Musings…

Over last weekend I had a pretty horrific experience with a hair salon. Late last Saturday, I had a little bit too much time in my hands and being stuck around the SS2 area, I found myself loitering in of all places, Atrium, after Mr Smartypants told me it was the way to go if I had a few hours to kill. Unfortunately, I finished coursing through every corner of Atrium within 15 minutes – there was nary anything interesting to see at all.

Alas.

So I thought, I needed a hair treatment pretty badly because after gallivanting under the sun and in sea water in Phuket two weeks back, my highlights were quite so wracked.

            I scouted around for a bit, and in the end, passed by this salon that had a few of its workers standing out in front of its door, beckoning potential customers to come in. Hmhh, a good marketing gimmick, I thought, as the lady explained about what I could do and checked at a few strands of my curls. And it didn’t cross my mind at all that the only reason they were standing outside was because there was hardly any customers at all inside. Being in the cosmetic/ haircare line, I thought, how wrong could it get? I just need them to slap some treatment cream on my hair and put it under the steamer and walla, I was done for!

            Boy, was I wrong. As soon as I sat down, I had shampoo poured onto my scalp as though to trap me from leaving. We haven’t even discussed about which treatment I was going to take. And I haven’t discussed if I wanted to have it done here! This feminine guy came out and explained in his long winded way about something called the color treatment. It was 3X more expensive than the normal treatment for damaged hair. After contemplating for a while, I declined. Didn’t need a color treatment, I told him, since I was planning to get another highlight soon. The man didn’t look pleased and handed me over to this young Malay girl, who told me she just ruined her own hair a day ago because she over-timed the rebonding treatment. Oh, very reassuring indeed.

            And so the treatment cream was applied none too gently, and the steamer used. Soon, it was time to rinse and style before I could be on my way. Sadly, that was not to be. The lady apparently did not know how to style wavy hair, could you believe that? She COMBED my hair with a small-toothed comb for chrissake! And then, she was blowing with the hairdryer as though I had straight hair. So I told her, no, you’ve got to use some styling gel and crunch from the bottom up. Halfway through that, Mr Feminine arrived and started to take over. It was so obvious they were chasing for time because the girl told me they closed for the day at seven and it was already 745.

            Oh, Mr Feminine, he was NOT gentle at all, I tell you. This crazy **** pulled here and twisted there as though he was playing with a mop instead of a human head. While working, he asked the Malay girl to join in. “Follow what I’m doing,” he said. And she did. Only she was this SLOW learner who couldn’t adapt what she saw. So in the end, she styled small curls for me on the right side of my head, while the man styled big waves on the left side of my head. I was livid when he even had the cheek to ask me to check how it was in the mirror when it was all over. Like was he blind? Or downright retarded? I had a lion’s mane, the curls were all so blown out of proportion. Not only that, right side was small curls and left was big wave.

            Seeing my reaction, he had me wash off all the styling cream at the back to restyle again. To cut a long story short, we went through that FOUR f88king times before I lost my cool and started to show my ogre face and growled so hard even he balked. Ok, I did not growl. But imagine this, by then, I had been in the salon for 2 hours for a treatment that only took 15 minutes. I was freezing so much because the Atrium Management decided to switch the centralized air conditioning to Arctic mode. And I was fuming angry. Mr Feminine would not even oblige with shampooing and conditioning my hair even though I asked him. The idiot put enough styling gel on my head to kill an entire colony of ants! The strands were so hard and sharp they were enough to poke through a marshmallow I swear to God. And he was so rough that half my hair ended up on the floor instead of revitalized.

            In the end, I had to restyle my own hair, standing up to do the work with water dripping down my clothes to make my blood freeze more. I was nagging a lot and was so irritated I couldn’t even express myself properly because it was so cold my teeth were chattering and my facial muscles were twitching beyond my control! Ranting mad, I asked for a discount and that fool had the cheek to tell me, normal price applies. For his wretched lousy ass DISservice and unprofessionalism, I had to pay him the normal price. If I were younger and bolder, I would have told him to his face to have a stick up his arse. Incompetent fool, I hope your business fold up! I gave him the eye, used milder words of course but something that had the same acidity, flipped my dead hair and walked off. So much for a treatment when all the blowing and drying and rewashing and restyling have negated the effect!!

            So truly, if any of you are around the area and are thinking to do anything at all with your hair, be it style or treat or cut, watch out for this signboard WAYPOINT STYLISTS. Once you see it, pick up your socks and bolt hundred miles and hour in the opposite direction. Even if you totally have nothing to do in Atrium and wanted to kill off hours like I did last Saturday, and even if all the other hair salons are closed, refrain please. Otherwise, you’d learn the meaning of the saying “idle mind breeds evil” very intimately, and that I guarantee.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.