Hair

In shock news, I've recently had my hair cut. Whilst general reactions from the press are favourable, I think it's a bit too short. Sure, I'll look neat for the wedding, but somehow it's just not me. It ought to be a bit longer and have a bit more tzutzush¹. Fran agrees. She's a fine woman and has good taste.

But it leads me on to a point worth saying, and it's about the crapness of modern hairdressers. It's been many years since I gave up on the kind of place that trades a fiver for "a grade three all over", and moved on to those sunnier climbs where you get a 'free' cup of coffee and if you're lucky, they're playing Fashion TV² instead of Sky Sports 3. But as much as might pretend I've gone up in the world, it's still not very good.

You see, when I go to a 'hair stylist', I expect a little more. I go in, and they say, "So what do you want done?"
And I say, "Well..." [hurry up]
"...I want it shorter." [well, duh]
"...and I want it to have more...life..." [thank you, that's very specific]

I think that ought to be sufficient, but it's not. Every time a hairdresser asks me what I want, they expect me to know already and exactly. Frankly, that's not good enough. They have to be better than that. I'm not paying them to be psychic, but I am paying them to be the expert that I am not.

Lemme put it this way: Every so often, people come to me as their friendly neighbourhood geek and ask for my advice on buying a computer. Never, ever, ever do I say, "Okay, so how much RAM do you want?" because that's not a meaningful question to most people. If they could answer that question they would never have come to me. So I don't ask them gobbledygook questions about RAM. Instead I say, "Okay, what do you want it for? Games? Office stuff? Internet? What?" From the answer to that question, I can usually start to figure out what they actually need.

So it annoys me that when I go into a hairdressers - especially one I'm paying fairly good money for - I get asked technical questions that are absolutely meaningless to me. I don't want that. I want someone to say, "How do you want to look?"
And I'll say, "Well, I like it long; I've got this casual, vaguely-rock/hippy thing going on, but right now I need to look a bit more formal."
And they should say, "Okay, you want a bit of funky Johnny Depp with more length but in a way you can wear formally."

(And they should say, "Aha, fuzz, mush, layers, yada-yada-yada," to them-f**king-selves.)

That's the way it ought to work. I'm willing to learn the terms, but I shouldn't be expected to know them the moment I walk in and I should never be expected to be an expert in them. I'm paying for expertise, and that ought to end at the haircut and start with understanding.

¹ According to Andi, that's how it's spelt.

² Have I ever mentioned, Fashion TV is the best channel in the world? In fact, it's the only good channel there is. If they showed Dr Who, that'd be it. I'd buy a TV and solder the tuning circuit closed.