A Hot, Hairy Mess

(Writing, on occasional Fridays, stories about summer jobs I had when I was a teen)

Maybe it would have been a good idea to ask my friend why she was giving up her job cleaning a local beauty shop. I was, perhaps, thirteen or fourteen when she asked if I wanted to take over for her. It sounded simple enough. I would get paid to sweep up hair, wipe off hairspray, mop down floors, and throw towels into the laundry. I pedaled my Schwinn across town, met up with my friend, and learned my new job. The hardest part, she told me, was remembering to point the spray nozzle down into the sink before turning on the water. I may have forgotten to do that a few times.

The job wasn’t difficult, and I enjoyed earning some extra spending money. I learned, however, that there are few surfaces to which hair and hairspray won’t stick. On occasion, my boss asked me to wipe down the steering wheel and interior of her car because it, too, was coated in hairspray. She complained that, after I said I had cleaned it, the steering wheel still felt sticky. I doubted there was a cleaning product known to man strong enough to cut through the build-up of hair product on the inside of that car. Perhaps a chisel might have been more effective. I picture that car, disintegrating in a landfill somewhere, layers of lacquer still clinging to the steering wheel.

One of my jobs was to look through hairstyle magazines, find pictures to cut out, and add them to a collage which covered a storage cabinet in the salon.  I guess I wasn’t very style-savvy because my boss usually pulled down the pictures I added to the display. I suppose it was important to have photos of attractive hairstyles on display, because I’m not sure my boss was her own best advertisement. She wore her hair cropped short and bleached straw-like, as though she had experimented on herself with a few too many chemicals.

One day when I arrived at work, my boss said she needed to go shopping for beauty supplies and asked if I wanted to go with her. I thought we would be going to an upscale beauty supply store. Instead, we drove to a discount warehouse where my boss stocked up on fruity green apple, strawberry, and tangerine shampoos. Her plan was to refill the expensive salon-quality bottles in her shop with these cheaper brands because, as she said, her customers wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

On our way home, my boss said she wanted to drive past her boyfriend’s house, where he lived with his wife. Having grown up in a fairly sheltered, conservative community I knew, theoretically, that married people sometimes had affairs. This was my first experience finding myself smack-dab in the middle of one, as an accessory to my boss’s tawdry love triangle.

We drove past the boyfriend’s house; my boss blasted the horn, and sped away. She drove around the block, and then did it again. I felt as though I were looking down on myself, trapped inside some weird soap opera or television movie. I just wanted to get home without being arrested.

I didn’t learn much about the beauty business that summer, but I did learn a few valuable life lessons. I learned that business owners don’t always act with integrity, and that adults don’t always behave like adults.

I told my boss I wasn’t going to be able to continue working once school started in the fall. She found someone to replace me and I trained her, showing her how to point the spray nozzle down into the sink before turning on the water. As for the rest of her responsibilities, I figured she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.