My Hair Salon Nightmare: Scissor Happy and Rough

A few weeks ago I decided to go to the same hair salon that my sister frequently visits to get her natural hair blown out. It had been a while since my hair had been trimmed by a professional (I usually trim my own hair), so I figured why not? A nice trim and a blow out would be nice. I don’t get my hair blown out often, last time was 4 years ago and I wanted a change.

Normally, I’d steer clear of a Dominican hair salon because I’ve had bad experiences in the past. However, since my sister visited the salon and her hair always looked great after, I decided to give them a shot.

Before I go any further, let me say that my hair needed a lot of TLC. Although healthy, I have naturally very dry hair that soaks up everything it touches. This is why I do weekly deep conditions and hot oil treatments. It’s what my parched hair needs.

My hair also tangles easily and shrinks very quickly. In order for my hair to retain length, I detangle with my fingers while it’s sopping wet with conditioner. This eliminates breakage for me and I’m not ripping through tangles with a comb or paddle brush*. Like I said previously, I usually trim my own hair twisting my hair in small sections and snipping off frizzy ends and stray hairs sticking out of the twists with my sheers.

This has worked well for me for years now, so I’m not sure why I had the bright idea of going to a hair salon to get this done. Keep in mind, I had already lightly trimmed my ends a month before my salon visit.

Red flag number one was when I sat down at the wash bowl and the woman started washing my hair aggressively with shampoo that was in an unmarked bottle. What exactly is in that bottle? No one knew.

They just knew that it was shampoo. Next, a different woman asked me if I wanted a deep conditioning* treatment. My response was, ABSOLUTELY! The lady put a thin and runny conditioner on my head and sat me under a dryer. I already knew what was going to happen next.

Like I said, my hair soaks up everything it touches so I knew that it had already soaked up this runny no-name conditioner. I felt my hair under the dryer and it had already started drying because my hair wasn’t saturated enough. I tried to tell someone, but I was met with stares and head nods.

Soon after I was taken from under the dryer, a woman rinsed my hair. I was moved to a chair where I sat for 15 minutes before someone could blow dry my hair. Big mistake. When my hair is free and without product, it dries fast. Have you ever had someone try to blow dry  kinky* natural hair AFTER it has already started drying. It’s terrible.

The tugging, the pulling, and constant cry to get the stylist to stop, is frustrating. I’ve come to the conclusion that some (not all) stylists will refuse to listen to anything you have to say about your own head of hair.

After my hair was dry, they proceeded to flat iron*. After flat ironing, they went over my hair again with a blow dryer*, then flat ironed again. This was way too much heat, but I had gotten so deep into the process that I let the stylist finish.

After all of this heat and zero moisture, the stylist proceeded to tell me that my hair was “very dry”. This is something that I tried to explain to them before hand. In order for my end results to look fabulous, you have to follow a certain process or my hair will look super parched.

Next, the stylist called a different woman over to trim my ends as I had requested. This was odd to me and I was wondering why every stylist in the salon didn’t know how to trim ends.

I told the woman who was assigned to trim my hair that I didn’t need it trimmed too much because it had been lightly trimmed a month prior. She looked at my hair, agreed with me and then proceeded to cut.

The end result of that trim was horrifying. Hair that was bra strap length was now at my neck. I couldn’t believe I was missing that much hair and my sister looked at me with just as much horror.

What was supposed to be a day of fabulous hair, wound up being a day of disappointment and bun wearing. I wasn’t going for the bob look, but that’s what I ended up with.

Could I have caused an uproar at the salon? Sure. However, that wouldn’t have made my hair grow back any faster. Not to mention, me being at the salon when my hair was already well taken care of, was totally my fault.

I should have just stuck to what was working and left it alone. You live and you learn and that was my lesson. From now on, if I decide to go to a hair salon, it will be one that specializes in natural hair and one that I can observe before committing to an appointment. SMH!