You’d think that with four days off in a row you’d have logged onto the NAILS website Monday morning, clicked the link to your favorite blog, and been greeted with a shining new entry from Maggie. Instead, you checked in and noticed that she hasn’t updated the blog in a whole week now. What gives?

Well, aside from all the usual holiday frenzy of family, baking, shopping and keeping everyone’s nails dazzling in the process, this particular holiday season has piled a few extra stresses on me. Nothing I can’t handle, of course, but I’ll be so glad when life gets back to normal.

I hope everyone’s holiday was great and you had a chance to enjoy some time off. Myself, I spent two days doing the family thing and two more days just being Maggie.

For instance: The BF offered up the recent issue of Reader’s Digest a while back. It has a piece in it called “13 Things Your Hairstylist Won’t Tell You.” BF thought maybe I could adapt it to nails and post it near my desk where my clients might learn a thing or two. I finally read it this weekend. It was interesting enough to get me to go to the Reader’s Digest website and read comments. Ooooooh! I do love me some comments!

I was hoping that people in the industry would have posted a few comments, maybe got a discussion of sorts going, offering their own wisdom and all. As it turns out, not a lot of comments at all. But one was good enough to get me all riled up! (There is an entry on my personal blog about it that is worded much more bluntly than is appropriate here.) Suffice it to say some lady thinks that the $23 she’s paying her hairstylist to shampoo/cut/blow dry her hair is more than sufficient for the service and there’s no reason for her to tip her stylist on top of that. SHE retired at $18.50 an hour, so why should her hairstylist get tipped when she already makes more per hour than this lady did after years on the job?

I love people who get paid by the hour. They think that’s how it works for everyone. Like I get to keep all that money. Not only do I get to keep it, but I also make that much every hour — eight hours a day. Uh huh. That’s right, lady. I don’t have rent on my space, I don’t have to buy the products I use, I don’t have to pay for insurance, or advertising, or my cell phone, or those 20 Hershey’s Kisses you like to eat every time you come in, and I never have down time. That’s me — $30 an hour, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. Wow. With an income that easy, I shouldn’t be concerned at all about little things like having to buy my own health insurance, or planning for my own retirement. No worker’s compensation coverage? No sweat. I can totally afford that $300 a month disability insurance premium. No unemployment benies? Well, I am self-employed, so it’s not like I’ll ever lose my job anyway, right? And vacation? Not a problem. My schedule is so flexible I can just mark myself off the book for a month at a time and go sailing around the world!

It’s called a CLUE — you should get one.

Not to mention, no, tips are not necessary. But when you flake out on your appointment and want me to smile and welcome you back, I’m gonna remember if you’ve ever gone above and beyond for me. Mom calls them “brownie points” and believe me, you want to make sure you bank some if you expect your nail tech to put up with crap from you.

Hope your clients treat you better than this lady treats her hairstylist.