Worst Salon Ever

Well... every year I do the same thing. Light in the summer, dark in the winter.

There's a reason outside of the fact that fall/winter just suits darker tones... and it's the fact that I have no tan and when I am too blonde with no tan it makes me look very washed out and sick.

My other reason for dying my hair is to mark change in my life. I like to look different when I feel different. It's one of those "out with the old, in with the new" things.

Today I decided I'd had enough of the blonde and insisted I get it dyed after work... so I did.

A girl I work with recommended that I go to the girl she goes to. She said she's reasonably priced and does a good job. I figured I might as well because I really didn't feel like spending 200+ dollars on my hair today which is what it would have been if I went with my faithful "never let you leave with shitty colour or cut" Axis Salon.

I figured since I will be changing my hair in the next 2 months anyways it won't matter if she screws up.

The colour itself is a nice colour, the highlight is done quite well, it's just not the colour I wanted. I had a completely different colour in mind. Unfortunately thanks to work not having colour printers I couldn't print off the picture I wanted. So instead I used the colour book and told her "I want this colour for my highlight, and this colour for my base" ... I pointed to a nice warm brown, it was more of a goldy reddish brown. The highlight I wanted was a caramel colour as opposed to a bleach blonde. I wanted the highlight to be close to the base colour so that it was a very subtle tone. But oh no, that's not what she had in mind.

I sit down in this womans chair and she proceeds to do her own thing. Thanks lady, waita do what I asked you to. I was immediately pissed off because normally I will let a stylist pick a colour for me, but today I had a specific colour in mind so I was irritated that the one time I wanted a specific colour, she goes and bails on me. Not only did I have a specific colour in mind but I asked her to dye my hair a specific way -- highlight it and whatevers not in foils dye the base colour... it's common sense woman! Then when you go to wash it out, instead of using a toner, mash it all together so it stains the lighter hair so that it's all nicely blended.

She had the two colours mixed up that I wanted so I didn't think much of it, but then she proceeded to do one foil in blonde where she would strictly touch up my roots, and then the next foil would be in the brown colour. This had me worried because I didn't want my hair being the same blonde it was, with brown low lights.

I finally had to just stop caring about what she was doing because I was pretty much ready to lose my shit. I'm sorry but normally I'm not picky, but I'm fucking paying you to do my hair so do it the way I want you to.

After she proceeded to do her own thing she put me in the dryer for 20 minutes and not once in that 20 minutes did anyone ask if I wanted a magazine to read or anything. Yes, I particularly love to stare at the same wall for 20 minutes while I have my head jammed in some noisy dryer. Good times.

After the highlights AND lowlights had set she took me to the sink to wash out the colour. Finally she informed me that she was going to be using a toner on me. This is something I usually get concerned with. I'm all for using toner, but it's an added cost (usually about 50 bucks) and this was the other reason for wanting to do my hair the way I told her to -- so I could skip this added expense.

"Fuck it." That's basically the point I was at.

She rinses out the toner yadda yadda, sits me down and takes the towel off and low and behold -- she decided she was going to use an ashy coloured toner. Awesome cause that's EXACTLY what I wanted. NOT.

Any hope in hell of MAYBE getting something close to the colour I wanted had completely gone out the window by this point. So I sat there while she blowdryed my hair for the next half an hour and let her do it. Normally I'd say "it's okay I'm just going home anyways" but oh no, this chick at the very least was going to spend an entire appointments worth of time just blow drying my hair.

Finally when I was fully able to see the end result I smiled and said it was nice, paid her and left. I had to come home and re-style it as usual and then actually put makeup on so I could get an idea of whether or not it really looks alright, and finally decided that yes, while it's not what I wanted it is still a nice colour.

Oh well. Like I said, it's not that the woman did a bad job at what she did, it looks great for what she did, it's just the fact that it's not what I wanted. Thankfully this will be the last time I have to pay someone this much money to have my hair dyed. School could not come faster at this point. Thankfully it wasn't too expensive or I definitely would have lost my shit.

Anyways, this is the end result: