Someone’s playing a mean, awful, hideous joke on me. I swear, if the producers of The Heather Show don’t lighten up, I’ll produce some drama for this shindig all on my own, and I’m not promising they’ll like it. Not one bit.

    I’m starting to feel a sense of deep camaraderie with Job – no, not Steve Jobs, not job as in work, I’m talking about Job the biblical guy who got toyed with by higher powers throughout his miserable existence. The post last night was my attempt to rid myself of Job’s influence, but alas, what was supposed to be my day to relax and be pampered turned into the day from Hell.

    I woke up in a good mood. Why? Because I love those days when I wake up, look in the mirror, and my hair looks like I just stepped out of a salon. The curls seriously couldn’t have been better. Sure, maybe a bit more lift at the top, but it looked fabulous. Didn’t have to touch it up at all before I walked out the door for the day.

    Despite my hair’s decision to behave, I decided I needed to get it trimmed. Nothing drastic, mind you, just a light trim. When it gets too long it becomes extremely heavy because I’ve got so much hair on my head. It weighs down the curls, making it kind of flat on top, and all that extra weight can actually increase the severity of my headaches. Today was my appointment at Elie Elie, the salon I’ve been going to for years because they specialize in cutting curly hair like mine. I’ve had my hair cut four times there, and every time it turned out perfectly – it made it bouncier, the curls were magnified, and it curled straight up to the roots.

    Today, my luck turned towards that of Job and I was some kind of sacrificial lamb for the God of Hair. I asked for a one inch trim by a Ouidad Specialist (someone who has been trained and certified to cut curly hair a certain way.) I double, triple, and quadruple checked that the stylist knew I wanted only an inch off, just a light trim, nothing serious. I expected her to do her job, since this was basically a $100 haircut, and she was supposedly certified.

    What happened? She completely and utterly butchered my hair. I told her an inch, right? Guess how much she took off the back. Four inches. Guess what she did to the front. Go on, guess, I dare you. Eight freaking inches. EIGHT! Needless to say, that’s a huge disparity from the front to the back, a disparity that’s not supposed to be there, that I very clearly said I did not want. She cut off eight times what I told her to! And you know what’s worse? I think she knew she’d screwed up big time, because she was very careful to hide her efforts from me. I couldn’t see what she was cutting – she was very carefully pinning up the hair she’d just cut so I couldn’t see. Then, when she was done cutting and gelling it, what did she do? She used five hair clips to flatten out the hair on the top of my head so that it would appear longer than it really was.

    She sat me in a hair dryer. Drying under one of those bonnets shouldn’t last longer than five minutes. I was in there for twenty-five. And in that period, she took in another client, started a dye job, and promptly splattered hair dye all over my expensive imported suede Australian shoes and my Calvin Klein jeans. With a simple flick of her wrist, she destroyed $250 worth of clothing. Those shoes are really expensive, they’re the only things I can wear, and that dye ate away at the suede. It looks beyond awful. But believe it or not, it could have been worse – I happened to see that flick of her wrist coming. I didn’t have time to say anything, but I had just enough time to shield my eyes. Thankfully my hands, rather than my eyes, got splattered with dye. And she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t care, didn’t say a word.

    I was furious! But, after the stress of the past week, I was too afraid to open my mouth for fear I’d start crying right in the middle of the salon. And that’s just not kosher. So I sat there, my head baking, trying to hold back the tears. Finally, twenty-five minutes after she set me to cook, she spat at an assistant to finish styling my hair. There I was, paying nearly $100 for a haircut and style job by a supposed specialist, and the broom girl was styling my hair. It just kept getting better.

    Finally, after my hair had transformed into a white woman’s afro from the frizz, the stylist decided to return. I can see in her face that she knows she screwed up. It was almost comical watching her try to cover up her mistakes, but I knew exactly what she was doing. By the time she was done futzing around, I was finally able to see just how horrific the cut was. I noticed the 8 inches missing from the front, the four in the back, and guess what else? The left side is an entire inch longer than the right. It’s not even curling right anymore, and because of her half-assed job of splicing the curls, my hair’s nowhere near as thick as it used to be.

    I got up out of that chair, marched up to the front, and the manager got an earful. She tried to apologize, she took down my number and said the owner would call me, she said she’d pay to repair the shoes, et cetera et cetera et cetera. Bologna. When I got home and checked the salon’s website, I realized she overcharged me. She dared to overcharged me.

    I couldn’t help it, I cried. The stress came to a head and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Everything that I’d tried to do has failed for seven straight days. Tumors, weight gain, important files deleted, injuries, arguments, lost opportunities, and now I had the worst haircut of my life. Worse, they forced me to pay for it. You’d better believe they’re not going to get away with it. While I cried, my Mother called the credit card company and had the charge frozen. And through bleary eyes, I did some research.

    Did you know that you can sue for salon malpractice? In the case of a hideously disgusting haircut, in violation of beauty license regulations, an unhappy and disfigured client can hold the stylist responsible. Interesting, eh?

    Guess what else? When you pay a salon to receive a specialized, expensive haircut from a certified stylist, and yet you receive services from a stylist who not only isn’t certified, but doesn’t do her job, that’s consumer fraud. That’s an offense worthy of a lawsuit, according to the Commonwealth of Virginia. My oh my.

    These may seem frivolous to you, but you haven’t seen my hair. And here I am, producing a television show, preparing to be on camera, and my hair looks like it’s been cut by a weed-whacker. A haircut this bad could have an impact on my career, it’s just that hideous. I’m infuriated, and if the owner doesn’t call tomorrow and do everything within his power to somehow make up for this, I have no qualms about taking the matter into my own hands. None whatsoever. I’m sick and tired of people screwing others over and not being held accountable. They’re refunding the cost of the haircut, they’re buying me new shoes and pants, they will find a way to pay to have another salon fix my hair, and they will come up with some way to make me happy. If not? I’m sure I can find a way to make them understand just how miserable they’ve made me.

    So why the comparison to Job? I know that a bad haircut isn’t as devastating as boils, illness, having your entire family killed off by strange diseases, and so on. But after this past crapload of a week, I think I have a teensy bit better understanding of what he went through. The bad haircut, that’s just the last iota of shit that I will tolerate from anyone. Watch out, world, I’m getting witchy, and you have Elie Elie to thank for that.