Let’s be honest, at least once in your life, you’ve been to a barbershop and you asked the guy there to just trim a bit the ends of your hair and he completely went wild and managed to cut your hair so short you had to wear a hat for a while.
We are going to talk about why most barbers cut your hair shorter than what you asked them to do and I am going to give you some useful tips on how to avoid this uncomfortable situation in the future.
First, let’s have a look back in history and see how barbery first started and who were the first people that introduced the concept of barbering.
Apparently, barbering dates all the way back to early 4000 B.C.
In Ancient Egypt, where they used oyster shells and sharpened flintstone to cut the hair. The first Barbershops as we know them appeared in Greece around 296 B.C. Besides cutting hair and trimming beards, barbers also were known to perform medical procedures like dressing wounds, bloodletting, or tooth extracting.
Barberry was introduced to Rome by Greek colonies in Sicily in 209 or 300 B.C.
The romans liked their hair to be of even length, and usually cut short. A messy or more natural hair style was associated with barbarians and showed a lack of culture. Almost all roman men used to shave, having a clean-shaved face was a “sign of being Roman and not Greek”
Believe it or not, the Romans were actually a lot into grooming.
Some of them used to shave their whole bodies and the removal of body hair represented a status indicator, the richer a roman was, the less body hair he had.
And now let’s get back to our little dilemma.
Why most barbers cut your hair shorter than what you asked them to do??
If I am asking you to cut this much length from my hair, why do you cut more than that? Where the information is lost and why?? I had this problem recently, it’s bit funny if you think about it, wasn’t that funny for me at that time.
This is what happened:
A few weeks ago I needed to book an appointment to the barbershop to get a haircut
Because the person who usually cuts my hair was entirely booked for that day, I’ve decided to book an appointment to a different barbershop close to my home.
I go there, I explain to the guy that I only want him to cut the ends of my hair
I even showed him with my two fingers how much is that( the distance between my fingers was about 1cm), all this just to make sure he gets it. He says to me:” Yes, yes of course” and goes to work.
He took the hair from the front of my head with a comb, pulled it between his fingers and asked me how much to cut.
I see in the mirror in front of me that he had there just about the right length I asked him to trim from my hair and I reply:”Yes, that is ok”
Imagine this: The first cut he did was how I asked him
After that I don’t know what happened in his mind because that man started cutting my hair shorter and shorter…and shorter until wasn’t that much left. At one moment I stopped him because he wanted to cut even more.
With a soft voice he asked me:”Is this short enough?”
In that moment I thought my head is going to explode:
“Please remind me when did I tell you that I wanted it short??” I said to him.
“Remember that I told you I want only the ends to be trimmed two minutes ago??
“When did we decide to cut my hair short!??”
He replied that my hair is not short and he thought that was what I wanted.
“But I told you what I wanted, I even showed you how much to cut, you don’t need to guess or imagine what I want because I told you like 2 minutes ago!”
Now my dilemma is this: Why he cut the first bit of hair how I requested and after that went crazy. What changed??
Usually, if you go to the market and you ask for apples and the person there gives you oranges, we have a problem, somehow barbers get a way with it.
Normally, I would have a series of measures in place to prevent this from happening, and they were developed in many years, dealing with all sorts of unskilled barbers.
I didn’t follow my own rules this time because I was in a hurry
Having a 15 months old son and a 12,5 hours day job can present some challenges at times. Also I was at peace with the thought that if this barber will mess my haircut it will be my fault too. Because I should’ve known better. I took responsibility for what ever was about to happen.
Hoping you enjoyed this lovely story, I will present to you the 4 main steps that you should follow when you go to the barber for a haircut and you don’t want him to destroy your hair.
1. Show the barber a picture of how you want your haircut to be, could be a picture of yourself or just a picture you found on the Internet.
2. Try to find a barber that you know is capable. Maybe a friend went there and you like how their hair looks. You can try to find some pictures on their website with haircuts they made. Take a look at what reviews they have, if people are happy or not with the services.
3. When he starts cutting your hair, watch in the mirror in front of you what he is doing. Don’t hesitate to correct him when he is about to cut more than you want him to.
4. Step number four, and the one that I really use all the time. This works best for me in any circumstances: With one day before going to the barber, could be one hour or couple of hours if it works better for you. I cut the ends myself, takes me 5-10 minutes. When I go to the barbershop, I only ask the person there to trim my hair with 0 or 1 on the sides, and to smooth everything out.
The end result is usually very good and most important, is exactly how I want it to be. If you go to a more or less decent barbershop, usually they can do the sides with the blending and fading pretty well. For me always the problem has been with the top of my hair, they always managed to find a way to ruin it.
You don’t need much skills to cut the ends of your hair, just watch a couple of tutorials on YouTube and you should be fine.
You just have to keep in mind that if you cut less than you wanted, you can always go back and cut a bit more till it satisfies your demands, but if you cut too much from the start it’s not going to be a good day.
Ideally would be to find a barber that understands what you want and has also the skills required for the job
I’ve been to some good barbers over the years, great actually but also I’ve been to some “butchers”.
I’m not saying this it’s the best solution, but for me this works the best, it eliminates the risk of getting a nightmare haircut specially if you’re going to a new barbershop.
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