10 Minutes Late

Day 266: It never ceases to amaze me how we as women treat each other. It does not pay to dumb yourself down ever to try and fit in with other people. This is something that I've found myself doing when I want to try and fit into other people's world.

Trust me when I tell you it's never worth it and every time you will live to regret putting yourself in that position. About six month ago, I left my hair salon of about 8 years to try a new stylist. Even though the salon is in the hood it's nice inside and all of the stylist do good work. Yes its gossip central and you can buy all sorts of bootleg merchandise on any given day. Yet they act like it's Salon Rodeo Drive with their arrogance but I kept going.

I received an invitation from a client to come out to a reception for the Atlanta Jazz Festival late in the day. Which is cool because I already had a 3:00 pm hair appointment. Atlanta traffic is always unpredictable and today it was bumper to bumper on holiday Friday. Knowing I would be about 10 minutes late I phoned into the salon to let them know. The receptionist told me she had to check in with the stylist to make sure it was okay. I in turn said, " are you kidding me?"

She came back with, "on any other day it would be alright but my stylist ( let me change that to the stylist I went to ) was by herself and having to do her own shampoos and wouldn't be able to take me." She offered to do my hair in the morning and I declined. I was really stunned by this because I kept thinking who does she really believe she is and how insensitive. I wanted to scream in the phone who are you people!

When you're out of your element other people recognize you're different. They never accept you they simply tolerate you. There's at least a dozen hair salon within a 3-5 mile radius of my home so I regrouped and said saylavee to my hood experience.

I love supporting small business and won't let this experience change the way I feel about that. What I do know is this stylist who is co-owner of the salon with her sister does not care that she lost me as a customer.

The problem- her not caring makes me sad.