Area salons open for business under some new safety protocols
Hair, nails and other esthetician services welcome clients while taking precautions
There’s a newly installed sink near the entrance to Salon Oblic in Ahuntsic and an employee — a recent hire — greeting clients, directing them to wash their hands and ensuring they’re wearing a mask. The hairdressers are all wearing masks and protective eye goggles.
The novel coronavirus has changed much about life as we know it. For those venturing back out into the world after weeks of lockdown, a visit to the hairdresser or manicurist or esthetician, or to any place of businesses devoted to personal grooming, for that matter, is a different experience from what it was before COVID-19.
As specified by guidelines from Quebec’s workplace safety agency, every other hairdresser’s chair in the Fleury St. E. salon is kept empty to provide for social distancing of at least two metres. Instruments, chairs and surfaces are thoroughly disinfected between appointments. In the section of the salon used by the colour technicians, stations are separated by transparent barriers because space doesn’t permit physical distancing. A sheet of acrylic is suspended from the ceiling at the front of the salon between the receptionist and the customer.
Similar scenes are being played out in hair, nail and esthetician salons all over the Montreal area and in Joliette since their reopening on June 15, two weeks after salons in the rest of Quebec. Look for sinks or sanitizing stations at the entrance and expect to be asked whether you have any COVID-19 symptoms, and not to come in if you do.
Although masks are mandatory only for salon workers, they are “strongly recommended” for clients, said Stéphane Roy, president of the Association Coiffure Québec, which represents about 1,000 people in the industry. Roy is co-owner with his wife, hairdresser Isabelle Lachance, of the five Oblic salons in the Montreal area, and he said that since the reopening, only two of the nearly 2,000 clients served each week have balked at wearing a mask: One agreed to wear one; the other was turned away. Roy said he has not heard reports of confirmed cases of COVID -19 in any Quebec salons.
Sixteen people at a Kingston nail salon, including six employees who had apparently gone to work despite having symptoms of COVID-19, tested positive for COVID -19. Thirty new cases were subsequently linked to that salon and one nearby — a worker there was in close contact with a worker from the first salon — but there were no reported hospital admissions. An order for mandatory face masks in all Kingston indoor public spaces, including stores, restaurants and hair and nail salons, was promptly issued.
Most Montreal establishments that used to permit walk-ins have suspended the practice and now require appointments. Clients are often asked not to arrive early, or to wait outside if they do.
Hours at the Oblic salons have been extended and the schedules modified to respond to demand and respect social distancing. Before COVID-19, for instance, the Ahuntsic salon had 21 of its 22 hairdressers working on Fridays and eight on Mondays. Now 12 work every day and, although they see fewer clients because of the time required between appointments for disinfecting, “it is full every day,” Roy said.
In contrast, salons near office towers, where only a fraction of the usual complement of people are back in the office, are suffering, he said, as are those near universities, where the population is way down.
Like Oblic, many salons have hired extra staff to clean and to greet clients, and have spent money on acrylic barriers and disinfectant. Most, especially in urban areas, have passed along the cost by adding 10 to 15 per cent to clients’ bills. At Oblic, the increase has been 10 per cent.
In salons in rural communities, where hairdressers often work alone, prices have not necessarily increased, Roy said.
At first, some hairdressers were anxious about returning to work, he said. “But the energy and enthusiasm of the clients encouraged them and now they are better.”
For some clients, going to the hairdresser has been their first outing in weeks, and he said they are tipping as generously now as they do around Christmas time.