At the end of the day, I still have lots of stuff to do around the salon. Sometimes I have to write a blog entry, or catch up with social media, or resize and watermark a bunch of photos. There’s vacuuming and dusting and changing disinfectant. General cleaning and organizing to be ready to open the doors and welcome clients the next day.

Sometimes I just have a bunch of stuff that I want to do that didn’t get done any other time because there wasn’t time. Sometimes I want to catch up with a totally non-industry-related forum or website. Sometimes I want to watch Netflix. Sometimes I just want to sit at my desk in the solitude and stare out the windows.

Sometimes I need to count money, write checks, balance checkbooks, and make all sorts of notes about the clients I’ve seen through the day in their client files.

These are all things that keep me here for a half an hour or more after “closing” time. The business may close when the last client leaves, but the business day isn’t over just because there are no more clients.

Throughout the years, this has been a problem between me and a variety of boyfriends, family members, and friends.

But mostly, I have a hard time with the clients. So many clients want to stick around with me at the end of their appointment.

“Am I your last one today?”

“Yep.”

“Oh good. I’ll just wait and walk out with you.”

Except I’m not walking out anytime soon. If a client feels better having me walk her to her car, fine. But I’m not leaving yet. I’ll walk her down and then come back to the salon. I have stuff to do! Quite often, stuff that I don’t exactly feel comfortable doing with/in front of my clients. Like counting money.

I don’t like to push people out the door. I like to let them sit and simmer. Decompress. Relax. Whatever reason they have for dallying is fine. But there’s a point where I find myself sighing and squirming a lot and trying to find tactful ways of saying, “Um. You need to go now. I have stuff to get done.”