Industry Standards

Why is it that when I walk into a barber shop, which is like twice a year at best, someone always turns to me and says, “May I help you, sir?” Yeah, I’m here to get my tires rotated and pick up a meatball sub for the girlfriend. What the hell do you think I’m here for? Yesterday (which was actually October 9 – I know, we schedule these columns way in advance) I walked into the local SpaceTown Barber Shop, which has been there for over thirty years. And this little Asian guy turns and says that very thing to me. “Can I help you?” So I looked about real quickly, and responded, “Uh, yeah. I need a haircut. You sell those here?” I don’t think he got it.

When I walk up to the fresh seafood bar at the local Snostrebla, I expect the worker there to ask me what she can help me with. There’s a variety. I could get the fresh jumbo shrimp, the frozen popcorn shrimp, the Alaskan King Crab legs, the lobster meat, the imitation krab meat (yes, it’s spelled with a K :rolleyes: ), the fresh Atlantic salmon, or whatever else they sell. Of course she needs to ask me what she can help me with. A barber shop sells one service. A haircut. Does anyone really go to the barber shop to buy their haircare products? I mean, obviously they try to upsell you while you’re there, and sometimes people buy the tea tree oil shit, but no one actually just goes there just to buy the products, right? Well this old town barber shop doesn’t even sell them. They, therefore, sell one thing. Haircuts.

So I got my Asian haircut and was quite pleased with it. I haven’t had a haircut since like May, so I was in bad need of a good one. Or in good need of a bad one – whichever. I’m always so surprised when I look in the mirror after I get a haircut to see a fairly good looking gentleman standing there staring back at me. I usually turn real fast, ask him what the hell he’s doing in the bathroom, ask him to please leave, then return to looking at myself in the mirror. And since I really literally get like two haircuts a year, I look shaggy for most of the rest of it.

This is also a good ploy to get a little SpaceLove, if you know what I’m talking about. If you wait several months between haircuts, then you look so surprisingly different when you come striding in the door that your girlfriend will usually say, “Ooh, ahh! Let’s make some sex!” Well she usually does that anyway, if you’re doing something right. But something about a fresh haircut always turns ’em on.

But you know what? That’s something I have never understood. How barbers get to be so good at what they do. Obviously it takes a lot of practice to get good, and fluent in the language of the scissor. But that tells me that at some point in there, they were practicing. And probably on people. Until that barber gets good, you’re getting chopped, no two ways about it. And sure, it always looks good in those trick mirrors they use, but then you get home and wash it and start looking in your own mirror, and there are scalp marks and chopped locks and just general shittyness all over.

Same thing applies to brain surgery, I should think. Until you get good at it, you’re practicing. Therefore, whenever I go in for brain surgery, I usually ask the doc, “So, have you been doing this a while?” And if they say something like “You’ll be my second patient ever!” I find a different one. I guess you could say the same about ocular surgeons and those guys who do the laser surgery. If they screw it up and shoot that laser beam through the back of your eye, they could fry off a part of your brain. Because (and what most people don’t know) the front of your eye has on it what is called a “lens”. And what do lenses do? They magnify. Like an ant underneath a magnifying glass, that shit turns his eye laser into a concentrated Star Wars type blaster. I’ve known guys come walking out of there with a clean, cauterized hole all the way through the back of their heads.

So be careful, friends. Choose your surgeons and your laser doctors and your barbers carefully. Maybe have interviews and shit until you find the right one for you. You don’t want to come away with a hole in your head and shitty hair to cover it up with.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Did you stop to consider that they might do “Happy Endings” at your barber shop?

    Maybe they’re just trying to gauge whether you stopped by to have your hair cut or to get a little extra lovin’.

  2. Space

    That thought doesn’t really get me anywhere. Imagine all the itchy hair you’d get on your bits. Yeah, I’ll pass.

    :derp:

  3. Well the practice place is called a barber college and use to give hair cuts for about half of regular price. I tried it once out in Abilene and got a lop-sided flat top.

    Twas’ a time when a trip to the barber shoppe was a weekly adventure. Man I use to love the way you’d smell when you came out of that chair. They had some special barber shoppe scent that they always splashed on you right at the last that was great. Alas, no more. Now they compete with auto customizing shops for the title “Chop Shop”.

  4. Catina

    You know they also do shaves, right? What’s that lil ditty. Shave and a hair cut… (/Channeling Roger Rabbit)

  5. Stella

    i think i might know a guy with a hole through his brain too. he also has a combover. imagine that…

    i may have to do some investigative spying. :ninja:

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