you know! Revenge!
So, I suggest you take a good look in the mirror: A good face, yes? OK then, the hair will grow (quickly), you will change hairdressers & all will be well again. Patience! (Difficult, I know, but this is the best advice I can offer. )

I think it's time I do honor to an actual good haircut I got recently. Too bad I didn't get the fellow's name, but -

I had been letting my own selfcut hair grow, twiddling my thumbs in figuring out which salon I'd waste my money with.
I cut my own hair quite well by now, thank you very much, in the front and at the sides, but I cannot reach the back and do it with any modicum of accuracy. So, the back was longer than I wanted, as I like the bottom edge of my hair to be nearly straight and level all around (if you follow me).

I was in Los Angeles for a funeral and went by my old trusty Supercuts salon (a local, I think, haircutting franchise) in the Marina del Rey shopping center. They have a policy, usually followed, of doing what you ask. Now, many places say that, or intimate that, but fail, fail, fail, as we all know. I explained that I was happy with the front and sides and would he just even the bottom edge by cutting the back....

He did. It took three minutes. Suddenly my hair... worked!
I came home to northern california to pleasant comments on my new haircut...

Osso,

SuperCuts isn't a local franchise - it is, unforunately, nation-wide.

It is where I got my mullet, and it is where I have gotten previously horrible cuts before. The people there are, in my opinion, unprofessional and uneducated on curly hair. The reason the gal cut my hair so short is because she wet it. Why do hairdressers cut curly hair as if it were straight? It's not! Curly hair curls when it's dry - so it will basically wind up half the length that you cut it. Ugh...

I am not, and have never been, satasfied with SuperCuts. They are low-grade in my opinion. But that is based on the local staff, not the business itself. I am glad your experience with them was positive!

Well, my experience with Supercuts was that one specific place, over several years - not continuously, but I tended to go back there after each expensive cut somewhere else. In this case, the guy didn't wet my hair, I asked him not to.

My hair is curly when let dry naturally especially when it is fairly short.

I don't have any stories, except that they always take off more than I tell them too.
I have long hair and like it long, but they obviously have other ideas. I tell them to take off an inch and they take 6 inches.
I had finally had enough of them hacking away at my hair a few years ago that I've been cutting my own hair ever since.
If I can't get what I pay for, I don't want it!

OMG guys I have laughed all the way through this.....

when I was 10 I had waist long hair, I was the only kid at school who had such long hair , so I begged my mother to cut it during the school holidays, which she reluctantly did to shoulder length. Then one of her friends came to visit who used to be a hairdresser (so she said) and told my mother she would style it more for me, after a few 'wines' she got stuck into my hair, with the end result of me resembling, like I had walked out of a concentration camp...I was almost bald, with tufts of hair sticking out all over the place! I blubbered my eyes out for days...just when I was getting over it , I cycled down to the shop to get some lollies and when I gave the man my money, he said thanks 'Son'....
Traumatised, I blubbered all the way back home!...oh those were the days

Oh how horrible, Kiwi! Oh... poor, poor Kiwi... Kiwi Kiwi. (okay, I just like saying you name.)

...

Kiwi.

Osso,

Nah, I'm sure that it's a local issue with me. I can't blame the company as a whole; but I really haven't had a good experience with them.

When you ask them not to wet it, what is the general reaction? I am always so afraid of requesting that, even if it is my hair, because of that snobbier-than-thou attitude previously mentioned in this thread.

I've called ahead to ask "do any of your employees specialize in curly hair?" The answer is always "uh...we can all cut curly hair." Well, that answers my question.

Me, I'm older and tireder. I said, don't wet it, just cut the back even, and he did.

In my time, I have explained, and then done a drawing to show what I mean, had total agreement and come out with, after say, 45.00, a tepid version of what I said.

Sometimes I wish we could draw on a2k. Let's see if any of you understand.

You have the person who is having her (but not always a her) hold her head in upright position. You cut a straight line along the bottom. This means.... that the hair dropping from the back of the head is actually shorter, since the back of your head is, er, further down. Level.

Then, you fan a hunk of the hair out, at a right angle from the head - got it? Pull the hair outward, neither forward or back, but straight out from the head.
Then cut an a fairly extreme angle, so the shortest hair is an inch and a half or two inches shorter than the longest... the longest being the baseline set earlier.

Do that all the way around the head. You will have an evenly wedged wedge, although the cuttee will be damned to some other cut if she says the word 'wedge', or even the word 'angle'.

Apparently no one on earth can understand me and do this.