With Miss Jenny gone, the remaining teachers decide that its time for us to hear about everything we’ve been doing wrong under her tutelage.
“Laundry needs to be put away in the closet, ladies,” Miss Lisa says, gesturing to a pile of four neatly folded bath towels behind the waxing station. The senior students grab from there when they need to make the facial beds on the fly between clients. “It can’t just be left out in stacks all over the spa.”
Later, Miss Stacy snags the red metal Klean Kanteen off my desk in the classroom. “You guys, I don’t want to see this kind of thing anymore,” she says. “Enough with the juice and the coffee and the tea. You are only allowed to drink water in here and it should be in a real water bottle.”
“But mine is water,” I say. “There’s only a little bit of vodka in there, honest.”
Everyone laughs, even the teachers. But still: “I’ll let you have your Klean Kanteen,” Miss Linda says. “But if Miss Susan sees it, she’s going to take it away.”
Miss Susan is the night school director. To quote another teacher (who shall remain nameless), she’s about 26 years old and still lives at home with her mother. But she doesn’t mess around about school rules. Half an hour later, she summons us all into the classroom. Stephanie is in the middle of giving me a paraffin dip, but Miss Susan needs to talk to us right now, so I pad over in my bare feet, dripping apricot oil, and stand on a towel.
It turns out the issue is us junior students working on clients before we’ve graduated to senior student status. “This has never been allowed to happen before in the history of Beauty U,” Miss Susan says somberly. “It can never happen again and it will never happen again now that I’m aware that it has been happening at all.”
The logic being that if we’re busy working on real clients, we’ll miss what Beauty U calls “theory instruction,” aka reading Milady’s. Which is all well and good, except that we’ve only ever worked on clients when the spa overbooks and a teacher tells us too. In fact, Meg misses half of the lecture because she’s finishing up a facial that Miss Stacy assigned to her earlier that evening. But no more! We all match Miss Susan nod for serious nod.
And finally, as we’re pulling on coats at five minutes to ten: “I don’t want to see coats draped over chairs in the classroom either,” says Miss Lisa. “You should fold them up and put them in your bags. And really, you shouldn’t even have your bags in here. You should put them in the lockers in the hall.”
“If Mr. G sees your bags in the classroom, he’ll grab them all up and take them away,” adds Miss Stacy.
Now lest this all sound like I’m whining: I get that most workplaces and schools have rules on what you can wear and where you can eat. And that they’re often necessary to maintain a professional and hygienic atmosphere. And the business about mastering the curriculum before we’re let loose on real clients makes sense too.
But there’s a lot of talk around beauty schools these days about how the industry has become so much more “professionalized” in recent years. Which means, beauty school is no longer just a place for the Rizzo and Frenchie types who failed typing in high school. We’re supposed to be here to build a career, to go on to work on rock stars and make six figure salaries, if you believe Mr. G.
So I guess I’m just a little stuck on the disconnect between that notion and the reality where it’s okay to confiscate water bottles and pocketbooks from tuition-paying, soon-to-be-professional adults.
[Photo: "Beauty School Drop-Out" on Broadway, via BroadwayWorld. I know, I can't believe it took me this long to make that reference either.]
11 Comments
March 9, 2010 at 10:05 AM
What’s the point of allowing a water bottle but not a Klean Kanteen? Does it seem to you that these are people who are so disenfranchised in their regular lives that the only time they can feel powerful is when they’re ordering you guys around? In my experience, the people who enforce rules that make no sense are enjoying the power trip. (And yes, I can’t believe it took you that long to slide in your first Grease reference!)
March 10, 2010 at 9:23 AM
Eh, not necessarily. Sometimes they’re just following the orders of someone above them who’s really the one making and enforcing the arbitrary rules. Between enforcing silly rules and getting fired, most people choose the former.
March 11, 2010 at 12:23 PM
[...] Paraffin Dip. I actually performed this the same night that Miss Susan came in to tell us that the junior students aren’t allowed to work on real clients anymore. Samantha was waiting on a friend getting her hair styled by one of the cosmetology seniors [...]
March 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM
[...] at the point where I can’t believe I got a loan for this,” says Meg after Miss Lisa’s water bottle rant. “It doesn’t feel like they’re preparing us for [...]
March 17, 2010 at 11:40 AM
As far as them not pulling you away from theory to work on clients, that is a rule from the accrediting agency that your school used to achieve their status.
Students are not to be taken away from theory (education) to go work on clients (that bring money into the school).
March 19, 2010 at 4:51 PM
[...] doing a lot for this whole “investigate the price we pay for pretty” quest. But forget no Klean Kanteens. Forget gaining ten pounds and constantly running short on sleep. That was nothing. That was [...]
March 24, 2010 at 6:17 AM
[...] “juniors can’t work on clients until they finish book work” business. Per this helpful commenter, I ask Miss Stacy if the spa will just book less clients until we’re done with Milady’s [...]
April 5, 2010 at 12:01 PM
[...] my car and run over to Subway, wolfing down my sandwich with one hand as I drive back. (Ever since The Crackdown, Miss Stacy has been keeping a close eye on whether our breaks take longer than the allotted 15 [...]
April 7, 2010 at 5:59 AM
[...] as is usually the case, read from the Milady’s-provided PowerPoint lecture instead). Remember that whole speech from Miss Susan about how we can’t work on clients because we’ll miss important book learning? When we [...]
April 21, 2010 at 9:26 AM
[...] Miss Jenny Quits & Miss Jenny Quits Part 2: The Crackdown Begins And these make me [...]
June 28, 2010 at 11:44 AM
[...] draconian attendance policies and being treated like a naughty five-year-old for bringing in a contraband water bottle — these things are not hot and they are humiliating, for [...]