You all know my pain of running into the wrong hair stylists when I was still getting creamy crack, and running into the wrong locticians once I locked my hair. You throw in a full blown pandemic and it’s just a free for all. I’ve allowed too many people in my head while searching for the “perfect” loctician (there’s no such thing in my city) to care for my locs. I used to come down hard on myself for this – and I really don’t know why because its not my fault. And this ultimately led me to the conclusion that it’s not me, but its those who are licensed professionals that are the problem.
The pandemic brought out a lot of opportunists when it comes to black hair care – especially in the loc community. All of a sudden people are claiming to know how to start locs, do retwists and reties, and care for locs. There’s been price gouging across the board and shotty, criminal work done to unknowing and unsuspecting people’s hair. I’ve heard and read so many horror stories and have shared my horror stories as well. But when you get down to the nitty gritty of being a business owner and being professional, that’s where things really get bad. Why, you may ask?
Those who do hair strictly for the money tend to be the worst offenders of unprofessional behavior, and they are the ones you need to run from. Unfortunately you don’t typically find this out about them until you’ve experienced their services. Those who do hair strictly for the money do not care about the health of your hair, does not have enough hair knowledge and only knows how to style or do certain things. They also don’t care about you or your time. They don’t think twice about inconveniencing you, cancelling on you, double or triple booking you in their appointments that will keep you in their shop all day. They only care about your money. They don’t care if they’ve done shotty work on your hair. Yes, they are running a business, but they run their business as if they are a street hustler. And what do street hustlers care about? Themselves.
I’ve seen this type of behavior in older and younger generation stylists and locticians and it’s sad. Just recently I had a new loctician whom I’ve only been to once, cancel on me an hour before my appointment. This young lady (she’s younger than my oldest child) did not apologize, did not offer any type of alternative accommodations to me since she inconvenienced me, and was not helpful at all when it came to rescheduling. Her nasty and very wrong and unprofessional attitude radiated through her text messages. Not to mention, her reason for the cancelation was total B.S.! I was livid. I was more livid at the unprofessionalism she displayed, the lack of caring or awareness of the position she put me in. What if I needed my hair done for an event? What if I was going out of town? What if that day and time was the only time I had available to get my hair done for months? She didn’t care because it was all about her and what she wanted to do and didn’t want to do.
It took me a while to calm down. I had to chalk this up to her being young and dumb and not being taught or simply not caring about how she should treat others, especially new clients. All I kept thinking was “This chick clearly doesn’t want my money.” She’s not just doing my hair, she’s doing my daughter’s hair as well! That’s over $200 combined, including tip! I don’t get it and I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. If there are certain things you don’t want to do when it comes to your business then don’t offer it! It’s that simple! She knew what I wanted done from my first appointment with her because I told her! She was all like “Oh okay, I can do that for you!” So I book the appointment, and again, she knew weeks in advance what I wanted and she ACCEPTED the appointment, took the down payment through her booking app only to cancel on me an hour before. I could have raised all kinds of hell, and looking back I should have and demanded my deposit back!
What kept me from going off right away was the fact that I was giving her the benefit of the doubt and I was waiting for her to show some accommodation and professionalism to me since she was the one doing the canceling – and she showed none. That’s where my anger came in. I was supposed to get a retwist and color. I was super excited about this, I told a few people that I was getting some color and then to have my appointment canceled was just deflating. But the reason why it was canceled and then to not be offered anything to make up for it – I was blown away. Why do I always come across these kinds of people?
The sad part about all of this is this young lady is good at what she does. She does very neat and pristine work and she’s fast. I was very impressed with her the first time I went to her and felt like she could be the one that I stick with from here on out. Listen…I know people aren’t perfect. I know people mess up – myself included. My husband kept pointing this out to me, telling me that this was just a first time offense on her part. But he has to understand (and remember) that I’ve been burned by a lot of people on my three year loc journey. So yes, I’m very gun shy and sensitive when it comes to stuff like this. Not only that, but I’m a stickler for professionalism and kindness in all areas of life. When you have your own business and you’re licensed, you especially should be going out of your way to be professional because that’s your livelihood! Word of mouth can make or break you!
I very reluctantly rescheduled with her for this coming Saturday. My daughter also has an appointment for the morning and mine isn’t until later in the afternoon. I’m no longer getting color – at least not by her – and am only getting my retwist. I will have to find someone else to do my color because clearly she doesn’t want my money. I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that we live in a very different world today. What I would do, how I treat people, and what I expect is not what I will receive in return. We live in a very selfish, angry, ‘it’s all about me first’ society. Professionalism, common courtesy, manners, and basic social norms when it comes to interacting with human beings are a thing of the past for a lot of people – older and younger generations. This really saddens me.
Normally I would have made a video about my most recent horrible experience, but instead I decided to write about it. I truly believe it’s where I live and the fact that the city I live in is very small and there isn’t a big community of professional locticians. There are many who work out of their homes, and there are those who work out of shops. I’ve had to rely mostly on word of mouth because not everyone advertise their services, especially on social media. I found a group for people to find locticians in my area and again the majority that I see work out of their home. I’m not going to a strangers home to get my hair done while dealing with a pandemic and not knowing their vaccination status. Many will lie and say they are vaccinated when they are not AND won’t wear a mask. I trust no one in these streets. But that’s just me.
Once again I’m contemplating doing my own retwists or having my sister in law do my retwists for me if I can’t find the right person to do my retwist on a regular basis. This is the ugly underbelly of having locs. I want to be pampered. I like being pampered. But the unprofessionalism in the loc community is putting a huge damper on that.
Going Back to my Natural Roots 