Service Industry, My Foot!

Literally! My friend Sasha* and I had appointments tonight for manicure-pedicures, which we both really needed and were looking forward to getting. I had somewhere else I needed to stop on the way there, so thanks to yelp.com (which I generally love) I located a nail salon that seemed to be a cut above the usual chain nail places you see on every corner here, where the thought of whose feet were in the pedicure basin just before yours is, frankly, just gross. The so-called "spa" even had a nice-looking website, and they took appointments...or so we thought.

We were tipped off to some trouble when we were led to our pedicure chairs. Instead of being directly next to each other, Sasha's was a good foot or so in front of mine and to the left. This made conversation somewhat difficult. However, the real issue, and vent-inducing experience, was the service. More accurately, utter lack thereof. 

When a customer -- a first time customer in particular -- enters any establishment based on service, be it a nail salon, restaurant, purveyor of sex toys, what have you, the goal of said establishment should always be to welcome new business and hope for a return visit. Thus, leaving your pedicure client to wait in a chair with her feet soaking in a tub of water for over 30 minutes is probably not the way to go. To ignore repeated requests for some attention, even less so. To actually shrug your shoulders and walk away upon being reminded that an appointment had been made for a specific time, disappointing. To attempt to file nails that have been so softened by water as to render filing literally impossible, and then offer a 10% discount for the customer's next visit (ha!) is downright baffling. And so on. Sasha finally gave up and decamped for another nail salon a couple of blocks away; I was not so lucky, having submitted to some mediocre filing of my own nails before her soft-nail situation came to light. I flinched when the technician asked if she could razor the bottom of my feet, which has got to be a health code violation. (And certainly didn't stick around for the manicure.)

In a city full of so many options, I am always amazed that places like this can even stay in business for a short while, but then, this is a city that is also full of many many people. It could be that just as Sasha and I were taken in by the nice website and reasonable prices, and left furiously never to return, so too will many other women, enough so that this horrible place can subsist on one-time-only customers for years to come.

*not her real name, but we agreed this was a fun pseudonym and a name we wish we had.