One of my favorite places in the world is the hair salon. While that wasn't always the case during my long-haired teens, when I was a kid I loved my barber. Bill was a great guy. It made enough sense by the time I turned 10 to hear what I asked for in the form of a haircut and what my mother told him to do. And for the most part, we were both happy with the results, even though my mother had an abnormal obsession with me for not having a blast, but that is beside the point. It also didn't hurt that I had one of those outdated coke machines and I got a penny to get a bottle of soda after I cut my hair. Of course, this was in the days when the family service station still ruled the field. And fast markets and corporate gas monoliths and supermarkets weren't too far from the cities.
Over time, my childhood barber reduced his hours. He had had a long and successful career and was a one-chair store in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania. Finally, I went to school and by the time I got back, he had completely withdrawn. I had to go find someone else to cut my hair.
Since I had a few extra bucks in my pocket, I tried some of the classy salons. Of course they had these wonderful sofas, candles and all these other luxury services. All of which was good, all of which added revenue and margin to their businesses, but that's not why I showed up there in the first place. Not unlike many customers in the world, he knew what he wanted. I was listening to new ideas, but at the end of the day I had a very good idea of what my problem was. In this case, my hair was getting long and tousled and I only have three evil locks on the front of my head. So I'm the type of man who knows how he wants his hair cut. I am not looking for a new style and color. I don't care if I'm trendy or cool. I knew what I wanted, I tried to communicate it clearly and it never resulted in repeatable output. They would be too concerned with the art of their profession. It wasn't as if my hair was cut; I just didn't get what I wanted. After a few years in places like this, I took the chain mall make sure that the haircut accentuates your facial features.
There are places to chain hair cut everywhere. They cost much less than the elegant salons. Instead of stuffed sofas, there are plastic chairs in the waiting room. The list of additional services was limited, but all I wanted was a good haircut in my own way. Unfortunately, despite being easy to find, abundant, and well priced, the quality of his work was unpredictable. As a customer, not knowing what to expect is simply frustrating and not good customer service. I could never find the same person twice in a row. There was no consistency. The poor children who cut their hair there were new. New is not exactly bad. But even though they had a license to hang on the wall, most had just finished school in recent years. There is nothing wrong with being new, we have all been at one time or another. Like many people who have just finished school, they had the basic idea of what to do, but lacked the experience of how to refine things. There was no mentor there to help them along the way. No one really trained, who could offer a vision and an experienced perspective.
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