This week has been one for the books. I quit my job yesterday and a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I have never been more stressed at a job before and it was solely because of my boss. Imagine Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada with a personality disorder mixed in.
The first day I worked there he warned me that he was "an asshole" but I blew it off thinking he was just trying to scare me. Then I started sensing something was off when a client who's also "an asshole" was on my books and he told me if I wanted to "cut his ear" that would be okay.
Red flags then went off when he told me that he wanted me to start cutting hair exactly the way he cuts it--which would also be the same style for "90%" of the clients. I've been doing this for 7 1/2 years and never has anyone told me I had to change the way I cut hair. That was beyond bizarre to me. So I kind of ignored it and continued to cut hair the way I always have. Of course not without having an hour long conversation with him informing him that all stylists have a different way of cutting hair and if he didn't mind I would like to continue to cut hair the way I always have. He said okay.
Then two weeks later he presented me with a document that said if I didn't start cutting hair the way he cuts hair I would be fired. He said he got to thinking about our previous conversation and didn't care how I felt and I would be doing it his way from now on. Obviously I had no choice but to sign it.
So I started doing it his way except he loved taking the scissors away from me in the middle of a cut to start working on it himself. He also wanted me to stand there and watch the way he cuts hair and tell me how to do it, even though I've been in this profession longer than he has. I just went along with it and even asked questions to make it look like I was interested in learning something new even though a lot of the time I wanted to tell him the many ways he was doing it wrong.
I could go on and on about his antics. One of the many things that blew my mind is when a girl came in looking for a job and her resume had "too much stuff about God on it." Something, I guess, he finds unacceptable so it was immediately thrown in the trash. It also never failed to floor me that many of his clients have a special name in the computer and that would be "Jackass." He loves to bash the people that are providing his income. How backwards is that? I only heard him say a nice thing about 1 of his clients the entire time I worked there. Everyone else is a....you guessed it....jackass. Especially if you drive a nice car.
The final straw for me came yesterday when I was in the break room talking to my Mom on the phone for maybe 2 minutes and he came back there enraged at me. He had the most evil look in his eyes and that's when I knew I just couldn't work there another second.
This guy is an extremely insecure individual. He has little man syndrome and feels the need to beat people down in order to feel big. He's only owned the barbershop for a little over a year and I can guarantee you if he continues to treat people the way he does, he will soon be out of business. I refuse to be bullied by my boss. I also refuse to be in a working environment where clients are bashed and made fun of before and after entering the establishment. His radio commercials are extremely inappropriate especially the one where he claims if you get your hair cut at Lews you can score some p***y when you get home. Joking that we should call our manicures 'hand jobs' didn't sit well with me either. And the fact that he has a picture of himself flipping the camera off on his business Facebook page says it all.
To say I'm so happy to be done with that place is an understatement. Working for him caused me anxiety and I dreaded when Sunday arrived because I knew I would have to be around him soon. It was like walking on egg shells every day.
For a long time I debated if I wanted to write about this or not given how inappropriate the content is. Ultimately this is a blog about my life and this has been my life the past few months. It's been miserable!!! I'm happy to wipe my hands of this and I most definitely won't be looking back.
