‘Dirty Job’ easy job compared to being hairdresser

There’s a show on television called “Dirty Jobs” with Mike Rowe. People send in videos of their nasty, dirty, stinking jobs and if they’re bad enough, poor Rowe goes out and spends the day doing it.

He’s often cleaning “poo” as he calls it from animal cages or wallowing in sewers. He’s gone in bat caves, noodled for catfish and wrestled alligators. Of all of the jobs he’s been forced to do, I can’t help but wonder why he’s avoiding the most frightening job of all – that of a hairdresser.

I owned a salon in Priest River for 12 years, and the stories I have could curl your hair without the use of perm rods or chemicals. Working with the public can be terrifying. I often wished for an altered version of the vacuum sending tube at the bank drive-thru. Then if I had a freaky customer I could push the “send” button and a trap door would open in the floor. The hydraulic chair would tip forward, dumping my scary client into the hole where the vacuum would suck them through a giant tube that tunneled under my shop, beneath the highway and shot them out across the road.

It seems like such a perfect invention and I know there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of businesses that would love to have one. Whoever builds the prototype and patents this ingenious idea will be a wealthy person indeed. I’ll call it my Scary Person Vacuum Sucker.

But, let’s get back to the hazards of being a hairdresser. First of all, some people don’t seem to understand that most hairdressers offer services such as a wash, cut and style. They do conditioning treatments, curls, straightening, color and streaks. Some salons offer tanning or ear piercing.

Hairdressers or cosmetologists are not doctors, veterinarians, shrinks, priests and we don’t own hazmat suits. So why was I asked to examine a home genital piercing gone wrong?

Why did a lady insist I feel how hard her breast implants had become and another describe her burning, bleeding hemorrhoids in horrifying detail?

Why was I expected to diagnose a dog’s diet by hearing about the shape, color and texture of its feces?

I’ve heard so many confessions of adultery that I expected the next person who sat in my chair to start out with, “Forgive me, Sherry, for I have sinned. It’s been two haircuts since my last confession.”

In my little North Idaho salon, I had a woman who liked to take her clothes off before she got to the tanning room. When I asked her to wait until she was in private, she’d laugh and show even more exhibitionist qualities the next time, until I was forced to stop giving her appointments.

I had a guy let out a loud scream while I was cutting his hair. Why, you ask? No reason other than he wanted to see me jump a mile. He laughed so hard tears flowed. He actually went to work the next day and told another guy about it, who came in for a haircut and did the same thing. It would have given me great pleasure to hand each of them a whole and bloody ear for their trouble.

And some people think they are so incredibly smart to deep-condition their hair with household products before a perm. One gal came in for a perm and had her hair wrapped in a towel, turban-style. When she unveiled her suffocating locks her entire head was covered in Crisco. She had smeared great globs of shortening all over her head, a good half-inch thick. I had to send her home – no shampoo would cut through that gunk and who would expect a perm to hold when the hair had been caked in grease?

Ask your own hairdresser what horror stories he or she has. You’ll spend your next haircut in disbelief at what people will come up with.

I still think Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs is playing it safe by rolling around in sewage and tangling with wild animals. Let’s give him a real challenge. Send him into a beauty salon and see how well he handles the public’s unique personalities for a day. My guess is it wouldn’t be long before he started plans to invent my Scary Person Vacuum Sucker. And trust me, if he’s not already a rich man, he soon would be.