A Hairstylist’s Chronicle of Salon Life: The Bi-Polar Inebriated Dragon Lady

Behind the Chair: A Hairstylist’s Chronicle of Salon Life

Behind the Chair: A Hairstylist’s Chronicle of Salon Life is a series of short fictional stories based upon years of work as a professional hairstylist. These are excerpts from a soon-to-be book comprised of comical, erotic, and serious stories that have been experienced and then embellished to depict the often humorous side of salon life.

The Bi-Polar Inebriated Dragon Lady

At some point in a hairstylist’s career, crazy rears its head and for me, it came in the form of a bi-polar, inebriated dragon lady named Marion, whom I had the pleasure of working under for four arduous months.

Working an extra job was about taking care of my family, but when my former boss’ madness materialized, it became more about proving something to myself. How much abuse can one person take, especially me and my giant ego? The old me would have told her to shove it at the first sign of loony, but I needed to believe I had grown into a better person, so for four months I let Marion insult me, humiliate me, degrade me, belittle me and bark orders at me, all for $10 an hour.

In this economy, with soaring fuel costs, the money wasn’t much. I was lucky if I brought home $200 a week at times since she always changed my hours. Sometimes tips were generous and at others it was scant. But with four sons, the peanuts I did make helped to feed them. I logged in somewhere between 18 to 22 hours a week, a part-time schedule that afforded me time to write, and be a mother. The salon was very near to my home with no travel time and in an emergency I could be home in seconds. It was also extremely bearable since she only worked with me on Saturdays, never on Wednesdays and for a few minutes on Thursdays and Fridays. My at-home customers were once again growing, but it wasn’t enough to meet the same salary, therefore on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays I was working as a hairsylist out of the house as well.

Some of us hate our bosses, or seriously dislike them. I’ve had a few whom I’ve remained friends with. I also know how the demands required to be as a boss, especially of a small business. When I owned my children’s party place, I stressed intensely over this fact. On the one hand you are an owner and all needs to run properly for the business to be successful, thrive and make money. My party place was one of my babies and I treated it as such, nurturing it and defending it at all costs. I’ve had wonderful employees and some, not so much. Being a sensitive woman (lol), I often worried over whether or not they thought I was a fair employer. As the events with Marion at Abracadabra unfolded from day one, I started to question my ten years as a boss and thought I had done something to deserve this treatment.

I believed my time as a former business owner would make for an outstanding employee. I knew what to do, when to do it, and hate doing nothing. I was right, or at least I thought I was. Her clients always told me how lucky she was to have found me. I did her shampoos, cleaned her salon from top to bottom, and cleaned up after her. A few years back, in the middle of turmoil within my own business, I took a part time job on Thursdays and Fridays in a local hair salon that was associated with friends of mine. The owner was an opinionated Christian woman and the salon life there was a haven of gossip. Although, personally, she is not someone I would associate with and we may not have seen eye to eye at times, she was a fair employer and helped me through a difficult time. Because of this, I would not take any clients with me when I left, even though some asked or called and even came to my party place to ask me to do their hair. It was during my time there that I had learned about Marion and her bizarre behavior.

As I noted above, the salon where I first learned about Marion the monster was a henhouse of chickens that cackled about someone, so I took what I heard with a grain of salt. Turns out these town criers were correct! Not only did they call the situation with my former business landlord, but also everything they mentioned about my new boss was on target. I remembered what I had heard, specifically how Marion accused my former boss and her employees of bringing roaches into her salon. I wasn’t sure it was the same place, so to be certain, I asked my new boss on my first day, and my interest piqued when she confirmed that yes, the crew of my old place of employment had rented space at Abracadabra while they waited for renovations to be completed after a fire destroyed their salon. I knew at once the old girls were right because Abracadabra was filthy and there was no way roaches were brought in, but however resided there in a filthy breeding ground for bugs.

It was a 30-year-old salon that looked like it still had the same decor from the 1980’s. There was dust inches thick all over the black lacquer and glass shelves. The posters on the walls were of hairstyles I had worn in the 80’s with male models dressed like the boys from Saturday Night Fever. The wood in the drawers and hampers crumbled to the touch, rust and color was clumped all over the slop sink, half-smoked cigarettes were left under the desk, ashes were flicked on the floor, and a dirty toilet graced the restroom.

That salon needed more than magic tricks, it needed a time machine to launch it into the new millennium. Even her clients’ hairstyles screamed, “Hello, it’s 1986, I want my hair back!” My first impression on my first day of Abracadabra salon life was one of disgust; therefore, as any normal bug-a-phobe would do, I cleaned everything and dried it in a hot dryer to kill any of the cooties I may have brought home. From then on, I never took my pocket book, but instead used a recycling food bag for my belongings. At the end of my first day, Marion gave me a key (totally bizarre-she didn’t know me from a hole in the wall) and asked if I’d be ok working alone on my next scheduled day. Sure, I was fine with it! It didn’t bother me at all that only a few years back a dead body was found in the dumpster behind her store!

The characters in these stories are fictional, although based on true salon life compiled from over 25 years of experience.