The Industry

Here's the thing about my industry. We can be having the crappiest day but as soon as you sit in that chair, everything else goes away and it's the client who is the main priority. Those rubbish feelings can be pushed to the back of the mind and we can create the best look after a couple of hours with a few special techniques.

Of course, it does take quite a few years to train to become good at your job, and it takes a lot of stress and tears to get through the assessments that your tutors can throw at you but the outcome is so rewarding because you know that those years weren't for nought, they were actually good for something. Something that you know will brighten the grumpiest of days that clients might be having. You know that with a little pair of scissors and a comb or a bowl of foul-smelling liquid, you can change the way someone is feeling about themselves.

We haven’t always had the best luck at my work. I guess it all had to do with the global pandemic of 2019 that lost all the business in the sector. The world locked down and no one was even allowed to leave their homes or visit family abroad. The elders talk about it all the time whenever there’s nothing to gossip about, and boy oh boy, can they talk about it. Even my manager and the business owner has had her say about it. She didn’t believe that she would be able to visit her niece in Cyprus again before she grew up. Holly, I believe the niece is called, did eventually meet her but it was a bittersweet reunion as Holly didn’t even remember her Auntie and my manager had lost her then-current job and wasn’t getting paid as much after that.

My manager is always emotional whenever she brings up her family, I guess she lost someone close to her during the pandemic but it is always a touchy subject with them so I don’t pry, just wait for the subject to come up when she wants to talk, which is often. I think she just wants to educate us ‘young-uns’ on the true horrors of the world and she would make sure we knew what to expect if an old law came out that we had to ‘socially distance’ ourselves from each other and say two meters apart. Doesn’t help because the Covid vaccine was a huge success when it came out then the common cold vaccine as well.

The world is a utopia now. Cars are 100% electric, something else that started being a thing in the 2010’s and all the bad things of the past, the history of the world is but a myth and in museums. It’s a world of beauty, wonder and we have managed to stop global warming, to a degree. Scientists are still working on that one and they get closer every day.

My industry has slowly started picking up the pieces though. It did take a while as many started jobs elsewhere during the pandemic but new recruits came in every day, went through the same training as many others before them and started new jobs in the same place they gained the experiences.

So yeah, we may have a crappy day, many of us do. That’s what my manager says, but as soon as we get a client in that chair, we don’t think about anything else and transform them into someone new, just by either giving a trim, a restyle or even colouring their hair a different colour. It can be wacky, fun or just boring but it helps so many people become something else.

My industry? Hairdressing.