Hairdresser/Housekeeper Guilt
STRATEGIES for LIVING WELL
Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell
All rights reserved
May 2009
Hairdresser/Housekeeper Guilt
My adult daughter thought it would be fun to celebrate Mother’s Day by shopping, having lunch, and having our hair done together by her stylist at the salon she has frequented for several years.
When she first proposed the plan I was delighted. What mother wouldn’t be? A whole day with one’s daughter doing fun girlie things would tickle any mother’s fancy. However, the initial glee was soon followed by a surge of guilt; oh no, I would have to cheat on my stylist!
This is not unfamiliar territory for me although not all women struggle with hairdresser guilt. If you’re one of them, you’ve probably had the same angst with your housekeepers as well; they tend to go together. People with this particular form of guilt suffer mightily at the thought of changing hairdressers or firing a housekeeper.
The only way I have changed hairdressers or housekeepers in my life was either they moved out of town, or I did. Luckily, the population in the U.S. is transitory. If the ordinary comings and goings weren’t typical in our culture, I’d still be employing one of the many difficult, though entertaining, men or women who have cut my hair or vacuumed my carpets.
My hairdressers, both gay and straight, have tended to have serious relationship problems. I’ve only had one who was rather normally married. The rest have been single and have bounced in and out of problematic love affairs. I suffered right along with them. My all-time favorite stylist hooked up with this guy who didn’t know what he wanted. Well, maybe he did. No commitment was his true cup of tea. But my poor hairdresser never knew which way to jump. Trapped in my black cape while the color “processed” I witnessed many of the lunches and flowers he sent to her shop regularly over the years. Those displays of affection were usually followed by some blow-up that I would hear about at the next appointment.
I loved all my stylists. They became part of my life. I was their mother/sister/girlfriend/therapist. I could never leave them; what would they do without me?
The same has been true for housekeepers. My housekeeper-history is marked with a notable sameness. I became so enamored of the various women who cleaned my house that their comfort and satisfaction in my home grew to be more important than the work they did for me.
I should have let Ophelia go simply because she was so weird. She rode the bus and carried two or three large bags of who-knows-what in and out of our house. She made bath-tub gin in her home and sold it to the neighbors. She called my children by names she made up for them, and talked to herself constantly as she worked. How could I fire such a colorful character? Anyway, she needed the money, so she needed me. Tina, quite married, was having an affair with a local businessman who picked her at my house after work for rendezvous. The stories of their sex life were much more entertaining than the soaps I had been watching before she came to work for me. She seldom brought lunch with her so, of course, I started making her lunch every week. The stories and lunches became longer and more elaborate as time went by. Did I mention she was a lousy housekeeper? But I couldn’t fire Tina; she was part of the family. Mary’s dysfunctional family was enough to keep me in the therapy business for years. Unfortunately, I paid her for the therapy I gave instead of the other way around. When she broke her arm, what was I supposed to do? She needed the work and she needed me.
I envied friends who had no such feelings about their hairdresser or housekeeper. They changed hairdressers and fired housekeepers willy-nilly. I’ll confess to being critical of them, my friends, not the hairdressers or housekeepers. I only criticized them in my mind because after all they were my friends. But I’d think of them as selfish, fickle, spoiled and disloyal. How would they like to be treated like that? But secretly, I was jealous of their freedom. They saw someone whose hair they admired and they’d make an appointment with that woman’s stylist the next day. Their housekeeper missed vacuuming the carpet in the closet and that was the end of that. Yes indeed, I envied that freedom.
So what’s my strategy? Clearly, I haven’t made a ton of progress in this category yet because of my knee-jerk guilt when my daughter invited me to cheat on my hairdresser. However, I did cheat on my hairdresser and my daughter and I had so much fun that we made another joint appointment with her stylist; we plan to make our beauty shop appointments regular mother/daughter events. I’m sure my now former hairdresser (whom I like very much) won’t go broke or have a broken heart because she’s loosing me as a client and I’ll be getting something very important—time with my daughter.
As for the housekeeper part, I think it’s just easier for me to do it myself. Not kidding.
It’s all about balance in the end. There is something to be said for loyalty and compassion and there is something to be said for getting your money’s worth and getting your needs met.
I feel guilty because I didn’t put this in my book as one of the common guilt-inducing situations. Oh well, I couldn’t put in everything that makes me feel guilty—too much to choose from.
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