Knitting to the Rescue

 I was determined that I was going to get my hair cut today. It's been a while and my hair had reached that awful too-long-to-style-but-not-long-enough-to-pull-back stage. For the past two weeks I've been stopping by to see if my usual stylist was around. (I use the word "usual" with a very broad definition, since she's only cut my hair once but I really liked the way it turned out.) I probably should have just made an appointment except (1) this isn't a fancy enough place to have an appointment book (okay, I confess -- it's a Walmart location) and (2) I don't have a clue what her name was because I lost the slip of paper I jotted it down on.

So, this morning when I didn't see her I was feeling horrible enough that I took a chance on the stylist that was there. Without even taking time to watch him cut someone else's hair to find out if he was any good. But he seemed nice.

Even a child knows better than to trust a stranger just because he seems nice. My haircut turned out horrible. Not just horrible, but oh-my-gosh-who-attacked-you-and-are-they-in-jail horrible. And if it wasn't bad enough to have one of the world's worst haircuts, he charged me a fortune for it. I take that back. He only charged me $16 for the haircut. Which is what I expected to pay. (And for $16, I truly didn't have that high of expectations -- and yet it still turned out really far below them.) But then he charged me $30 for blow drying it. What?! Really?! The explanation was that it cost so much because he had to use the metal round brush.

Being me, I paid him without too much of a fuss. Although I was mean enough to only give him a small tip. (Sigh. I still can't believe I tipped him at all. Although I did feel I was being very mean with the small tip.) Then I went home and cried. But after a while I managed to get up enough mad to call the manager, who naturally wasn't around. So I called the national headquarters. And they called the manager. Who called the store. Who called me and asked me to come back in so that they could fix it. So I did.

And they tried. Of course, first I had to have a long phone conversation with the manager about the charge to dry my hair, since that really was a legitimate charge -- if my hair was long and thick. Unfortunately, the longest (random) pieces were less than 2". Once we got that figured out, they refunded the entire cost and tried to restyle my hair. My hair is now extremely short, and still horrible. But I'm feeling a little bit better since I didn't pay almost $50 to look this bad. Plus I've cast on an Emergency Hat using a skein of my handspun yarn and I think I can get it finished before I have to go out in public again.