Repo man Ep#65

[00:00:00] Jason, I got a tip for you. Great. Go throw in the tip jar over there. Someone change the block of cement. That's not the type I'm at, but okay.

[00:00:25] Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Shit I Told My Hairdresser. Isn't it a shitty day, Jack? It's a lovely day. It's snowing outside, so the world is blanketed in white. Oh, that's nice. I like snow. Yeah, it's just lightly falling. It's nothing heavy like the rest of the country. I don't know what's happening there, but... They're frozen. We are too.

[00:00:53] So now is a really good time to hunker down and listen to a couple of episodes of Us. What a great idea. I know. You've got another great idea for the new year. You haven't made any, what do you call those resolutions? Resolutions. I don't really have any. I want to have some. Do you? Tell me what I should do. Oh, don't worry. We'll get there.

[00:01:20] But I say this year, once you go through and head on over and give us a couple of likes, if you don't mind. Wherever you get your podcast, go through and give us a review. Tell us what you think and help us grow. We'd really appreciate it. So definitely go through and give us a listen. And like we say, tell 10 of your friends and tell 20 people that you hate. So one of the things that I have been noticing, I don't know if you've been looking on Instagram.

[00:01:48] I know you just like dead scroll through that all the time. Right, Jack? Like a zombie. Like a zombie. Yeah. And have you been noticing all the posts about moving to a new hair salon? Uh. It's like rapid fire right now. I just haven't. Is that happening again? Oh, yeah. It's always at the first of the year. Well. New home. New year. New home. I guess it is at the beginning of the year. Like, why not?

[00:02:16] And you don't want to do it during holidays or anything. It's too much. No. You either do it after the holidays or way before maybe October at the latest. But, um. Yeah. I know when that happens. It's always, you see the beginning of the year. So many people just go through and start posting like, I'm in a new home. New year, new home. You're noticing more than one. Then there's like a big shuffle happening.

[00:02:44] And it does happen every once in a while. And maybe not every year. Um, but when it happens, it really happens. And right now it is. I see a ton of posts. I love seeing that though. It's just because, uh, there's someone out there who's shitting their pants. They're like, oh yeah. What do I do? It's usually the salon owner. That someone's usually the salon owner. People leaving. Normally when it's like, it's never just one. It's like, there's like a domino effect. Yeah.

[00:03:14] Oh yeah. Depending on what that means, normally like a domino effect. Well, here's what happens afterwards. Well, I've always noticed is like, you may not even notice, you know, like the people you work with, you're happy there. And then one person leaves and it throws off the energy. Yeah. And then it's weird. And you're not sure if you like it without that energy there, you know, and, um, maybe someone else leaves and, and it's even more awkward.

[00:03:43] Then, then it's on. It's domino. You're right. And, and, and it's, uh, I've, I've seen it happen lots of times and usually I'm the first one to leave. Yeah. And then salons end up closing. Uh, so I don't, I don't stick around long enough to see what happens after I leave, you know? Um, but yeah. But that's usually like a telltale sign. You start noticing that the salon owner kind of recoils, you know, and it's not that happy

[00:04:12] go lucky person anymore. You know, when, when there's less money coming through the door, you can tell, you know, and like one of the big signs again, is like no shampoo at the back bar, you know, no one's restocking the product at the front. The salespeople aren't walking through the door anymore. Right. Right. Cause normally they're trying to sell you a ton of stuff. They know you don't have money. Yeah. Right. Now you owe them money and they're not coming in. Or that.

[00:04:41] I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Um, so they're like, uh, until you pay us, we can't really come in and give you anything else, you know? So yeah, that starts to happen. The place isn't clean anymore. Like it used to, you have a receptionist. One is you're down to one receptionist. That's only part-time and no one's answering the phone. Yeah. That drives me crazy. Oh my God. Or the phone ring once has someone to cancel their appointment and that's it.

[00:05:09] Or it's a sales person or a political call or something. You know, wrong number. Yeah. That's usually the signs that things aren't going so smooth anymore. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Lawn owner's always gone. They're not really around that much anymore. You know, so probably cause they're trying to, you know, ditch the, the landlord. Whoever's coming in looking for rent money. Yeah.

[00:05:36] You have worked at at least one or two of those. Oh, we worked at one together. We did. Which one? Which one? There's two I can think of. Yeah. Well, this was the one where it didn't last very long. The second one that we worked at that closed down had been there for like 20 years. Oh yeah. Yeah. This one was around for maybe like five months.

[00:06:01] The other one was also, I was the first one to leave and, and it just dominoed within how long? I don't know. A few months maybe. Oh, not even that. Cause I was gone. Actually, I left first. I left first. And then you. Oh, oh, oh. Nope. You mean the first one. Yep. Yeah. You did leave first. Yeah. That was alarming. So I was immediately like, okay, well, I think I'm out of here too.

[00:06:30] Um, it was a good one. Clients. Drama. Wow. That was a big time. Yeah. A lot of promises made at the salon. It was, and it was like this gorgeous salon in a awesome neighborhood in LA, you know, one of the shop. I mean, just like high end finishes. It was a gorgeous place. So of course, when we all walked in, when it was done, we were like, holy shit, this place is awesome.

[00:06:57] Um, and it was, it was supposed to be one of those like big time celebrity, kind of like the owner had celebrity clients and they made all kinds of promises to everybody. And we're all kind of like, you know what this? I mean, it's in a great location. They spent a shit ton of money in the salon, you know? And so it was like, well, a lot of us were like, let's do it. And a lot of people came from some really big shops to come and work at the salon.

[00:07:28] And it was maybe three months in that, you know, people were really questioning what was happening with this place. Now, when it first opened up, of course, things are going to be slow. Whenever a brand new salon opens up, clients are going to kind of filter over. They don't like change sometimes, you know what I mean? So it's a little bit of a slow trickle at the beginning. There's a lot. It's a different neighborhood. I don't know where to park, whatever, you know, reason. You know, we had like a ton of assistants working there.

[00:07:56] We had like, I think it was like four or five of them, you know? And all of a sudden it was like, they started falling off. They started getting let go. Because there wasn't enough business for them, you know? So I remember like, okay, well, no one's really cleaning anymore. Now we kind of barely have any assistance to kind of help out. And the people who, you know, were busy, we're still kind of busy, but it was like one person every three stations, you know? And the people, I think that promise come at work didn't come.

[00:08:25] And I don't know if they kind of saw the cracks that we didn't see, but I remember the owner, everyone was like kind of came to the owner. It was like, listen, we need to have a come to Jesus here. And so the owner decided to have at that staff meeting. Remember that meeting where it was, you know, everyone was called, everyone come in, please be there. They had a few of those, I think, you know, but I know what you're talking about. This was the big meeting. Like a reassurance, like, oh, let's see here.

[00:08:55] Everything's fine. And we have money and everything's great. You just wait. Oh, we're going to have these people coming over here from these salons. And you just wait until this place is going to be rocking. This always happens in the beginning. I've done this before. You know, we're like, okay. Everyone's like, okay. All right. Well, you know, the lie sounded good. Sure. You know. Sounds like real confident, huh? Oh, absolutely. So do you remember what happened after the meeting?

[00:09:26] I know you remember that. I do. And I didn't actually witness it, but I. Oh, it was a gorgeous thing. It was a gorgeous thing. You did. I know. Oh, I. Yes, I did. Because one of the assistants comes to work. So I think a bunch of people went to go have coffee to kind of like talk about what happened. I was there and because I had a client coming in. So I went to the back room and one of the assistants comes flying in. She was like, hey, Jason, someone just hit the owner's car.

[00:09:56] And I'm like, what? She goes, yeah, there's this big old truck in the back that hit the owner's car. I'm like, okay. So I go running back there to kind of take a look. And I go. And I'm in my head. I'm like, oh, my God. Someone hit the owner's car. And I'm about to confront the guy. And I go, hey, did you hit that car? And he goes, if this is a repo, buddy. And he points his finger right into my face. I'm like, oh, shit. I'm like, wait a minute.

[00:10:25] Oh, my God. I mean, I was like, this is a car. Not even paying your bills. Your car is being repoed from the back of the building. That is a lot of payments missed. Yeah. To have that done. So with this big grin on my face, I go walking straight into the office where the owner's at. Knock on the door. Open it up. And I go, hey, your car's being repoed.

[00:10:52] And the owner gets up and flies out the back door. Yeah. And of course, all of us are following the owner to see what's going on. And what do you think comes out of their mouth? I made the payment. You better talk to the bank. Exactly. Like exactly what you see on TV or those repo TV shows or whatever. Exactly. That's exactly what was being said. Were they hoping the guy would be like, oh, well, in that case, I'm going to let the car go.

[00:11:23] Oh, he was like, no, please go through and call your bank and make sure that my company knows about it. And then I'll drop the car. Otherwise, the car belongs to us now. Yeah. And the owners walked away. They just walked away. And all of us were like, oh, there's nothing they can do. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember later on that day, everyone was like, oh, crap. That meeting was bullshit. Well, yeah. After that, the owner was gone.

[00:11:52] Not to be seen again the rest of the day. Canceled their day. Wasn't even there doing hair. Nothing. You know? So all of us are sitting there just like gathering together. What in the hell are we going to do? I don't have a car anymore. Or, yeah, listen, the guy changed the whole mood of the salon. And he's laughing about it. He's like, hey, buddy. It's real. Yeah. I love him.

[00:12:21] But who knew that the repo guy would change our lives, right? The repo. It was kind of amazing. I know. I remember one of the guys like, well, I better go get some money out of the till. I go, why? Because the owner still owes me for some Coke. I'm like, oh, shit. So you wonder what was happening. You know what I mean? So at that point, you're almost like, yeah. You know exactly what was happening. There was, instead of making the car payments. Yeah. Yeah. They were paying their dealer. I wonder everything's fine.

[00:12:51] Yeah. As long as you're high. And we're back. Tipping. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Who deserves them and who does not deserve tips. A big hot button issue right now. That's for sure. It is all over the place. No one wants to talk about it, I guess. I don't know.

[00:13:20] People have opinions about it. Either you're really hot about it and you want to tell everyone your opinion or you don't want to talk about it. It's like one or the other. The ones who don't. They would rather talk about their bathroom habits. Yeah. Whether they just took a shit or not rather than tip. Yeah. They're the ones that just cowardly tip and walk away no matter what. You know, it's just like, here, here's 25%. Here's all my money. Yeah. Who are you?

[00:13:48] It's personal services is traditionally who gets tipped. Yes. I definitely agree with that. So hairdressers. Yep. Waiters. Massage therapists. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. If someone's rubbing your body, you know, like, or cutting something that grows off of their body, you know, or serving you something that will go in your body. They get tipped.

[00:14:12] I say the people who are creating a unique experience for you are usually the ones who are going to get the tips. That's who I like tipping. I like going through and giving a tip to someone who is, you know, basically creating a service and experience. Right. For me. And so, like, here's another one. Okay. All right. Say that I'm in the Caribbean. I take a tour on a bus.

[00:14:39] The guy who gives the tour, I give him a tip. Yeah. Because he created that experience for you. However, I would not give a tip to the person who sold me a ticket. No. I work at the same company. So. But you could have bought that ticket online or you could have bought it in the office. You know what I mean? It doesn't really matter. I would probably want a tip anyway.

[00:15:05] You know, there's just a whole new tipping culture being created right now. You know, it's. Yes. People who don't need the tips. They get hourly, you know, like a salary or whatever, and they're not doing anything. So, I get the Starbucks thing a little bit. But if someone is pouring out the coffee, drip coffee, maybe no tip. Maybe a dollar. I feel that. Yeah.

[00:15:35] Maybe a buck or so. You know what I mean? My neighborhood coffee shop that I go to that everyone knows who I am. My coffee is already being made. You're getting that experience through them. And yes, I do tip extra for that. That's for sure. What you want. And they're nice. They remember you. You walk in and they're like, Jason, hey, you're here again. Third time today. And so you give them money for that, I guess. I don't know.

[00:16:04] And the people I know them, they get to know me. You know what I mean? They know my dogs. Of course, you know, they give them a treat. You know what I mean? It's like, that's the experience when you walk in. You know, they get to know who you are. But like with the point that you're getting to, I actually had an experience that I think I told you about where I was shopping for Christmas. That's what I'm, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's retail shops. They want tips.

[00:16:33] Why? Something completely new to me. It kind of blew me out of the water the other day. My wife was like, sent me to the store to go buy chocolates. And these chocolates are fucking amazing. I have to admit. But it was $100 for this box of chocolates. It wasn't that big, but they're good. But so I walked in. It is. It is. But they're worth it. To me, they are. But here's the thing, though.

[00:17:02] I picked out the box. They did it. Now, here's the thing. If someone went through and put a box out in front of me and I got to choose a chocolate that went inside there. And they actually created this whole experience for me. Right. And then sold me that box of chocolates. Would I go through and deem that tip worthy? I think I would. Because they would probably let me sample it and try the different ones. I get to pick those out. Right. That's not what happened. These are pre-packaged chocolates in a box.

[00:17:32] The only interaction that I had at the beginning was someone said hi to me. They said, here's the chocolates. I'm like, yep, thank you. That's what you sell here. That's all you sell here. I picked up the box. I walked over, paid for them. And she goes, the screen will ask you a few questions. And I'm expecting like, what kind of receipt do you want? You want an email? Or you want to type in your phone number for like a discount or something? Or reward program or whatever it is. No.

[00:18:02] The first question that machine asked me was, would you like to leave a tip starting at 22%? 22%. 22% starting. That's already higher than I would have the average waiter who makes hardly any money. We know that. That's even more. And that's where they're starting out. How high did it go? I think it went to like 22. Then it went to 25 and then to 28%. 28%.

[00:18:32] I mean. $28 for a box that I'm the one who picked out, picked up and carried to. Who gets that? A calendar. They deserve a tip or what? I'm telling you. But that's not where it ends. I went to the food hall later on with my son to go get some food. And we settled on this Korean place. It looked really, really good.

[00:18:59] You walk over to a kiosk. Yeah. You hit the button on what you want to eat. And then you pay for it. And then it asks for a tip. There's no interaction with the person. There's no one standing there to help you at all. Answer any questions. It's just you and a computer screen. So like if you have a question like something about the menu or something. No one to talk to. You're just shit out of luck. Yep. Okay. There's no one there.

[00:19:29] There's people cooking in the back who are not looking at you at all. You know, they're not paying attention. All they're doing is just cooking food. And that is it. So I paid for the food. I didn't leave a tip because who am I tipping? I'm tipping the kiosk machine. Yeah. So I don't even know why they would ask that. I get that they're going to say, oh, it's going to go to who the food cooks or whatever.

[00:19:52] You know, why they're doing what they were hired to do and not dealing with any public. You know, they don't have to smile. They don't have to say hello. They don't have to be nice. And what worries me about you not having a tip is when they look at the order, maybe they say that you did not leave a tip. And they're going to go, oh, what an asshole.

[00:20:18] Well, I'm going to take like your whatever your rice and wipe it on my ass or something. Thank God I can see them in the distance. So they weren't doing anything like that. No, but there are things like that happen. No, that's true. They expect a tip. I don't even expect them as a hairdresser. You know, they're nice. Oh, sure. I don't hold out my hand or anything, you know? No, absolutely not. I mean, it's nice that people do that. But I mean, it gets worse.

[00:20:47] So then there's another screen that the number pops up for your order. No one talks to you. They just set your food down and walk away. And then you hopefully get everything correct by the time you go pick up your tray full of food. What if it's not? I don't know. There's no one around even tell that. You might be able to get someone's attention who's cooking, but I mean, who knows? So it was just a really weird experience. Yeah, I don't like that at all. And it's like tipping on everything.

[00:21:16] Like imagine, like who gets a tip? You know, it's like when you bought your Tesla, did you give them a tip? I know. The last car that I bought, no, they didn't get a tip. But I mean, no, it's like if someone goes through and they sell you a sweater, you know what I mean? It's like, do you tip them? Do they get a tip? No. They didn't make the sweater. You know what? They get commission off of sales. They have an arrangement with the company.

[00:21:45] So the harder they work, you know, if they're really good at that, they get more money. You don't know it. Does it matter? Right. So that's the thing. It's like, where does this stop? You know, that's what I'd like to know. It's going to get worse. So this whole culture is being created here will stick, you know, like, and this is only really happening here in this country. And so the older people who know better, like us, they'll eventually. You're old.

[00:22:15] Yeah. You're old. I'm older, but not old. They will eventually go away. So it's only the new young people who know about this, who will just tip anyone that asks. And that will become a norm. I hope not. You want to know what that everyone is right now, though? It is a big issue. This whole titflation that's been going around and I'm reading about it. And there's certain people are kind of like, no.

[00:22:45] There's people are putting their foot down who are younger as well, though, too. So they're putting their foot down. I am not tipping on this anymore. Right. You know, I do know. I was I was wrong. I do know better. And a lot of people are starting to put their foot down and be like, this is ridiculous. What's happening? You know, so that's what I'm saying. It is definitely a hot button issue right now. Yeah. Because even some hair salons now are even telling clients like, oh, no, it's already worked into the price. You pay one price and that's it.

[00:23:13] I guess I would never work at somewhere like that. But whatever. I wouldn't either. My clients are very generous. These are very nice people. Once who do the no tipping thing, they're also like hook online only. You can request a silent service, which means the stylist will only talk about the consultation a little bit. And that's a no chit chat or anything.

[00:23:41] And it's they're making it real impersonal. So like you're like a robot, like a little worker. So I think that's what we were talking about at the beginning was like people creating an experience. Right. That's not an experience that you're just paying for a service done real fast. You just want your hair shorter and get the fuck out of there. And don't talk to me. Yeah. There's probably a good reason why you don't want to talk to that person. You know what I mean? But that's that you're tipping for an experience.

[00:24:10] And when someone's going through and creating that for you. Great. I mean, I would say if the client wants to go through and tip extra for that, let them. You know, but I like to know what everyone else thinks as well, though, to tell us where you land on tipping. You know, go to our website at should I told my hairdresser dot com. Send us an email how you feel about this. Send us a voicemail. We definitely want to know what your opinion is.

[00:24:42] And now for shitology. Here's a tip for you. If you think your salon is on its way out and about to close down, do yourself a huge favor. Start collecting all those phone numbers and those emails from all your clients. And you want to start asking them for your tips in cash. I don't know. Better yet, go through and start telling them just to bring cash, period.

[00:25:06] So that way for the service and the tip, you just collect it and then just leave. Never mind all that. Just stage a robbery. Get it all over with at once and then tell them, whoa, this place is way too dangerous for me to work here. I'm out of here. And with that, stay shitty. Hey, listener persons.

[00:25:33] If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or Amazon Prime Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shit. It definitely helps out our algorithm. Also, check out our shitty posts on Instagram at should I told my hairdresser where you can give us a follow and like some of our content. If you'd like to get your story on our podcast, go to our website at should I told my hairdresser dot com. You can leave us a voicemail using the green mic icon or send us an email. And if you like us, tell 10 of your friends.

[00:26:03] And if you hate us, tell 20. And remember, stay shitty, listener persons.