Hairdressing
Kennen Sie das? Von jetzt auf gleich kann man sich nicht mehr im Spiegel sehen und meint, dringend zum Friseur zu müssen. Englische Begriffe für den Friseurbesuch finden Sie hier.
According to statistics, most of us go to the hairdresser’s around four times a year, making hairdressing a huge industry. The majority of hairdressers are female (84 per cent in the UK), young (48 per cent are between 16 and 34) and often poorly paid, earning around €18,000 a year for a physically demanding, skilled job after three years of training.
In villages and small towns, the hairdressing salon is often the place to go if you want to find out what is happening in your area and join in local gossip. As well as being skilled tradespeople, hairdressers need to have a strong interest in people and enjoy making small talk.
In the past, men went to the barber’s shop and women to the beauty salon. These days, we are more likely to go to a unisex salon. Men tend to go more frequently, but women generally have longer appointments and pay more for the services they get.
Trends come and go. For women, perms are out, while long and asymmetrical bobs are in. Fades and undercuts are currently popular with men, as is beard care and eyebrow shaping. But fashionable styles such as sidecuts for women and boxer cuts for men do not suit everyone, so an important part of a hairdresser’s job is to turn a customer’s unrealistic wishes into a style that will suit the shape of their face, skin and type of hair, or to offer a more realistic alternative.
Salons usually have a contract with one beauty company that specializes in hair products. Which company they choose to work with will have a huge influence on the kind of customer they attract, for example young and modern, or older and traditional. Customers’ style and age group will be reflected not only in the hair products used and sold in the salon, but also in the window displays, banners, advertising and decorative posters. The beauty company will often supply other products displaying their logo, such as capes for customers, towels and equipment
such as brushes and hairdryers, as well as aprons and T-shirts worn by the hairdresser.
To make sure that the colour of hair dye the customer wants is always available, a weekly inventory is usually carried out and any products that are running low will get restocked immediately.
In addition to cutting, styling, colouring, hair washing and so on, there is a lot of cleaning, sweeping and towel washing to be done in every salon, not to mention making tea and coffee. Hairdressers work hard, and their busiest times are often when the rest of us plan to have fun: weekends, Christmas and early evenings, after office hours. So, the next time you go to the hairdresser’s, don’t forget to smile and leave a tip!