when you're a newbie...

It's exciting when you're a new hairdresser.  You finally get to practice your craft that your worked hard at when you were in school.  And you want desperately to prove to your client that you know what the heck you're doing.  HOWEVER.  Take a deep breath.  While you have to impress the heck out of them so they'll come back, don't go into over drive.  Keep it simple, and remember to listen.  Please.

Case in point:  Tiffany had a Walmartian yesterday.  The plan:  Color, full foil, and haircut.  They worked hard at getting the color down (which is fine), and Tiff's brain started formulating (get to that in a minute).  However, she turned her hearing off at a crucial part : "I want quite a bit cut off."  Had she cut the hair first, instead of last, she would have reduced the client in the chair time by a good hour and 10 minutes, by not fighting through all that hair.

The next panic:  Client has level 4/5 hair, 1/2 color, 1/2 virgin.  So, regrowth area was level 4-ish, ends were 6WG.  Medium texture, fairly thick in density.  And this is where Tiffany panicked and wanted to get very aggressive with her hair by using 40 volume on the client's scalp. (which, by the way, is a fairly big no no as it can cause serious chemical burns).  She was just convinced that 40 volume was the way to go.  She couldn't give me a good reason beyond "her hair is so dark.  I'm afraid it won't lift."  I finally convinced her to just use 20 volume with "You're going to burn her head if you use 40 volume.  It's not meant for on the scalp processes.  Just use the 20 volume"  And thank GOD she did!

The last question:  "Should I just pull the color through all her hair??"  This is instead of formulating demi color for her ends (which, ultimately, didn't need to be done for the entire head).  My response "You can, but the color will wash away on those ends because there's nothing for the color to grab onto and she'll have two tone hair again".  Had she paid attention to cutting the hair first, she would have only needed to color the ends on the front part of her hair (she did a diagonal forward hair cut).

End results:  Color came out almost what she was looking for (color is always a crap shoot.  It doesn't always do what you want, no matter how hard you try.).  What we discovered is that "dialing back" the volume to 15 instead of 20 would have prevented the "hot roots" she wound up with.  Highlights were beautiful, hair cut was beautiful, client was very happy.

The downside to this appointment for the client??  It took 5 HOURS to accomplish this.  (I did a similar process on another client, same length hair, just different texture, and slightly less foils, got it done in 3, and I'm a bit pokey on my application)

Other things I've noticed about Tiffany:  She's picked up some bad habits from Rita:  SITTING instead of getting other stuff done.  She had a PILE of 6 dirty color bowls in the sink, waiting patiently (because that's what dirty dishes do) to be washed, there was still laundry to be finished, etc.  We've got days now where there are only two of us on.  That will only increase when Lynn goes out on maternity leave.  There's no room for leaving messes for other people.  Totally not fair to the other person.