Bad hair day

Last night I took my daughter to Great Clips to get our hair cut. While we were waiting for our turn, my attention was caught by the owner, Millie, and her customer. She asked the usual question, in her Russian accent, “How would you like your hair cut?” He replied, “Just make it look good!” in a loud voice which caused me to look up.

Then she asked, “How short do you want it?”

“Don’t you have procedures?” he asked.

“Yes, we have procedures that we follow,” she said. “But I need to know what you want.”

“I just want it to look like I haven’t just had a haircut,” he said.

After a few more snips, he said, “I feel like I’m being shorn.”

Then she asked how short he wanted his sideburns cut. He indicated where he wanted them cut.

Another man was waiting his turn for a haircut. He was checking his smart phone.

When Millie was finished, the customer said it was too short and the sideburns weren’t right.

She said, “If you are not satisfied, you don’t have to pay.” “Well, you smell like cigarettes and this looks like an east European haircut!” he said. “You don’t have to pay for it,” she said. “And I don’t want you to come back!”After a few more exchanges, he quickly left. He was a nice looking man in his 30s, with a nice haircut and was wearing an Air Force T-shirt.

I told my daughter, “he’s racist.” The man with the phone said he noticed the irate customer drove off in a vehicle with government license plates. I said he was pretty particular over a $10 haircut.

The guy did not like her accent, whether it was because she was Russian in particular or an immigrant in general.

Millie went to the back for a few minutes and then called out the next customer, my daughter. “I’m trembling,” Millie said. “This is bad for my blood pressure.”

I said, “He was sure rude.” “We have 30,000 customers,” she said. “About three a year are dissatisfied and that is usually because they want it a little shorter. I should have cut off his ear for my collection and said ‘that is how we do an east European haircut!’ ‘You don’t like it?’” The other customers and I laughed. And she laughed.

After my daughter got her hair cut, the man with the phone got in Millie’s chair.

I was sitting in the next stall getting a trim.

I noticed when the man with the phone was done with his haircut, he gave Millie a hug before he left.