I detest going to salons, because I always feel so uncomfortable. It's mostly as "me" thing, as I know a lot of people don't have the hangs ups I do. For years I dreaded it as much as I do going to the dentist, and at that time I was going to a place but it was clear the woman who worked there didn't like me. One day back in 1998 (and this was when it was quite common to have walk-in "appointments" - is that still a thing or do they need to always be booked now?) I went to the salon and found it was closed for the day. This left me walking further up the high street to look for another.
I found one, it was not busy, and the lady made the entire experience all about me. For the first time ever, I was able to relax at a salon. I was gutted when a year later she said she was leaving, but they were part of a small chain of hairdressers, and her replacement was every bit as personable and good at hairdressing. That hairdresser ended up buying out her branch, and I was gutted when she sold it in 2005 and I had to find somewhere else.
I missed that hairdresser to the point of being reduced to tears at the process of finding another - she really went above & beyond, as an example, I can remember handing her a VHS tape and asking her if she'd mind taking it home to watch so that she could she the person from a TV show whose hair I liked (not like now where we'd just Google it on our phone).
It was a nightmare trying to get someone else where I was comfortable - in one salon the hairdresser always insisted on talking to whoever was at the side of her when doing my hair, but never talk to me. I'm not being self-centered, it's just that she couldn't have cared less about what she was doing for me and I felt like a spec of dust when I left. Looking back, I don't know why I went there as many times as I did, I suppose it was alright when the other hairdresser did my hair, but it wasn't the sort of place where you got to choose.
Eventually I settled on a mobile hairdresser, had her for about seven years, I used to go to her house but I got fed up of her shouting at her kids while she was doing my hair, so I asked her to come to me instead, which she did...and brought the kids with her, so it was just as bad only worse, as I have no children and therefore nothing to occupy the kids. As kids do, they wanted to play with my dogs, one of which was fine, the other hated it (that dog didn't like any children), but their mother wouldn't help me out by stopping the kids from accessing the dog who didn't like them...eventually I went back to her house for further sessions.
One thing which kept me going back to her was her (seemingly constant) complaining about her customers, particularly the ones who just stopped going...I was so sure I didn't want to be the subject of one of her rants to someone else, so I carried on going. But eventually enough was enough, and I found the lady I have now.
She's been coming to me since 2011 and I worship the ground she walks on, as she's so accommodating, reliable, a good hairdresser, who turns up & just does my hair exactly how I like it. We talk about lots of things, but strangely enough never talk about my hair, she just does it. I don't know what I will do when she retires.