Corrective Color gone horribly awry...

So, this client came in a while back...maybe 3-4 months ago, and was with Tina.  Back then, they had decided to take her to blonde.  Now, this nice lady is a level 6.  I'm sure she was doing her hair at home (although I'm not 100% positive, this is usually how it goes).  Consequently, she's not quite as blonde as she wants to be.  So, Tina attempts to take her to blonde.  And gets her to chicken yellow (commonly referred to as level 9).  And then puts a toner over it, to make it all better.  Which it does not.

Here's the thing about lifting & toning that I don't seem to be able to get through Tina's head.  In order for the toner to do the job you're asking it to do, the hair MUST be lifted to PALE BLONDE.  Like the color of the INSIDE of the banana.  Almost white.  If there is any brighter yellow in the hair than that, the toner will NOT "take".  If it does take, it doesn't last for very long.  She also subscribes to the issue that if you wash your hair enough times with blue shampoo, that will fix everything.  Not so much.

So, here we are, 3-4 months later, and we want something different.  We settle on a chestnut brown color that was picked out of one of the haircut books.  Should be a reasonably simple request??  Not really.

Ideally, what needs to be done is to fill the hair.  Which is how Tina started out.  She turned the previously blonde hair orange, which is step one.  The next step, she used a brown/copper, which kept her hair red, but not a bad color.  HOWEVER, once the hair was dry, you could see large areas where the color didn't "take" very well.  And, just for "fun", Tina did apply the demi permanent color, each time, all over the client's head.  Which made the regrowth (about 3 inches) darker, and a pretty color, but not the same color as the rest of the head.

Which is why the client came back yesterday to schedule an appointment with Tina to fix this nifty fact.  Sigh.  And, when I let Tina know the client would be coming back in, her reply was "I asked her if she was okay with it like that and she said she'd live with it a few days". 

#1:  I never heard this conversation occur.  I had my bat hearing turned on throughout this procedure.  Not a word about this.  And I checked in with Tina during the process, to see if she needed anything....wouldn't ask for help.  Now, I should have stuck my beak in this a bit further, and did not.  Which was a mistake.  She was on the right path, just decided to skip a step.

#2:  When doing a corrective color, A) you can't promise exactly what they're asking for, as you don't know what the hair will do.  B) Corrective color does not take an hour or two.  It can take ALL DAY LONG.

What happened:  Areas within the hair shaft didn't "take" according to plan.  This wasn't caught when she was drying the hair (or we chose not to acknowledge it needed more work).  What should have happened:  More of the red color needed to be reapplied to the "bare" spots, then  brown needed to be added to the formula to help tone down the red AND the regrowth needed to have additional color applied to attempt to match the ends, in permanent color. OR, if the red was a pleasing color, the regrowth should have been colored red, using a permanent formula instead of a demi permanent formula.

Since these things weren't done, Tina now has to devote MORE time to correcting this color.  Free of charge to the client, of course.  Which costs the company money.

Corrective color isn't easy.  And it doesn't take one or two or even three applications of color to get it right.  But, it does take patience, and the ability to ask for help when you need it.