Confessions of a Charlotte nail technician

Whenever I get my nails done I always wonder what my nail technician thinks about me. Does she judge me for picking my cuticles? Does she think I’m gross for not shaving my legs? Does she hate the color I picked? I spoke with one nail technician to get these answers as well as find out her favorite (and least favorite) stories about working in a nail salon. Here are her confessions:

What’s the most annoying thing your customers do?

Oh, there’s a few things.

1. When customers walk in and don’t even say hello. They just immediately say, “How long’s the wait?” I always want to answer, “Six hours, go away.”

2. When they tell me, “You don’t have enough colors.” The salon literally has 500 colors.

3. When they ask, “Do you really know how to wax eyebrows?” Um, yes. But now I don’t want to do your eyebrows because clearly you’re going to be very hard to please.

Do you care when girls don’t shave their legs?

I don’t care. We all wear gloves. Bring your hairy legs in.

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened in the salon?

One time a frequent customer (male) told me that he was single. A few days later my coworkers and I saw him walking outside our store. We started talking about him and I mentioned jokingly that he was single and ready to mingle.

What we didn’t know was that his ex-fiancé was inside our salon.

She heard us talking about him and as we were closing she confronted a few of us outside. She started yelling and accused us of wanting to “get with her man.” The funny thing is that all of us are married and wanted nothing to do with this guy. The girl acted like she wanted to start a fist fight.

The weird thing is that the guy and his ex got back together and then both of them kept coming back to the salon. It was so awkward that we had to ask them to please find a different nail salon.

What do you do when people pick an ugly color?

Who cares? No one cares.

Are there any services you dread doing?

It’s not the service but the customer that can make things tedious. It’s so annoying when a simple service can take up to two hours because people are so picky and tell me how to do my job the entire time. Would you like it if someone watched your every move and told you how to do your job? I didn’t think so.

How do you do respond when people are rude to you?

At my salon we all handle it different ways. I usually just smile and laugh it off while others will say something to the rude person and ask them pointblank why they’re being rude. This usually catches people off-guard and then they act nicer.

What do you want people to know about nail technicians?

It hurts when people talk down to us and look at us as just “nail girls.” We work hard to support our families just like you. We respect our customers and just ask that they do the same.

Any other confessions?

One time I was talking to a woman and she showed me a photo of the house she just bought. I told her that it looked really nice. Then she looked at me and said, “Don’t expect a big tip because you’ve seen how big my house is.” It was so rude, but I did my best to just keep smiling and ignore her.