The Salon Professional Academy

The good...and the bad. I came in with my hair in long layers, bra-strap length a la Jennifer Aniston and cut by a great girl at TSPA back in September. It was great, but I was looking to go shorter. Came in, went to front desk, and it took a few minutes for one of the receptionists to come and ask me about my appointment. Then, my stylist came forward and was quite enthused and very sweet. Based on the service I'd received in the past, I wasn't too anxious and followed him back.

He sat me down and ask me what I wanted. I told him that I was looking for something collarbone/shoulder length, with long, softly blended layers. I even showed him what length I wanted everything. He nodded, called his instructor over, and drew a couple diagrams. He began by chopping to the length I wanted, which was wonderful. But from there on, he started doing something strange.

First, he started picking up sections and cutting them much shorter than I expected, about nose-length. I figured that this was part of his layering strategy and left him alone - and it was hard to tell what the overall length was, because he pinned each section up after working with it. But midway through, I asked him how short the shortest layers would be, knowing that even with layers, there shouldn't be many that were too short. He pulled out a strand that, when sitting against my head, fell to about the middle of my ear. But, he reassured me, it would be blended in smoothly and I had no cause to worry.

But no matter how I tried, I couldn't get the fact that my "longest" layers were unfortunately thin and wispy, and that the majority of my layers were those short, choppy pieces. As he was preparing to cut another layer, I asked to see how the layers were turning out already. When I looked, I thought I would literally burst into tears. Instead of long, sleek shoulder length layers, I had poofy, thick chunky layers around my head and a long, thin tail that reached my "collarbone". It was a mullet, but worse.

I asked if he could leave the layers he hadn't cut longer, and he called his instructor over. She, thankfully, saw the devastation that was my hair, immediately knew that it was not what I had in mind and attempted to direct him to fix his mistakes. In the end, I got him to take the mullet into a chin-length bob, but at that point, there were too many of the short chunky layers for the bob to properly reach the intended length. Thankfully, his instructor saved the day by thinning out some of my top layers, fashioning the style into something that looked semi-wearable, hugged me and thanked me for my patience, and gave me her TSPA card in case I wanted to come back to get it fixed (which I eventually came back to do). My stylist ushered me out with a smile, but I think he was upset, too. In either case, I feel like his teacher handled the situation much more professionally - apologizing to the client, fixing the faults - than he.

I'm a girl who wants her hair to be as convenient as possible and I've had a bob by the Salon Professional Academy before, but this is literally the most time-consuming cut I've ever received. It takes me nearly 30 minutes to style each day - not including the time that it takes to blowdry and set the strands in place.

The experience at TSPA is hit and miss, and I've had multiple shares of hits. I'll definitely give it another chance, but hopefully, this was one miss that won't be repeated again.…