Bad Haircuts From a Friend’s Good Hairdresser

By The Hairpin May 22, 2013

by Brenna Killeen

What do you tell your friends when they recommend a restaurant/dentist/etc. and you have a bad experience?Case in point: two of my friends go to the same hairdresser. Their hair always looks great. I decided to also go to that hairdresser. But now I have a poorly done version of The Rachel. It’s not just that the style the hairdresser gave me is bad, it’s totally uneven and kind of awful. I actually phoned the salon owner to ask if someone else can fix it, which I have never done before.

Of course, I take this experience as no reflection on my friends. Maybe the hairdresser was having a bad day or maybe she is only good at adorable Carey Mulligan cuts. Overall, the situation ranks as “pretty annoying,” but I’m not making a huge deal of it to my friends who recommended her.

Still, there is an overall aura of “feeling bad” around the experience. My friends feel bad that I don’t like the cut and then I feel bad that they feel bad. Nobody should feel bad in this situation except for the salon owner who has not returned my call or email.

Maybe the answer is that my friends and I just have to get over our Canadiana niceness, because I’m not sure there’s much else I can do in this kind of situation except say, “Your hair always looks amazing but I think she just had an off day when I saw her,” and then move on. But do you have any advice or sage wisdom for when this situation comes up again? Is it just one of life’s unavoidable unpleasantries?

I am also really hoping that I didn’t make their respective relationships with the hairdresser weird by bringing the bad haircut to the salon owner’s attention but, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that.