Job Brief: Style ladies’ hair in the pop-up salon in the shopping centre to demonstrate the new styling tools range. This will be a luxury pampering experience to draw a queue and a crowd.
I’d exaggerated my ability to style hair.
But the pay was good because the shifts were 14 hours long, so I was determined to Have A Good Go.
As soon as anyone sat in the chair, I quickly offered a ‘nice loose curl’ in my best hairdresser voice and proceeded to give them Shirley Temple ringlets with the curling wand. It was the only thing I could do. I think I even curled someone’s fringe. But at least I’d got good at convincing people it was what they needed that day.
“How long have you been a hairdresser for?” someone asked.
“7 years now actually”. I don’t know where that answer came from but I had to continue with it.
“Was it something you always wanted to do?”
“Yeah! Yeah it was. Yeah.” I didn’t have the energy to launch into a full backstory.
This job, in spite of my fraudulent and questionable styling, was all fine until I was asked to check people for nits in the queue, by running my hands through their hair. I don’t like running my fingers across a person’s scalp at the best of times, let alone when it’s a stranger who hasn’t washed it yet this week.
We were advised not to announce to people they had nits, but rather that they had too much product in their hair and that’s why we couldn’t style them today. A surprising number of people had ‘too much product in their hair today!’… (I thoughts nits were over in the 90s.)
I didn’t learn much from this job other than the fact that styling hair is difficult and I don’t like touching another person’s scalp.
Average Brunette 