I was getting a consultation from Michael when he kept dragging his comb across the top of my glasses. The second time he did that, I brought it up to him. He wasn't embarrassed. He didn't apologize. He told me I needed to leave. That's a pretty amazing way to deal with YOUR lack of coordination. He's obviously done stuff like that before because he immediately turned to other people who happened to be around and started dealing with them as if I wasn't there. I was left saying, ""That was not necessary,"" over and over because I couldn't think of anything else to say. He smoothly ignored me. Practice makes perfect? If you are a hairdresser, it might be good to develop the skills not to drag your comb over someone's glasses or to apologize if you do, OR you can just kick the person out, I guess.
Before that, he informed me that I had ""thin"" hair, although it is twice as thick as the average person's. It is three times as thick as his own hair.
He started the consultation by telling me what he would do to my hair if he had carte blanche. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. I would have liked him to ask me what I wanted. He said he wanted to give me the hair cut Julia Roberts had in the nineties, when it was long red and curly. I had that cut. It was a good cut on a young woman in it's time. Although he did say that was the cut he wanted to do, it's possible that he actually wanted to do a more face-framing, ringletty cut, which would have been o.k, maybe. There seemed to be a lot of communication difficulties which didn't need to be there. I had wanted to have me telling him how I wanted my current cut adjusted but that didn't happen.
Before that, I had talked to his partner, Steven about coloring my hair with less toxic hair dye I was to bring in. I was already using this dye for four months. He said he would do it but he ""wouldn't be responsible for the results."" Then he said it two more times. Then he said that HIS colors were professional. When I said I liked the color I used because it was ammonia and perfume free, he said that natural hair dye is a myth and there were no ammonia free colors out there. Experienced, professional colorists have a lot of knowledge, but I have found that there are also things that they do not know. The hair color I use HAS been ammonia-free for decades and there IS natural herbal hair dye/henna. Steven didn't know if his own colors were perfume free. That's not unusual, but it is regrettable, because a certain percentage of the population is allergic to fragrances. This whole thing with hair dressers being unhelpful with fragrance allergies and less-toxic dyes is common, but it costs them money. I understood that he wasn't responsible for the results of my dye job if he followed the instructions properly, but I was hoping for someone I would enjoy working with. My hair color looked pretty good and it was sitting right in front of him so it's hard to see who was being helped by the attitude. Not him.
I can't say if the skills are or are not there at this salon. You can't separate that from temperament and communication issues, which seem to be a huge problem.
I wish I'd never gone to this place. Ick!
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