Unique

Let me fill you in on a little secret. I have rubbish hair. Seriously. I have two crowns, it grows funny and is so unreasonably thick that all I can do to control it every day is heap a whole bunch of product on it and hope that it vaguely stays in place. And by «in place» I of course mean «however the hell it decides to fall.»
«So what has your rubbish hair got to do with anything?» I hear you cry, well cry no further — I’ll tell you (there there… don’t cry), the problems I have with my hair have been further compounded by the fact that it’s been a real long time since I had a good haircut.
Having let my hair get to the stage where I reasonably couldn’t have it any longer for my suited and booted office job, I had no choice but to seek out a new establishment in which to get my hair coiffed being as all the others I’ve been to of late have been completely terrible. Being a boy I decided to go to the one that was closest — that being Unique on Dalry Road. Or it could be Unique Unique — I’m actually not sure as it says it twice on the sign…
Strictly speaking there are chop shops closer to me, but most of those fall into the «gent’s barber» category and being as my hair is especially rubbish, I always find that a good salon cut (with all the texturising and thinning out) usually leaves my hair a little better than just taking to it with a pair of clippers.
So throwing caution to the wind I ventured in to this fairly new establishment and asked how much a guy’s cut was. I received the very non committal answer of «oh around ten or fifteen pounds». No prizes for anyone who guesses how much I paid…
As cheap as fifteen pounds may be for a salon haircut (just for those who hadn’t figured out the cost) there are so many things that were terrible about this place that I might struggle to limit myself to just a couple. What I’ll do then is give you a couple of handy hints about what not to do whilst cutting someone’s hair based on my experience at unique.
1. Don’t attempt to engage in small talk with your clients, then immediately change the subject to how you’re throwing a party for a big group of models. This makes your client not want to engage in dialogue with you.
2. Don’t answer your phone three times whilst cutting your client’s hair. The first time is potentially forgiveable (emergency maybe) but by the third time you’re just being plain rude.
3. Don’t comment that you probably would have given one to your very pleasant middle aged client if she was fifteen years younger seconds after she leaves. This makes you look like a prick.
4. Don’t spend twice as much time ensuring that the hair on the neckline is perfectly even as you do on chopping the stuff off the top.
5. When you think you’ve finished and ask the client if the cut is okay, don’t (and this is a biggy) tell them that it’s as short as you’re going to cut it when they tell you they think it’s still a little long.
It takes a special kind of audacity to name yourself twice, but ideally you should make sure you live up to your name at least once before sticking a second occurrence of it on your sign. Sure the complaints may seem a little harsh, but I could forgive the gripes if the cut had been any good.
Unfortunately this place genuinely gave me one of the worst haircuts I’ve ever had — and that’s coming from someone who used to shave his own head with disposable bic razors. Seems like I’m back to the drawing board and letting the rubbish hair grow uncomfortably long again…
Avoid at all costs!