When I first moved to California, I had made a detour in my life and gone through Georgia. The water is really hard there and I was all punk rock anyway, so my hair was kind of dreaded up, but not really with a design. And I hadn’t had a professional haircut in many years at the time and hadn’t had any haircut in a while. So I was staying with friends who lived walking distance from the Jose Ebere salon in Orange County. Which I walked over to. The folks at Jose Ebere looked at me kind of dubiously, but I have never accepted the idea that my identity means I don’t get service, so they had to see it my way. A guy named Thierry took my disaster of a hairstyle and made it all sleek and California and exactly what I wanted at the time. So I’ve had Thierry cut my hair for the past 13 years, even after I was not staying anywhere near the salon, sometimes coming from as far away as Las Vegas to have him work his magic.
Unfortunately Vidal Sassoon bought out the Jose Ebere salon in Orange County. Once they took offer, the shampoos I got became really lackadaisical, which bothered me, but Thierry still did a true artist’s job on my hair. He would get every little bit to fall just right and it would look so good when it moved or when I was still. So I kept going to him, although I did get my blowouts at a place in Koreatown.
Only the last time I went to Thierry, my haircut came out totally messed up. Parts of my hair are literally a half a foot or a bit more different in length. And I’m not talking layering, but like a bizarre shelf where my hair is two different lengths in back. This leads to intense snarling and getting the horrible tangles out pulls out more of my hair than I am pleased about. And it is super difficult to style. Ironically, this last visit Vidal Sassoon finally had an assistant for him who gave good shampoos again.
So, after a few weeks of trying to figure out the new cut, I called up Vidal Sassoon and told them I was unhappy. I wasn’t sure if I just needed some tips on what product to style the current style with or if I wanted Thierry to fix it or someone in the Beverly Hills location, which is closer to me, or if I wanted my money back. Only I got this horrible woman named Adrianna was really snappish with me. She told me that there was no product on earth which would work to make my hair look right, in the same breath that she told me that Thierry certainly had not made any error, and I was probably just a poor communicator. I realize that Thierry’s first language is French, but he did a beyond fabulous job for thirteen years and we never had any trouble communicating before. Not only that, but she was able to repeat to me, from Thierry, what I had asked for — but not gotten — during my visit. She kind of accused me of just having some sort of scam for a free haircut, even though (a) I have never ever had my hair cut at a three week interval in my life and (b) who the heck would go to the same place for thirteen years, tipping high all the while, as part of a plot to some day scam them for a free haircut at an interval they don’t want their hair cut in? In a concret way, Adrianna told me I couldn’t go to the Beverly Hills location, but I could come back into the Costa Mesa location and get my hair fixed by either Thierry or anyone else there I wanted. Only she was so unpleasant that I decided not to. Thierry is normally brilliant and I have no idea what happened in this one instance, other than that Vidal Sassoon could stand to work on their management training, and I can’t trust that I will get a brilliant haircut next time.
Then my blowout stylist moved back to Korea.
So today I go to get a haircut at a new place, where I will hopefully be able to get blowouts as well. I am super nervous. Super super nervous. I really hope it works out. Soooooooo anxious.