Maggie Rants [and Raves]

I Ain't Nobody's Stepchild

by Maggie Franklin | January 23, 2009 | Bookmark +

You know what I hate? I hate being treated as "just the manicurist."

 

It's not the clients who do this the most, it's people who are in the industry. Hairstylists, supply stores, sales reps — they just look through me like I don't exist. If I speak up, they look at me as if they can't believe I have the audacity to talk to them.

 

I've seen the sales rep from one of our local supply stores come into the salon and make her rounds and never once stop by my desk. Not even to introduce herself to me. Seems like a bad plan for someone who makes a living selling beauty supplies to salon personnel. But <shrug> whatever, right? I don't, after all, do my shopping at the local supply store.

 

I really do like our salon's Enjoy rep. He always says "hi" as he passes by my desk. Even though I don't actually know his name, at least he treats me like a professional and acknowledges my existence.

 

And then there's the lady who blew through the salon the other day.

 

This woman comes in like a whirlwind and blows right past me and up to our newest hairstylist and immediately demands to know when we're leaving.

 

Huh?

 

I guess this woman heard that we were moving and she wanted to see our building because she wants to open her own salon.

 

First off, we're not moving. Maybe someday. I don't own this salon and I'm not in charge of these things. But I do know that our salon owner doesn't own the building we are currently in and I know that she'd like to — well, I don't know if she wants to own this building, but I know she'd like to own the dirt that her salon is on. That doesn't mean we're moving. So I'm not sure why this woman came in under the impression that we were packing up already.

 

But, <shrug> whatever, right?

 

Well, our newest stylist has only been working at our salon for a few months now and I notice she has this deer-in-the-headlights look on her face — probably because our visitor seems to be half-mad. This woman was incoherent.

 

Well it turned out that the strange women currently works at the same salon that our newest hairstylist just moved from — the same salon that all the hairstylists used to work out long ago, so everyone knows each other. And apparently there's drama (There's ALWAYS drama in the salon biz!). And now she's hell bent for leather to open her own place and somehow (ex-owners club, put your drink down now so it doesn't come out your nose) opening her own salon is going to make everything better.

 

Thing is, I tried to get this woman's attention. I tried to ask her a few questions. After all, I've owned a salon before (BTW, our salon owner was off work at the time the lady came in). I could have helped her out, answered some questions, at least given her some information that would have helped her deal with some of the drama she's having where she works now. But NOOOOOOOOOO. She looked at me like I called her some horrible thing, like I was completely out of line for daring to address her directly. As I recall, she actually, audibly, snorted at me before blowing back out the door in the whirlwind that had brought her in.

 

She left our hairstylists all shaking their heads a bit, but she left me insulted beyond words. How rude.

 

I'm tired of being the red-headed stepchild of the salon industry. I'm a professional too. I had to go to school, take my state board, and I have to sit at my desk and work all day and put up with whatever sits across from me day in and day out and I do not understand how it ever came to be that manicurists aren't considered every bit as essential to the business as anyone else in it.

 

Well, <shrug> whatever, right?

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