I had the fullest of intentions of writing a fantastic, insightful entry last night, but like all good intentions, they’re being used to resurface the road to procrastination. During at least part of the period while I was not writing (the entire evening), I thought to myself, I haven’t had a good rant in a while. It’s true. I’ve had some satire recently, and at least one review-rant, but I just haven’t gotten angry at some bad situation.

I haven’t been mad because I haven’t experienced any incompetence. The last time I even got riled would have been a month ago when the Comcast contractor didn’t show up to install my internet. When I called them about it, however, they were super-polite and understanding, and got me taken care of right away, and the guy who showed up was very helpful and had it installed in minutes. I was actually kind of mad about that, because all the good customer service meant I couldn’t even get mad about it! So things have been good.

Until today.

“If I don’t talk during a hair cut, I look like a jerk—even though, let’s keep in mind, I’m there to get my hair cut and not to talk.”

Unlike the cartoon avatar version of me, I have hair, and it needs to be cut periodically. Now, I hate getting haircuts for a variety of reasons. They cost a lot, for one thing. In fact, they cost the same amount whether you only have a little bit of hair that’s getting trimmed, or a giant pile that’s being bulldozed. That doesn’t seem right to me. In addition to that, haircuts also open the door for a whole host of annoying small talk scenarios. This are exacerbated by certain circumstances; for example, being put into a chair and having a smock wrapped around you. (They use special extra-itchy material around the neck cuff, for some reason.) Now you’re trapped in the chair, subject to the fickle will of talkative stylists. At this point, if I don’t talk, I look like a jerk—even though, let’s keep in mind, I’m there to get my hair cut and not to talk.

I have no problem mentioning the name of the haircut place because it’s terrible. You might be wondering why I go there if they’re so bad. Truth is, I was dissatisfied at Previous Haircuttery Joint (never any customer service problems, it was just busy and the prices kept going up), and decided instead to try Holiday Hair on 501. From about the beginning of the year until now, they’ve been on a sort of haircuttery probation. Every time I went, they sucked just not quite enough to make me quit going there. The biggest plus there was the wait times: only once or twice was there any wait at all. Not hard to see why, though, come to think of it.

So Holiday Hair was on probation, and I did expect that they would improve. Ho ho, was I wrong.

First the good: I went over my lunch break today and there was no wait. Okay. That’s it, actually. No wait.

As for the bad, let me begin this tale of woe with Holiday Hair’s “requirements to get your hair cut” policy. Evidently, they have an unwritten rule that you are not allowed to get your hair cut there unless you give up personal information: name, address, phone number etc. It’s for a “customer record”, which I think they put on the dates, times and stylists of your previous haircuts, and use this information to send you coupons that expire just before you need your next haircut.

But sometimes I like to play the part of the social engineer. The first time I went there, I really didn’t want to give out any personal info. When the lady asked me if I had been there before, I just said yes. So then she tries to find my card in the file, and it’s obviously not in there because I never filled one out. After unsuccessfully locating it in their high tech database (more commonly known as “a pile of boxes”), she says she’ll just cut my hair and look for it later. But afterwards, as I was paying, she tried to get me to fill out a card. I made up some excuse about being late for a meeting and said I’d do it next time. She conceded this, and I left. Perfect.

The second time I went in, they asked me again if I had ever been there, and this time I said, quite truthfully, “yes”. They look for it, again unsuccessful, but this time, when they can’t find it, they made me fill it out before they cut my hair. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Not in an argumentative mood this time around—and not caring so much about my personal info—I gave them all that stuff and got my hair cut.

Well, now things should be easier for me, right? Just go in, and they find the card. This, of course, would rely on the hairstylists being able to find said card. These records reside in a series of boxes, some of which are theoretically in alphabetical order, while others are labeled—I’m actually not making this up: “new customers”, “new customers 2″, and “new customers 3″.

In other words, someone was supposed to go through the “new customers” box and alphabetize the new cards. This was put off for so long there are now three boxes of new customer records. These will never be filed.

Ever since I filled out that first card on my second visit, every single time I got to Holiday Hair I have had to fill out another new card. They never find the one from the previous visit. They’ve never found one. Somewhere in this pile there are six or seven other people with exactly the same name and address as mine, each with progressively more agitated handwriting, and each having stopped by the shop for a single haircut, never to return again.

When I went in today, this happened again, of course. But this time it was worse than usual. First of all, the lady helping me was like 80 years old. This in itself isn’t a problem, except this lady was slow, and I wasn’t even sure she worked there because all the rest of the employees were wearing a “black top, khaki pants” uniform while this lady was wearing khaki colored jeans with some faux-Hawaiian shirt-smock going on. I sure hope she wasn’t the manager because she was more clueless than Encyclopedia Brown’s dad.

Anyway, she looks through the appropriate alphabetical box for my name (something like Rq to Sx) and can’t find my card, so she looks through the box labeled “new customers 3″, and she still can’t find my card. Then she looks at me and says, “I can’t find your card.” Then she asks, “Your last name is spelled ‘S-T-A’, right?” I looked down at the sign in sheet where I quite clearly wrote “S-T-O”-and the rest, and said, “No, S-T-O”. So she proceeds to look again—slowly—and still doesn’t find it.

I was not about to try and be helpful by pointing out that she neglected to look through New Customers 1 and 2, even though it was plausible I was in one of those boxes because I really was only a moderately new customer, not a new new customer. But my lunch break only lasts an hour.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You can’t find my card.”

She looked kind of taken aback at this and I realized that I was in full-blown mock mode. It’s not her fault the previous six people who helped me didn’t file my card correctly, but come on, Holiday Hair. It’s called competence. She pulls out another fresh card from that inexhaustible supply and begins that common refrain, “if I could just get you to fill out this card—”

With as level a voice as I could muster I said, “You know, every single time I’ve been here, I’ve filled out a new card.”

She looked down at the card and started filling it out herself. She writes, “S-T-A”—

“Uh, no, my last name is S-T-O…”

She scowls in disgust and encircles the “A” with angry pen scribbles until it turns into a fat, blue “O”. She then attempts to write the rest of my name, and forgetting the second “T”—

“You know what, just let me do it.” I fill out the card in 0.7 seconds. The fact that it’s completely illegible doesn’t matter. They’ll lose it anyway. I also put down my old address, just in case—by some incredible twist of bad luck—this one gets filed and they start sending pre-expired coupons.

So after the “new” customer card-filling out ritual, she takes me over to her station and pins on the scratchy smock thing and asks me what I want.

“Number four on top blended to number three on the sides. Straight across on the sideburns.” I say it every time, exactly the same way, because I’ve had exactly the same haircut for about ten years now. She busts out the clippers and starts mowing.

She waits until she’s got those clippers—buzzing away like an angry swarm of mutant wasps—right next to my left ear before trying to strike up a conversation with me. First of all, the lady is so old her voice died about five years ago. Second of all, I can’t hear because she has mutant wasps in my ear. And thirdly, I don’t want to talk anyway.

But fourthly—ah, fourthly—fourthly, she tries to talk to me about the only thing she knows about me as a person, which is that Holiday Hair can never find my cards.

“So they can never find your card, huh?”

Oh, no—I was just kidding, you see. Little joke. I actually like to fill out a new card every time! Makes me feel important. No you bag, of course you never find my card. That’s why I said it the first time!

So I mumbled some stupid answer that I didn’t even care enough about to remember. Thankfully, she lets the conversation go at this point—more likely due to my sharp reply than a lack of topics. (There’s always the weather.)

The next thing I noticed is that this lady is a smoker. (Actually, I noticed it when she stepped up to the desk, but at the time, I was hoping it was the guy behind me, not her. Would that I could be so fortunate.) Now here’s something I don’t get. In some states, you’re not allowed to smoke in bars. Even if the owner wants to allow smoking, no. The government tells him how to run his establishment.

But there’s no law on the books mandating that people who touch your body aren’t allowed to smoke. The lady had just come off her break, I think, too, because she had sauntered in from the back of the store when she met me. So she’s got nicotine tar staining her 80 year old nails—and now it’s in my hair. Thanks, Holiday Hair! I appreciate the professionalism. In fact, I generally wear an ashtray as a hat, so that worked out.

Now, hopefully at this point, you may recall that I told the lady “four blended to three”. I hope you do, because she didn’t. The next thing I know, she’s buzzing up over the back of my head almost to the top with the number three. Just going to town. She probably would have done my whole head that way if I didn’t suddenly burst out at her, “don’t give me a high-and-tight—I want it blended. Three on the sides, four on the top.”

She is startled again, as if this robot-like mannequin in her chair was not supposed to be able to speak. She may have stumbled through some apology, but I couldn’t tell because of the wasps. After a little more trimming, she switching to four.

Now, hopefully at this point, you may recall that I told the lady “straight across on the side burns”. I hope you do because—well, I don’t do sideburns. Just straight out from where the ear meets the head.

Oh, and the stylist didn’t remember, either. “You wanted points, right?”

I’m not even able to comprehend how she thought that points would look good with a military-esque blended buzz cut. But the absurdity of this suggestion didn’t surprise me—not really—because this lady acted like she had been using clippers for all of three weeks.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you have to go to a school and get a certificate to become a hair stylist, right? It’s probably longer than three weeks, too. Suffice it to say that the stylist was very unsure with her movements on those clippers. Of course, I should give her credit. She could just be used to cutting it by hand. With a flint knife. (Okay, no more old people jokes. I promise.) Anyway, she was so pensive about what she was doing, the only thing that kept me from grabbing the clippers out of her hands and cutting my own dang hair was that itchy smock.

Of course I took the initiative to correct her as to my preferred side-burn style, and she finished up without further incident. At this point in the narrative, I’d like to be complaining about how the cut itself came out lopsided or something, but it actually didn’t. Aside from the higher-than-usual amount of cigarette tar, I’m satisfied with the result.

Still, this was, without a doubt, the worst haircut I’ve ever had. The whole experience: my seventh card filling out, the lady not being able to spell my name right even though she’s copying it off the sign-in sheet. The smoker’s stench. And the not-listening or not-caring, whichever it was, to pretty much the only important sentence I said during the entire visit, which was how I wanted my hair cut.

I already knew I wouldn’t be coming back—even if they did manage to file my customer record card. But the final camel-back-breaking straw happened as I was walking out the door. I checked my receipt—and noticed their prices had gone up.

-Ted