A Bad Hair Day Made Me Call Into Work

Bad hair days get the best of us all. It’s especially trying when you don’t have a backup plan like a nice wig* laying around, or your hair just isn’t quite long enough to fit in a ponytail. Double this with a bad hair day on a work day and it’s enough to make you cringe. But has it ever been so bad that you were forced to call into work sick out of embarrassment because your hair just wouldn’t cooperate?

*hides face in shame* It has happened to me. I had just taken out my neck length bob sew-in and was ready to reveal my natural hair. I finally made the decision to go natural months before, only I didn’t big chop, I was transitioning from a pixie cut. Now you may be wondering, why would you transition at such a short style? It would’ve been nothing to chop those few relaxed inches that were left, right? Well for me this was a no.

I thought taking baby steps would be a lot easier than taking the full plunge. In hindsight, oh how I was wrong! I was curly in the back and on the sides, and holding on to the length of my relaxed ends up top. I did a trial run on Friday of a perm rod set and it worked, so I wanted to do a fresh one Sunday night so it would look perfect for my big reveal at work on Monday.

Monday morning came, and with only 60 minutes to get up and out the door to work, I stared at my hair in the mirror. I removed all of the perm rods* only to find that every last one of my curls were still damp. The natural areas were fine but the relaxed portion of my hair looked stringy and a hot mess. I tried putting on a headband*, pinning parts down, I even so much went to blow dry and try to curl with an itty bitty curling iron*, but it wouldn’t mesh with my natural coils.

I cried, grew anxious and knew there was no way I could show up to work like this so I called in sick. I took the entire day to restyle my hair and made my big reveal happen the following day which was a success. Needless to say, I ended up chopping off all of my relaxed ends soon thereafter due to all of the fuss and problems it gave rise to.

Have you ever called into work sick due to a bad hair day?