sidelanes.com

For most people, getting a haircut is a monthly ritual, so with that in mind it is important to select a barber or hair stylist that you enjoy. It is surprising how often once a month actually is, so don’t select someone who you don’t like or you’ll end up procrastinating your haircuts. You can always tell people who don’t like their barbers because their hair always looks like crap.

My barber is silent and only says the essentials, like “how do you want your haircut?” Then, he remains silent for the duration of the actual haircutting. This I enjoy. I think it would be much easier to select barbers if there was a such thing as a “silent barber”. “Silent Barber” could be a tag-line on their sign and could be a promotional item on their advertisements.

The other thing that is important when selecting a barber is ensuring that they are inexpensive. For me it’s got to be less than $10 with tip or I’m going to start looking like someone who doesn’t like their barber.

For me, the barber never picks up a scissors and only uses the electric clippers with different length attachments. It’s funny that every barber thinks that you should know what number their attachment is. “Would you like a number 4 on top or a number 3?” I answer with “leave about an inch” and they tell me “Okay, that’s a number 4″.

One time I even wrote the number down, thinking it would make the experience easier. It seemed to work, but it must have made things too easy on the barber because they started talking to me, asking me what I was doing today and how my weekend was. “SILENCE”, I said… but asked for silence is not the same as initial silence, it was just awkward. I no longer go to that barber.