I left the barber shop last Wednesday with a cut on my neck and a tissue up against it to stem the blood flow. A Halloween massacre.
I usually toddle over around 11.45am to beat the lunchtime queue. All barbers were at work upon my arrival but there was nobody else waiting. One other chap arrived then and two barbers finished almost simultaneously, a good fella who’s been there for years and a new lad.
I could have done the “I’ll wait for him” type thing when the new lad was first to sort out payment with the departing customer and sweep up a bit. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
It was a shoddy affair. There was a general lack of care and attention to detail. Scrambling around to borrow blades and other pieces of equipment from other workstations. Harshly shunting my head from side to side and cutting with an unnecessary level of aggression.
I noticed that a crucial bottle of ointment / gel / liquid was near empty and he was draining the last of it. It’s the ointment that they wipe around your locks, back of the neck, hair and beard line (if you have a beard) before smoothing off and straightening out those parts with the cut throat. Yer man filled the bottle again with tap water, rubbed it around those parts and started butchering away at me.
It was sore as fuck but, of course, I didn’t say anything. He moved onto the beard trim and was similarly taking chunks out of me when I noticed my neck was bleeding. Then he started saying “no, no, sorry, sorry, no, beard trim, blood, no, no” and making the universal hands up to apologise gesture. It seemed he didn’t have much English. Then he was chatting to one of the other competent barbers and produced some cream which kind of slowed the bleeding and he finished the hair cut.
I got the hot towel at the end to wipe away hairs along with blood from my neck and yer man was saying sorry. I went up to the cash register and he was saying “beard trim, no, no, no” so I presumed there would be no charge for that aspect. So he tapped at the register and input for a standard dry cut and then tapped again for a beard trim! €17 + €10 = €27.
I was a bit startled but regained my composure enough to consider complaining. But then I looked around and saw a queue had formed and people were watching the general commotion of bloody towels, pigeon English, barbers muttering to each other and me standing there with a tissue held against my bloody neck.
So I bottled it and paid €27 by debit card. I didn’t tip.