Suburban Afro

NEW CLIENT SYNDROME – SALON CUSTOMER SERVICE

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I have very strong views on customer service, which almost certainly stems from spending several years as a customer service manager for a very large company, and means that whenever I come across poor customer service I notice.

There are lots of ways that hair salons can display good customer service and over the years I’ve experienced both fantastic customer service and terrible customer service. The frustrating thing is that sometimes you get both ends of the spectrum from the same salon.

New clients seem to bring out all the best and most professional service but a year later when you’re classed as a regular it can be a very different story. Instead of rewarding you for being a loyal customer some salons seem to class you as a friend they’re not that bothered about. The level of skill is exactly the same as it was a year ago but the general level of respect seems to have dipped. There are signs that you have dropped down the scale of importance, little things such as when you arrive on time but are still thumbing through the magazines an hour later.

I’m smart enough to know that hairdressers have to make conversation with clients even if they don’t really feel like it. I also know that many of them work very long hours and as such it’s perfectly reasonable that they have their mobile phones with them. It’s less reasonable that they’re so busy talking to their friends on the phone that they burn one of your ears with a set of straighteners!

I’m now at a stage with my hair where I’m not willing to take risks. My hairy horror stories post explains the background to that. In my experience one of the biggest risks to your hair is a dodgy stylist and the second is a good stylist who isn’t putting you first. I currently only ever deal with two stylists and both of these ladies consistently provide excellent customer service. The know their craft. They do excellent work. They respect my time.

I’m fairly relaxed about braiding. If somebody plaits bits of nylon into my hair, even if they do it wrong the worst that could happen is that they’ll fall out or be so tight that my head hurts. Well technically the worst that could happen is that its so tight that it makes me go bald but lets not tangent. Unlike attaching extensions with the superpower of braiding, lots of other hair treatments involve irreversible processes that rely on some very serious chemicals and when it comes to chemicals I only ever talk to one person and that person is called Barbara.

I live in a smallish village in Greater Manchester and the population isn’t particularly diverse. There are currently seven hairdressers and three barbers in the village but none of them deal with afro hair and although the number of salons has varied over the last twenty years there has always been at least five hairdressers and none of them had ever specialised in afro hair, so as you can imagine I was quite surprised one sunny afternoon when a man approached me with a business card because his wife and her friend were about to open a hair salon.

Dishing out business cards to random black women in the street didn’t feature in any of the marketing books I read during my time at university but it definitely worked in this case. As customer relationships go that random business card has led to a relationship of over fifteen years. During that time my family has grown, the salon has closed and I’ve experimented with lots of different hair styles, but Barbara still does my hair. The location may have changed but the level of customer service is exactly the same.

My ongoing battle with my natural hair and my lifelong reluctance to ever let it have it’s own way, have led me to tolerate nonsense from a long line of hairdressers on the basis that all is forgiven as long as I look amazing on my way out of the salon. The question for me now that I’m older and better able to reflect on the whole situation is – Just how much did I hate the way my hair looked when I arrived at the hairdressers, if I was willing to accept a two hour wait and burnt ears just to look great on the drive home?

 

 

 

IN DISGUISE

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For the next few days the site is going to look a little bit different.

I built this site on WordPress and there have been a couple of updates which mean that the theme which controls how this website looks has changed – and not in a good way. It’s the digital equivalent of dying your hair blonde and having it turn green!

So until I finish rebuilding it, I’m going to have to go with something safe and plainish. Technically this shouldn’t take very long but when you’re self employed you can’t leave your clients waiting whilst you update your own blog so it might take a while.

 

 

WEB DEVELOPMENT STUFF

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As I hope I’ve made fairly clear, this blog isn’t designed to offer you a host of life changing hair and beauty tips.

I build websites for a living. I offer other digital services too, but the majority of the day job is building websites for people. I retrained as a mature student a few years ago and quickly discovered that learning web development is a process that never ends. You don’t start with a list of things and when you’ve learnt them all you’re done. The things on the list change and there are always new things being invented and developed and therefore there are new items being added to the list. If you want to stay up to date you have to continually keep working. It’s a little like trying to tidy your house whilst throwing a massive house party.

I don’t believe in experimenting with the work that I do for clients and I just can’t bring myself to spend hours building imaginary websites, so the best solution appeared to be that I should create real sites that I could be creative with. Since joining the digital industry I have invested in an assortment of different tools, some I feel I’ve mastered, some were a waste of time, money and energy and have already been abandoned. There are others that I use on a regular basis without fully utilising all their capabilities. The Adobe Creative Suite falls into this bracket. Like most people I prefer to do things I’m already good at, but if you want to get good at something you have to work at it. I’m finally at a stage with the Pen Tool where I’m winning most of the time but I wanted to get better so I’ve personally created all the artwork for Suburban Afro. It’s tempting to stick to doing things you’re already quite good at but if you want to get better then you need to put the hours in, work a bit harder and show the world what you’ve been doing. Suburban Afro is a chance for me to do all that and it also gives me the chance to get all my hair complaints off my chest as a bonus.

I’m getting new ideas all the time and noticing little things on the site that I need to tweak. The look of the site will change a little over time as I adapt things but primarily it’s about experimentation. I used this blog to test things, such as uploading a site I’ve built locally, instead of always working on live installations hidden with plugins. None of these things are particularly big, but they might have been if they’d gone wrong with a client site during an installation. I’m a massive fan of WordPress but I’ve barely touched the surface so far so I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and doing more with it.

I have a notebook full of half written blog posts which will go live over the next few weeks and I’ll continue to work on the WordPress theme. This blog is primarily an opportunity for me to develop my digital skills but the relationship I have with my hair will always provide me with content.

 

 

 

HAIRY HORROR STORIES

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I was a child in the 1970s, so I grew up watching Charlie’s Angels with icons like Farah Fawcett and her famous flick. There were also regular adverts for Harmony hairspray, which consisted of somebody with nice straight hair flicking their head about for no obvious reason.  As far as I was concerned nice hair meant long hair and definitely not a very short afro. When I was a little girl, visits to the hairdresser were essentially going to have my hair cut very very short. The only thing I hated more than my scruffy little afro was having it cut very very short.

By the time I reached my teens and started choosing my own hair styles, I always avoided anything that involved cutting my hair any shorter, but as you may remember from my first post, I’ve tried just about every other hairdo possible. Many of those styles have reappeared time and time again, and some were done once and never tried again. My 1980s wet look perm with it’s miriad of products was quite high maintenance, which left my hair not only looking wet, but also feeling wet (and if we’re honest a bit slimey) I’m sure that most people have never tried sleeping in a  shower cap, but I’m willing to wager that the majority of people that have, were sporting a wet look perm at the time.

The idea of taking my hair all the way back to my scalp isn’t something that has ever appealed to me, so unless that changes I don’t need to worry about what’s happening under the fro. I definitely can’t ever shave my head because there is a possibility that I’ll have a scalp like Freddy Krueger, thanks to my first experience with hair relaxer. At this point you’re probably expecting me to describe the usual DIY stupidity with a home relaxer kit, but no my first experience of chemical burns was courtesy of a salon that charged me full whack!

A little tip folks, if you’re a hairdresser and your client says that her head is burning do not

  • Tell her it’s not
  • Tell her it’s only tingling
  • Leave the relaxer on for goodness knows how long, whilst she grimaces in pain
  • All of the above!

There is nothing good about standing at the bus stop on your way home from a salon, running your hands through your new hairdo and finding that your scalp is covered in scabs. I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing now. I’d have put my foot down when my scalp started hurting. I wouldn’t have just sat there and made the best of it. I’d have made a fuss. Fourteen year old me didn’t know any better. I just put up with it.

Deep down somewhere, forty-something year old me is still hoping that my hair will suddenly decide to change it’s genetic make up and grow differently, but until that happens I’ll continue to try an assortment of different hair styles whilst I wait for my miracle to happen. The one thing I’m quite certain of is that the very very short afro of my youth, will not be making a comeback.

 

BAD HAIR WEEK

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I’m currently having a bad hair week. Some people have bad hair days, but mine generally last at least a week.

If there was a scale of how good my hair looks where a ten is how I look when I’ve just left the hairdressers, I’m currently around a two. Last week I was a three because I could still manage a fringe with the help of the straighteners, this week I’ve dropped to a two because I can just about get all my natural hair in a bobble but not even a pair of GHD’s could get this sponge to cooperate enough to get a fringe.

I’m not particularly vain, but once I drop below a four, on the (imaginary) hair scale, I’m not myself. If I was a wealthy celebrity I’d probably have my servants covering all the mirrors, or on a bad day my mansion would be full of smashed mirrors similar to the forbidden West Wing in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My current level of celebrity means that I just scowl when I catch sight of my reflection and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m trapped in a bad hair week  and since my folic ugliness is generally finance related, my current period of bad hair is likely to last until I obtain a wad of cash.

There is a definite correlation between how much money I have and how bad my hair looks and how long that ugliness lasts. With the right amount of income I’d only look bad when there’s a diary issue between me and my stylist.

I’m constantly between hairdos which I’m sure some people find confusing but they’re generally too polite to ask and anybody that knows me well enough to ask, knows that the hair comes and goes so there’s no need to question it.

I’m becoming increasingly aware that my relationship with my hair isn’t a particularly good thing. I’m not setting a good example for my children by moaning every time I come face to face with my natural hair. At this stage of my life however, I’d say that I usually set my children a good example, so this one little thing shouldn’t really be an issue. I don’t smoke. I don’t do recreational drugs. I don’t even get drunk on a regular basis, so spending most of my time in hair extensions isn’t going to ban me from any Mum of the year competitions, my swearing might, but the hair thing won’t.

I’m generally very low maintenance. With the obvious exceptions of food, water and my tiny tribe of direct descendants all I really need is Lucozade and hair extensions. Ideally I’d also like access to a car or decent public transport which is required for mum stuff and for the regular 30 mile trips I have to make to buy haircare products. I understand the forces of retail but travelling into central Manchester everytime I want to buy a conditioning pack or a decent shampoo is inconvenient to say the least, but that’s another blog post.

 

 

HELLO FROM THE SUBURBAN AFRO

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As a rule of thumb my natural hair journey is me travelling as far as humanly possible away from my natural hair.

I spent most of my childhood daydreaming about having long straight hair and most of my adulthood experimenting with every kind of hairdo. I’ve been permed, relaxed, weaved and braided but when the chemicals wear off and the extensions are removed I’m back to spending time with my nemesis. My natural hair. Every time I look in the mirror my unruly, unattractive, uneven afro waves back at me.

In the grand scheme of things the ongoing battle I have with my fro isn’t a big deal, but it definitely bothers me more than any of my other imperfections. Perhaps because it’s more visible to the world, but more likely it’s because I decided at a very young age that this ugly looking sponge was just not for me and I’ve spent so much time and money trying to fight nature and losing. Mother nature has been consistently kicking my backside for the last 44 years and will quite rightly continue to do so.

So why have I decided to start a blog about my hair? Am I on some sort of journey? Do I feel inspired by people like Jamelia who have abandoned their weaves in order to embrace their natural hair? Have I finally come to accept the inevitability of the situation? Nope. I build websites for a living and needed material for a development blog site I’m experimenting with. I work a lot better if I’m dealing with real work so I decided to combine that, with my never ending hair whinges and write occasional blog posts about my frizzy nemesis. I have an afro and I live in the suburbs and long after I’ve moved onto my next digital project I will continue to be “The Suburban Afro”