$13 Haircuts.....

Nobody wants to be considered a tight wad. It’s up there with “dweeb” on the list of “avoid at all costs” designations.

For the most part I’m neither frugal nor freewheeling. I shell out a few extra bucks for some purchases (wine), while seeking everyday low prices for others (groceries, household necessities, air travel). I rarely get held down in one price range.

Still, I will admit to being a “ceiling” shopper at times. There are some expenses -– shoes, rounds of golf, stone birdbaths -- which come with an upper threshold in my mind. For example, I wouldn’t want to pay more than $20 for a haircut.

I think that’s a fair price for a trim. I’m not looking for an hour-long expose. No need for excess product either. Get me in. Get me out. Charge me $20 or under. Everyone goes home in a limousine.

The $20 trim had a 100% success rate for my first 29+ years on the planet. I even had an agreeable option in Chicago thanks to Atanas’ skills and his $13 price tag. There was no reason to think life would ever be any different.

Then, last Thursday, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

A business colleague once told me that all companies are essentially competing on three variables: quality, price, and service. He said that well-performing companies deliver on two of the three (ex: a company offers a quality product and a high level of service; it therefore charges more because it doesn’t need to compete on price). A correlated reality is that most companies willingly ignore at least one variable.

Last week it became painfully clear to me how important that missing variable can be.

I arrived for my appointment with Atanas last Thursday promptly at 4:00 pm. Promptness is not typically part of my regime. I consort more regularly with promptness’ older brother, uber tardy. In other words, that day was an anomaly. It was also the wrong day for a regime change.

My haircut began at 5:34 pm: ninety-four minutes after I arrived.

I hate waiting. I hate it to the nth power. Readers who know me are currently sporting a shit-eating grin. Readers who don’t should accept the following as sworn testimony: I could have separated dangerous isotopes with my bare hands last Thursday. If the Iranians had been strolling around Lincoln Park looking for enriched uranium, they could have stopped by the Cuttery and picked up enough to flatten Jupiter. I was fisioning off appreciable amounts of U-235 by the nanosecond.

But here’s where the rubber meets the $13 road.

No one in the Cuttery -- not the person answering the phones, not Atanas, not a manager, not the Vidal Sassoon delivery man – ever mentioned why I was waiting or when my haircut would begin. As I revisit this reality now, a week later, I’m going to simultaneously put on my protective, radioactive suit for everyone’s benefit. I can feel my thermal neutrons starting to get a little antsy.

Seventy-five minutes into my wait I began to arm my warheads. About the same time time I'm pretty sure the salon manager called her supervisor and asked for permission to take the Cuttery to DEFCON 1, while concurrently advising all store workers to avoid me. Any manager (insert your favorite mammal with a pulse) could have sensed that all communiqué which didn’t immediately place me in Atanas’ chair might have resulted in the loss of life. I’m absolutely certain my molten stare was that intense.

Finally, around 5:30 pm, two eastern European girls emerged from behind the iron curtain alongside Atanas. The two girls were laughing and mumbling in an indecipherable tongue. Said another way: unacceptable behavior. There was a firm cessation of in-store pleasure at 5:15 pm (coinciding with the arming of warheads).

In that instant, I needed a Rosetta Stone which could transcribe thoughts in passing. The girls could have looked at me, looked at the Stone for a translation, and then bolted from the salon in a petrified state after reading: “You are dying from radioactive exposure. I am the culprit. Ha, ha, ha. ”

In truth, it wasn’t their fault. Then again, when Han Solo was put in carbonite to test the freezing chamber for Luke Skywalker, it wasn’t his fault either. Sometimes a bystander has to take the fall, even if it means a one-way ticket to see Jabba the Hut.

Luckily for the girls, I turned my wrath towards Atanas instead.

Atanas sensed my approaching cyclone. He wisely began by apologizing. A good start, but then he fumbled in an enormous and irrecoverable way. He tried to justify the circumstances by saying, “What could I do? The two girls come in together and both want blow-dry.”

What could he do?!?!? I sat there for ninety-four minutes with an appointment and now I’m being greeted by a flummoxed shrug of the shoulders and a putrid, deterministic rationale. What could he do?!?!?!

At this point I put in a call to the Iranians to unload some uranium (the Ayatollah is #4 in my Fab Five); I had enough stockpiled for two planetary erasures. I then offered a few suggestions to Atanas -- suggestions that could have made my previous ninety-four minutes less nuclear. It was a triple forte performance with little room for misinterpretation (imagine me as a conductor with a caveman club serving as my baton, demanding more bravado from the orchestra during the finale to Carmina Burana).

I’m pretty sure he got the picture.

After my rant I took a deep breath and then summoned all the Zen powers in the universe. I knew there was a chance that my “normal” haircut could end up looking like a mohawk if I went too far with my diatribe. Not loving that prospect, I decided to change direction and meander towards a nicer shade of me.

In hindsight, after my movie-length wait, I should have gotten my money’s worth and asked for a crew cut. That would have been a funny end to a miserable story. Instead, I requested my normal shavings with instructions to leave a little extra in back with hopes of negating comparisons to Beaver Cleaver.

Needless to say, my tip was on the low side.

In actuality, my astounding wait was a collective breakdown. The girl working the desk making three kernels an hour didn’t care how long I waited. The manager was probably coming from another shift, at another $13 salon, and therefore not focused on the “customers” upfront. Atanas never got the memo in his native Bulgaria, notifying him that Americanos like waiting about as much as we like alone time in a meat locker.

Everyone played a part (or more accurately, sat on their ass), but there’s another reality at play which needs to be underscored.

I forfeited my right to service before I walked in the door. I forfeited that right by agreeing to a $13 haircut. I was hoping to make up for the concession in other departments (namely, quality and price). This time around, I lost out.

As it happened, I was handed ninety-four minutes to ponder this macro issue, while living through it on the most micro of levels. I pondered every portion of the experience that could have been handled better. Every tactic I should use to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Every cent of the $13 which cemented my demise.

These are the thoughts that bind as you wait. Thoughts that spiral endlessly out of control. Thoughts that become enriched and more radioactive.

With every passing minute.