professionalism

So have you seen the commercial where the customer has her hair all up in rollers and the stylist is yakking on the phone and the customer tries to say something and the stylist snarls "I'm ON the PHONE!"

Yeah, well that was me and my mom at our last hair cut. Oh, the stylist wasn't snarling at us. But she was taking calls, making calls, stopping the blow drying to gossip with the receptionist about other customers.

TURNING OFF THE BLOW DRYER so she could hear the gossip better.

ARGHHH!!

It's bad enough that neither my mother nor I are big on hearing random about people we don't know (and, I wonder what she says about US when we aren't around). BUT I am in a hurry. I have to get to the theater to check in my actors.

So after my mom's cut & blow dry, I get in the chair and say I'm in a hurry, I will forego the blow dry, I need to leave by 11:30 a.m.

My mom's cut & blow dry took an hour. My cut, with apologies (but still a couple of calls) took twenty minutes, so there was still 10 minutes for a blow dry.

On the upside, my haircut and my mom's are both great.

On the down side, I am looking for another stylist.

Really!

I go for a haircut to feel pampered. I expect to have the focus and attention of the stylist. I always thought the receptionist's *job* was to answer the phone and say, "I'm sorry, she's with a customer right now, may I take a message," then take the message and give it to the stylist AFTER she finishes with the customer/client.

Both my mom and I wondered, has this woman never seen that commercial? Impossible! It's all over the tube.

Instead, she, like so many of us, has seen this flaw and laughed at it and never applied it to herself.