One day when I was…8 or 9, my mom was getting her hair done. She didn’t want to leave me at home, so she told me to just bring my iPad and keep myself entertained.

Now, I have no idea why I remembered this just now, or why I remembered it at all. But I did, so this is what happened.

A girl, probably 15 or 16 and her mom come in. The mom goes first, gets her hair cut and whatever. The daughter goes up, and I’m sitting near them so I can hear their conversation.

The girl asked for two inches off. A simple request, very easy job, right?

Apparently not.

So while this lady is getting her stuff ready she’s making comments about how this girl would look good with a bob. Mind you, she had hair down to her ass.

The lady gets started and everything is going normal, until the girls phone goes off and she starts texting with her friends.

The hairdresser then takes the opportunity and cuts a giant chunk of this girls hair off, at about her chin.

Long story short, the girl cried while she got the bob cut the hairdresser so desperately wanted, and they left without paying.

I’m surprised they didn’t throw hands, because if someone did that to me or someone in my family, they’re getting some free eyeshadow. Purple or black, depending on how hard I hit.

My ‘friend’ started her own salon and complained she wasn’t getting many customers. I thought, that as a friend, I could help her out by getting my hair done by her.

She offered to add highlights to my hair.

I agreed.

I am Indian by descent and have thick black hair which was a little past shoulder length. Since I’d never gotten anything done to my hair, no chemical treatments etc, she said she would lighten my hair a little so it would look brownish in certain places but not too much. No color added.

I went on the day of the appointment and she put bleach and foil on selected parts of my hair and then started talking around her husband problems. She even turned my chair away from the mirror so I was facing her while she talked at me.

And she talked.

And she talked.

By then my scalp was burning and I told her.

She said, “It’s just the bleach. Wait.”

I was also getting a a little late for my other appointment and told her firmly, I need to leave soon. Let’s wash this off. She shrugged, turned my chair around and then I saw there was something almost steam like coming up from my head. WTF

She must have seen my expression since she took the foil off, clumps of my hair coming off and washed it hurriedly in the sink. Then she toweled my head and rolled me in front of the mirror.

“What do you think?”

My hair was yellow—straw yellow, not blond, certainly not brown, but yellow and so dry it was sticking out like straw. I looked like a scarecrow.

“You said it would be brown,” I said.

“Oh, that’s after I color your hair now.” Then she offered me a palette of colors with prices on them. I was to buy it off her apparently.

I paid for the bleach and left, my scalp still itching, my hair like straw, half wet, not even blow dried. Not another word spoken

I trimmed my hair short and it grew back black after about three months. That salon closed down soon after. Lack of customers.

p.s. this didn’t happen in America.

Of all the mistakes I have made before, this one could have easily avoided.

I was in Miami and I booked an appointment for a haircut in July. Mind you, this is in the middle of the pandemic but I had to get it done because I was having tremendous hairfall (probably the water or weather did not suit me).

I made it to the salon and showed the young woman a picture of the haircut I desired.

The woman set one of her hairdressers to work. This was an old lady who looked like she had been hired to keep the salon clean. Something about her seemed like she did not know a lick of haircutting. When she held the scissors, I saw her observe it and shift it between hands. Red flag #1.

Next, she proceeded to spray my hair with water and she went on for a long time. My hair had started to drip water by now. You know how sometimes you want the movie to last longer so you can avoid working? Same thing. Red flag #2.

Finally, she started cutting my hair and oh what a performance it was. She moved my hair everywhere and cut my hair straight in the ends. Red flag #3

When it was done, I looked a lot like:

My dad called me an expensive lampshade.

Edit: Some of you thought I was upset about the 'length' of my hair but, trust me, I wasn't. What irritated me more was the fact that my head looked like a triangle.

Hello! Random person on the internet!!

Okay, so I went to this barber for the first time and he didn’t really know how to work with my hair. So I told him to give me faded undercut and get my hair to be a little shorter so it could be styled into a fauxhawk (or fo-hawk, if you're from other places where they call it so), and then I sat on the chair. He told me to just relax and that he had got it all perfect. After I was told to get up and check it out, my hair was 1.5 inches long. I got furious, but told him nothing, because I’m a guy of peace. I asked him if he knew what a fauxhawk was, and he replied, “ Something like all your hair being up in the air”, and then I lost it and slammed the 20 Australian bucks on the table and stormed out.

But I grew it out afterwards and now I have hair that is long enough to be in a man-bun, but I usually keep it all to the side, which looks pretty cool.

In college, I got my eyebrows waxed at the place I normally went to, but my regular stylist wasn’t there so another woman did it. The wax was way too hot and burned my skin— peeling off the top layer—leaving me red and raw and irritated. Ouch!!! She did a really bad job shaping my brows, too. Over a decade later, I still have faint scars where she applied that molten hot wax.

I called the salon afterward to complain. I hope that lady got fired but I never found out, because I started going to a different salon after that!

Ive had other bad experiences, too. The last time I got my hair cut, I asked for “just a trim” and the stylist gave me layers! Ugh. She had actually asked me if I wanted layers at the beginning of our session and I said no, so she trimmed my hair, then blow dried it… and afterward, ***for some f@$king unknown reason, got all scissor happy and started hacking away. I was horrified when I saw she had randomly chopped several inches of hair off on one side but I was too timid to say anything, and walked out of the salon with layers I didn’t even ask for — and to top it off, left side layers weren’t even with the right side. Grr.

My experience wasn't bad, just annoying. My hair was about chest length and I wanted to get it cut to shoulder length. The stylist kept telling me I wasn't going to like it. I kept telling her “It's fine. Just cut it.” After having this back and forth between us, she then held up some of my hair with her scissors in hand. She said “Are you sure you want me to cut it? Once it’s gone, it's gone.” Again I said “Yes, it's fine.” She said “Ok, but you're not going to like it.” I was getting aggravated by this stylist. So I told her, which was true, “I've had a pixie cut before. So you cutting my hair to shoulder length is no big deal.” She said “Really? You've had a pixie cut?” I said “Yeah. I've had lots of different hairstyles.” She said “Oh, I thought you were one of those people who never cuts their hair.” I didn't like her and she didn't do that great of job cutting my hair. I found it incredibly annoying that she just wouldn't cut my hair. Just give me the haircut I want. I don't need your two cents. Even if I was somebody who never cuts their hair, which in that case my hair would've been a lot longer than just chest length, it's not your decision how I want my hair cut.

Back in college, I went to the barber that I had be going to for years. This was the time of the Beatles, with their long hair.

I told the barber that I wanted my hair cut so that it would come down to my shoulders. I was reading a magazine, so I was not paying attention to what he was doing.

When he was finished, I looked in the mirror and saw that he had cut my hair short. I confronted him about the hair cut and he replied that he did not like long hair on men.

I was so angry that I left the barbershop without paying him and did not get another haircut for five and a half years.

My hair is wavy, but when it was wet, it came down to my waist.

Here some pictures after about four years into my rebellion

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One day my mother decided I was now old enough to have my hair professionally cut and took me to the place where she normally had hers done.

The moment we stepped inside, a hairdresser who was very recently hired exclaimed, “What beautiful hair, I simply must be the one to cut it!”.

I was preferring not to have my hair cut at all, but my mother wanted it done and she was the one paying the bill.

As the hairdresser began she told a story of how she had been unjustifiedly fired from a previous hair salon and had everyone including her new employer believing she had been falsely accused of deliberately ruining the hair of the clients of her previous employer.

She finished her work on me with a whole can of hair spray “free of charge”.

After a few days I washed my hair and my mother saw what I could not. A whole chunk of hair the size of a human fist was undeniably missing from the back of my head.

I then remembered what the hairdresser claimed she had been falsely accused of but dispite the arguments we had in the past about whether or not to let my hair grow my mother refused to believe I wouldn't take scissers to my own hair like that.

The second time it visibly looked like she cut too much off. When I mentioned that she dismissively said I “moved”, and I had most certainly did not but was afraid to say anything, especially after she repeated what she did before that afterwards, a whole can of hairspray free of charge, beginning as before, right in my face and having me repeatedly coughing til the can was empty.

When the damage became visible as before we had the same argument.

The argument that no trained professional would put her career at risk just to mess with my hair prevailed, as it was just average hair and didn't stand out as anything to be targeted.

Which only made it sound even more odd that she would, especially after exclaiming how beautiful it was, which evidentially had her listened to when she asked my mother to always make sure she was the one to cut my hair.

I seriously didn't want to go back a third time but I was still a child with no way to stop it.

This time I watched her very carefully, and saw her look around before grabbing another handful and chopping it off in a way that had nothing to do with the triming pattern she was only pretending to do.

“She did it again, Mom.” was all I said and my mother said I needed to stop crying wolf. It wasn't logical for so many people to be targeting me.

Meanwhile the woman in question stood smiling demurely as my mother defended her.

That's when I realized I had been actually targeted, a lot. When people who are trouble for children see a child who is not being listened to they target that child. Not for the size of the target but for the ease of said target.

I didn't know why a (presumedly) trained professional would do it, only that she had been evidently doing it since the job she had been fired from before, so there was nothing more I knew to say that would have changed anything, since I was just a child and not the one paying the bill.

Everytime I said something happened to me, sometimes right then in the same room, it only got the wrong kind of attention.

So I became silent, not because “good little girls don't complain”, but out of the instinct to survive.

Then my mother brought me back for a fourth haircut, only to be told she had been let go because of complaints from the other customers.

That's when I saw a chance to be heard and repeated the total of our conversations concerning those haircuts to my mother, much to the concern of the owner of the beauty salon still right there; but I knew if I didn't speak of it now it would never get a chance to be heard again.

My mother gave me a bewidered look, and said, “You never told me that.”

That's when I saw how tired my mother looked and realized why.

She had always been a good mother, but unfortunately for me that had placed her in huge demand with other adults that mentality just wouldn't grow up, with me all to often the only real child in the room who saw how they treated her.

My mother had been the one actually falling through the cracks and I had been the pesky little kid who kept seeing it and was not to be listened to.

As for the hairdresser, I never learned how she turned out, but I'd say she was a prime example of the real reason some people are unemployable.

Fortunately for me I wasn't born until after my mother was married to my father.

The worst memory I have had in a hair salon, was the memory of my reflection in the mirror before me. Namely, my face! A salonist at a JC Penney salon, fried my hair after a perm…back when perms were popular. Not only did my hair fry and fly…my face was the picture perfect of sheer horror. I couldn’t even wait on my tears. All of a sudden I broke out in shoulder heaving sobs. The poor salonist stood by me in shock…okay you know it’s bad when they don’t offer a mirror, a spin around and sugar coat their way out. She was rendered speechless for a moment. Me..well, poor girl..after I recovered, I really couldn’t be too mad at her for too long. Shit happens:( sure she didn’t mean to do it and hair grows back:( It wasn’t going to help me by destroying her! After getting the salon manager, they made it as right as they could. That was the end of my perm experiences and idk, maybe that day in that salon, her and I made them unpopular and it went viral!!

My worst memory in a hair salon occurred when I was seventeen years old.

I had a 3:00 pm appointment at a St. Louis hair salon specializing in prom updo hairstyles on the Friday afternoon of my Senior Prom.

Two Previous Practice Hairstyle Appointments

To make absolutely sure everything would go off without a hitch, I’d already had two practice appointments over the course of the previous two months.

I loved my hairstylist and at each practice appointment she had done my updo exactly as I had requested.

I Did My Part To Avoid Any Miscommunication At The Salon

To avoid any possible miscommunication, I had taken several photos of the desired updo from multiple views (front, back and side views).

On Prom Day I was expecting everything at the hair salon to go off without a hitch.

I arrived at 2:30 pm just to make sure if my stylist was caught up, she could take me early.

A Horribly Overbooked Hairstylist

Not only was she not caught up, I discovered she had overbooked and was running approximately an hour behind.

Although I had carefully booked my appointment in advance, she decided to take a handful of last minute appointments she really didn’t have time to handle properly.

I was extremely worried I wouldn’t make it home in time to get changed into my Prom gown and get my makeup applied.

As I watched my hairstylist frantically trying to handle all of her overflow clients, I contemplated just walking out of the salon, driving home and doing my own hair.

An Afternoon Of Growing Frustration And Irritation

Sensing my growing frustration and irritation, my hairstylist attempted to reassure me that she would get my hair finished in plenty of time for me to make it home in time for my Prom date.

Unfortunately, my hairstylist was so late finishing my hair, that I made it home with just fifteen minutes to spare before my date arrived.

If she had been on time as planned, I would have had plenty of time to dress and prepare for my big date

Yes, my hair looked incredible, but I was a nervous wreck and angry.

I never again went back to my Prom day hairstylist.

That day was my worst memory in a hair salon in my entire life.

DISCLAIMER: I neither sell nor promote any companies, their products, nor do I have any online shopping outlet of my own to promote. What I write is based upon my own experience and belief in the techniques I share.

While working in Newnan, GA as a Substance Abuse Tech, I became engaged. y coworkers treated me to a salon visit for the wedding, among other treats. They had given me a gift certificate for Fantastic Sams. When I went in, I told the cosmetologist that I had very easy to perm hair and not to leave the solution on more than 3 minutes to which she responded “our perms are self-timing”, so again I told her only 3-minutes, please. She proceeded to do the perm and after about 3 minutes, I called her over and said for her to end the procedure and she again said: “Our perms are self-timing like I said!” When she finally washed the solution out after 8 minutes, everything looked okay. She styled my hair and it looked really good. I had a birthday party to go to across the parking lot for our Assistant District Attorney so I walked over. As the party progressed, people started staring and even asking me what was happening to my hair!! By the time the party had ended, I walked back to the salon which had just closed and everyone was attending their stations. I tapped on the glass door and the one who had done y hair came and opened it saying they were closed and then: “What happened to your hair?” It had bushed out like an Afro and had broken places even with my scalp all through it. Chemically burned off at the scalp! She said what do you want me to do? And I said for her to fix it!! She had to cut my hair really short and give me daily conditioning treatments for weeks…FREE, of course. That was the absolute worst time of my hair’s life!!! It took forever for it to grow back and the hot oil treatments were not that successful. I reminded her to listen to her customers!! Never went back after getting all the treatments. And the only place I went for a very long time after that was the beauty college next to where I worked as Managing Director of a Personal Care Home. I went 4 or 5 times a week there to get Jason to do my hair!! He listened the very first time I said 3-minutes or mix the solution half & half with milk, a trick my late aunt taught me.

Oh boy, more than a few unfortunately, but the absolute worst was when the stylist took a section of my hair - which appears full but is fine - and took a thinning shear to the hair, and before I caught what she was doing and would have stopped her, cut into the side section and ALL the hair from that side fell away and went from 15-inch long hair below the shoulders to two-inch hair standing out from the scalp on the right side of my head. Looked like she tried to scalp me. I actually screamed when I saw it, and she backed up eyes real big. The owner came running over, grabbed me by the hand and said, come with me hon, I’ll do what I can. And she fired the stylist on the spot, told her to leave and not come back, someone who’d worked there for a few years.

I don’t like going to salons anymore, that was the last straw for a number of reasons. When I do go, I won’t let them take off more than one inch, and I make them show me before they cut. And I’ve learned to trim my own hair with relative success and keep it longer to avoid having to get cut.

It wasn't for me to get tanned but it was for a friend. She had really fair skin and she decided to get a light tan. She asked me to come with her so I obliged.

It was a really small, fairly new salon. It was shady, but it was real cheap. Upon entering,there are a couple of ladies. One is a worker, two are the workers friends whom are smoking, and one is a customer who was being tanned. One asks me if I want to go and I say no it's my friend.

So my friend goes in and one friend, whose drinking, says, “oh why would you want to ruin your skin by becoming dark. You're white and pretty, there's no use in you ruining your skin to become dark and ugly, that's horrible. Another says “ let the terrorist here get her tan. That bitch will blow us up if we don't let her.” Now we wear hijab, and this was utterly disgusting and disgraceful. Of course me and my friend were pissed as to what audacity they had to utter this bullshit.

I yell at them, because of course I'm outraged and it turns out to be a fight, and say that my friend and I will sue them. Manager comes out, kicks out the friends, and says stuff to the worker. The place ended up closing after two months because more fights occurred. My friend didn't get the tan obviously but went to another one and I went with her, where the environment was professional and friendly, but this was the worst experience we had.

I had very long hair that I kept in beautiful condition as a teenager. I went to the beauty salon to get a body wave (perm) put into it. It took about an hour or so to wrap in the perming rods. The lady put the perming solution on and set the timer. Another customer came into the store. She wanted all sorts of things special things done to her hair. The timer rang for the removal/rinsing out of my perming solution. The lady sat there in the chair yapping away to the hairdresser endlessly as I signaled to the hairdresser that the timer had gone off. Once or twice I mentioned it out loud as the other lady sat in the chair yapping away to the hairdresser! Finally, after at least 20 minuets to a half of an hour when the timer originally rang - signaling the need to rinse out the perming solution- she got up from the chair and paid her bill up front - still yapping away. By the time the hairdresser got back to me to rinse out the perming solution well over a half hour had passed. She rinsed out the solution with water thoroughly and then started to take the perming rods out and unravel my hair. My hair had all literally burned up and pretty much melted onto the perming rods! It was burned and destroyed from the roots to the ends and she was literally ripping my hair out of my head trying to get the perming rods out which were now a sticky, goo- hair covered mess! The pain was excruciating as she pulled and tugged inflaming my burning scalp all the more. Finally she got all of the rods out and finished the rest of the procedure. When it was all done, my nice, beautiful well kept hair was a matter, burned, fuzzy mess! It was horrible! She decided that she would try and remedy the situation by cutting and styling it, but even what was left of my hair was a fuzzy, burned up mess! I must have lost a good foot of my hair which she hacked off! When it was done, I couldn't believe it! Her manager came in and she excused herself and left the salon for lunch! When my mother arrived to pick me up and saw what was done to me she almost fainted! They actually had the nerve to charge us (then in 1980) $40 for the services- which was quite steep back then! My mother wanted to speak to the hairdresser, but she took off! Until my hair grew out - some two years later or so, I had to basically get up early wash and condition it and pretty much cement it down with styling gel to somehow make it presentable. It was either that, or shave my head - which I wasn't about to do! It was horrible and to this day, some forty plus years later, I still get a lot of anxiety about going to the hairdresser - especially if they are going to do anything special to my hair!

I showed the hairdresser how i want it cut. i am short sighted and I don’t have eyes on the back of my hair. The moment she finished, it is totally different from the photo. the next day, i went to work and everyone was asking what happened with my long straight pretty hair. My hair looks like it was chomped by some wild fire. I had to pay so much for that ugly hairstyle and never go there again.

I had to wait a year for it to grow back to near my waist and then still the only hairstyle the new hair dresser told me was short hair around my ears. The hairdresser said there a huge holes at my hair that render unable to cut any semi long hair style.

I was a receptionist at a nail salon during Highschool.

It was the weekend and a customer had come in asking for one of our most requested technicians. She was a regular and knew that if she wanted Victor (not his real name) she should’ve called in advance. Keep in mind, Victor is usually booked a month out. Anyway, she starts saying stuff like “I’m a regular so he can make an exception” “Is this how you treat your customers?”. At this point, I told her that he is booked all day today so there is nothing we could do. Again, she keeps insisting that she sees him. Now I tell her, look, someone already made an appointment with him and you’re asking me to let you steal her spot. She then proceeds to cry…. Who cries because they couldn’t see their favorite nail tech? Girl, you know he’s popular and you’ve been here long enough to know to call ahead. Finally, she makes a bigger scene and storms out. Mind you, there were other talented nail techs available. She just HAD to have Victor.

On another note, the salon was on a main street in LA and once a year they have the naked bike ride through town. So, once a year, we see flying pieces of flesh on bikes and everyone has a hoot.

There was a new hair salon in town and this girl I had a huge crush on and was in pursuit of wanted to check it out. We took her 2 year old daughter and we went in. The kid was uncharacteristically horribly behaved on that particular afternoon for reasons I never figured out. She was running around and knocking stuff over and being a little tyrant so we were both pretty distracted by her.

I ended up making her come sit with me and wait but unfortunately while our attention was diverted this woman totally butchered my friend’s hair. It was all uneven and was seriously a horrible hatchet job. She freaked out with good reason and I asked the woman if she had failed to understand the concept of cut about 2 inches off the bottom and even it out.

The scary part was when we got back to her place she took a better look and really freaked out. She was mindbogglingly gorgeous on a bad day and now her hair was totally screwed up so she turned to me to fix it after I dealt with disciplining the kid for going apeshit in the salon.

I looked at it very carefully and determined that really this shouldn’t be a problem but that maybe 10 minutes that I spent evening it out was one of the scariest things I’d ever done, She was a masterpiece and if I screwed this up any chance I might have had with her would be significantly diminished.

The worst hair cut I ever got from a salon was what we call a “chemical hair cut”. The salon owner that I was working for agreed to lighten my hair from black to color it crimson red. I also had one blonde hilight on the side that I wanted to keep and asked her not to touch it. Of course, she put the bleach over my already damaged hilight and it completely broke off! She also turned my hair a bright clown red instead of a crimson blood red. I was mortified, and that piece of hair never grew back the same, so I ended up having to shave the side quarter panel of my hair and rocking some cool designs for a while. Needless to say, I didn’t work at that salon much longer!

My worst experience with a hair salon/barbershop is when I had to wait extra long for my “appointment”.

Here’s what happened. I had made an appointment for a men’s haircut for a specific date and time. I got to my appointment 10 minutes early and I told them I had an appointment at that specific time. They acknowledged it and told me to sit down and wait. That was totally fine since I was a bit early.

10 minutes passed by and I wasn’t called for my haircut. Another 10 minutes passed by and still nothing. It looked like they were busy and I totally get that.

Another 20 minutes had passed by and still nothing. I asked them when I was going to get a haircut and they told me to just wait a couple more minutes since everyone was still very busy. Now, I had to wait because I really needed a nice haircut before an event I was going to go to in a couple of day. I unfortunately could not have gotten anything last minute at any other barbershops because they were fully booked until a week out.

After a ton of waiting, I was finally given my haircut.

Phew! So much for an “appointment” right? I just wish they could’ve managed things better. It was a bad experience and I’m not going to be going back there any time soon.

Thankfully my girl has never been unkind, but I definitely slipped up one time and she never lets me forget.

I had asked her at the beginning to trim my fringe. We gossiped and she washed and cut my hair and started to blow dry it, and I reminded her about the fringe, to which she said, “yes I know, I’m getting to it. It’s better to cut fringe when it’s dry.” (That might not have been what she said, this was awhile ago, don’t hate me, professionals.) This is where I made the fatal mistake -

I ask, “Are you sure?”

We both paused, looked at each other in the mirror and burst out laughing. I should have previously mentioned that we went to school together and have been friends for quite some time. She said, “No Rachel, I went to school to learn how to mess people’s hair up forever.”

I had no right questioning her professional decision in her studio with her scissors on my head. She has never let me down.

A few years ago I stopped into an Ulta to pick up some new foundation and there was a makeup artist working in the it cosmetics secretio there. I had never tried it cosmetics at that point and the woman told me that if I allowed her to put make up on me she would give me 30% off my purchase if I bought at least $40 worth of it cosmetics. I figured why not. I ended up loving the foundation and still use it to this day but this woman screwed up my eye make up so bad she made me look like a zombie or somebody that had cried off all of their mascara. I couldn’t see what she was doing when she was doing my make up but I made a comment that I thought she was putting the eyeshadow to low underneath my eyes. I look like a complete panda and of course Ulta doesn’t really have make up remover wipes around they only have that make up removing oil which didn’t really do much. I got my discount found my favorite foundation but I will never let a make up artist from Ulta touch my make up again.