The Longest Haircut

Another low key Sunday, so there's not much to report on that front (I did snap the above picture of Catherine, but that was about it). So instead I will regale you another haircut tale. It's been about two to three months since I had last gotten my haircut so it was way longer than I would like. I walk in and as I'm being directed back to the shampoo area by my stylist she asks what I want to do with my hair. Now remember my hair is pretty long at this point, so I tell her I want it short. She asks if I want it buzzed, and I say, not that short, but almost. She asks about length and I say I'm thinking somewhere between half an inch and three fourths of an inch. She says ok and we're off.

As I'm sitting there in the chair she's going around my head with the scissors and trimming it. After a while I'm starting to get a bit worried because she's just trimming it so I mention off handedly "You know, I was really thinking a bit shorter than this."

She says something along the lines of "We can do that" and starts around again. This time as she comes around it's still pretty long and not that much more has been taken off.

So I go into "I'll pretend I'm stupid" mode (waits for jokes about this not being a stretch or me playing it close to the vest) and I say "You know, maybe I told you the wrong thing, how long is half an inch?" Apparently I'm just playing the part of the straight man today as I can only imagine the jokes from this comment, but let's ignore those for now. She shows me on her comb about how long half an inch is, and I say, "Yep, that's about what I wanted." So she starts around again.

This time I don't wait for her to make it all the way around since she's just trimming around the sides again, so I say "If we're going to make it half an inch long, shouldn't you be taking more off?" (must... resist... double... entendre...)

At this point she stops and looks at me and says "You want it half an inch long? I thought you only wanted half an inch off the top."

I try and remain calm and not point out that I said I wanted it short and then gave the length. We both had a nice laugh and we go back and forth about how this could have happened and how it's like something out of Three's Company and she continues to apologize profusely. And to her credit she remained nice and apologetic about it even though underneath she was probably upset too because now she's almost spent an hour on my hair and she could have been serving other customers. So after that I got it the length I wanted (maybe a tad shorter than I wanted, but I figure at this point it's close enough and what the heck, it'll grow back).

To round out the trip I found out they no longer let you include the tip to the stylist on your credit card. Which for me was especially annoying since as is typical these days I had no cash in my wallet whatsoever. This meant a quick walk across the street to Giant grocery store to make some minor purchase so I could get cash back from them and then go back and give a tip. So overall I spent about three times longer getting this haircut than I was expecting.