Worst Mistakes In The Salon

Memorable Mistakes

Oh, we so love doing surveys with our clients! Here’s another fun query / response scenario that we think you’ll enjoy…

The Question:
What’s the worst / most memorable mistake you’ve ever made while performing a service and how did you correct it / handle it with the client?

The Answers:
• Back in the 80s I had a young client with waist-length hair come in for a “bi-level” (omg, remember those!) but wanted a tail left (again…omg). We got to chatting and I forgot to leave her tail, chop, chop, chop…no tail!! I took a deep breath and said how awful I felt, but she loved the haircut so much it didn’t even matter in the end. Phew!

• The client has short hair. I mixed the bowls of color. The lighter color was intended to be placed on the top and the darker color was for the bottom half. Because the bowls got switched, the dark color ended up on the top. She was a client that loved change, thank goodness. She was happy when I told her that her regrowth will be minimal. In the end, the client was happy and I started labeling my bowls of color from that point on.

• Worst? Probably with highlights and using a lighter I wasn’t familiar with. It bled into her roots… I equalized the color and gave her a discount for her patience.

• I once turned someone’s hair purple but did a bleach wash to correct it.

• A client asked for a haircut she thought was called a certain name. We cut her hair and it turned out that she wanted something else.

• I thought I had picked up my thinning shears and accidentally cut a section of the client’s long hair off mid shaft. We changed the style obviously but thankfully she was a super sweet client and now we laugh about it. She will never let me live it down.

• While in cosmetology school, I had a customer in for a haircut I ask him if he wanted his haircut up over his ears and he said yes he wanted it over his ears. What he really meant was that he wanted it covering his ears! I was so embarrassed!

• Confusing one client for another. Apologized, explained the situation.

• I was trying to use a stability ball chair and fell off to a loud crash as went down to the floor. She laughed and said I do not know how you do that. Apparently I am not that good at it. Then We both laughed.

• I had these rollers with my name written on them in red. I thought I used a permanent marker. She had white hair. When I took the rollers out her hair had turned pink. She was in her 80’s. And my next client was already in the waiting area. I was freaking out! It turned out that she loved it and wanted me to put pink rinse in her hair from then on. Whew!

• One time I mixed the wrong color! I realized that it was way too dark within about 5 minutes so I rinsed it off and had to do a weave on her to correct the color at my expense!

• I fell asleep cutting someone’s hair years ago! Went splashed water on my face and finished!

• I started curling a client’s hair and it melted right off. It was so embarrassing. I’ll never use a new curling iron without testing it on myself first. I did not charge her for the service.

• I forgot to put the neutralizer on a perm. I apologized and explained to the client that I made a mistake and I made it right with her by finishing the process.

• Cutting a man’s neckline above the mole he asked me not to expose only 10 minutes before.

• On my second day of work in a salon as an apprentice, I completely soaked the owner’s mother all the way to her waist, front and back. Then I accidentally washed off one of the boss’ mother-in-law’s eyebrows.

• Not checking the open tube of color to see if it was marked correctly. I was trying to impress the new client. I finished the first section of hair when I noticed. I excused myself to mix another bowl of color to put over the section I had already applied. I didn’t want to take her back to be washed, make a fool out of myself and on top of it run behind. I was able to mix a few levels up to make the formula work!! I then mixed a third formula for the other three sections so everything matched. Oh my stomach!

Do you have any memorable mistakes you’d like to share?