Hair salon hell

AKA, why my hair isn’t blond anymore 🙁

Have you ever seen a great deal at Groupon for haircare and thought, “heck ya, what a deal!”? How bad could it be? I’m here to tell you that some cost savings ideas are just not worth it.

Case in point: highlights at the local hair school!

I do get a little bit irked (or maybe confused?) when my quarterly visit to my salon ends up having varying charges. I mean, I always get the same thing, from the same stylist – partial highlights. Why does the price differ? Even so, she does the best job ever and my color ends up looking consistent.

But I was wooed in by a really good deal at Groupon. Disclaimer, this was a service at a salon school.  I’d never been to one.  Why not give it a try?  My first red flag was when the foils took forever to put in. Then I realized this student had probably never done foils before. She was not good at it. I knew I’d get a “level 1” student, but I thought they’d be a little more skilled!

When it was time to check the foils, the teacher/manager notes how my foils did not sit close to my scalp, so she moved them and started putting more color on to match up the part that didn’t get colored yet. This is a big red flag to me because the original color has already been sitting on my hair, developing.  At this point I’m certain the two sections of color are not going to match!

After waiting for the color to process, I started to hear talk of “toner”. I’m no stylist, but to me, toner is used to fix color issues. Ugh.  My regular stylist never talks about toner.

My hair has red tones to it (my brother has red hair!) and if the color isn’t left on long enough, it turns orange. Ewww.  While shampooing I hear the manager say something about my hair being stubborn, and they run to get something else to put in it while they are waiting for the color to lighten up.

When I get out of shampoo, she starts to blow dry. It’s taking a million hours. I next learn that her wrist hurts and eventually the manager starts drying my hair. Manager says it “looks good!”  WTF.  Really?

My hair is clearly orange looking all over now and looks hideous. I say, it looks bad!!

Manager suggests she puts dark lowlights into it so it has “dimension”. Ok, could it really get any worse??  I agree that would improve the situation.

Another freaking 1/2 hour of waiting for hair color to develop again. This sucks. I didn’t plan on spending the whole afternoon at the salon and now it was going on 3 1/2 hours to get my hair looking like crap!

By the time the lowlights get washed out, I’ve been there almost 4 hours.  The manager and the student blow dry my hair simultaneously.  I think we all just want me to be out of there at this point.  The manager asks if I’d like my hair flat ironed.  Uh no, I just want to leave.

When I’m checking out (by a different person), I’m told my charge is $16 more than the Groupon.  WHA???  I explained that my hair had to be corrected and I wasn’t going to pay for extra color.  Since the “right person” wasn’t around to discuss the bill, I agreed to just pay $8 for the toner and left.

What a day!  I’m not saying all services, or students, at a salon school are bad by any means, but my student really needed some more lessons.  We were a very bad match.  I kid you not, she did not even say one thing to me the whole time.  She needs to work on her “small talk” game too.

My family said they barely even noticed the color difference.  They were being kind.  You be the judge.  Me, just a few weeks ago….

Me, today….

It looks even more red in my basement!!  Oh, woe is me!!

On a good note, my hair was so light, the color will probably just fade in a few weeks.  Probably.  And I saved enough money [which was quickly spent on triathlon shorts.  bahaha!].

************************************************

Q:  Have any bad hair stories to share??

Q:  Do you have regular appointments at the hair salon?

I wait until I can’t stand my color anymore and then I call for an appointment pronto!

Q:  Do you use Groupons?

I used to use them a lot, but haven’t as much recently.  Love the deals for dining!