Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Time I Went Crazy

I have mentioned before that I roll the dice on some kind of weird fungal infection every time I get a pedicure at a crappy nail salon, and I also accept that the customer service will generally be pretty awful too, and the ambience is not “salon” quality. I’m okay with all of that when the trade off is a cheap and fast pedicure. I like to be in and out within 30 – 40 minutes and refuse to pay more than $30 for a pedicure – that is my threshold. I imagine you know where this story is going.

Last week I had a day off so thought I would grab a quick pedicure as my feet were suffering from being stuffed in Uggs and other boots all winter, and were in need of some TLC. So I went in quickly to a place I had been once before. I walked in and it was completely empty. Perfect. One of the women comes out of the back room and sets me up and then disappears again. Again, no one else was there and I could hear her talking with a coworker. Some more time passes and I realize that I’ve caught them in the middle of their lunch hour. So I wait a few more minutes and then finally, after I’d been sitting there for ten minutes playing Brickbreaker on my phone, I call out a “Hello? I’m in a bit of a rush please.” One of the girls comes out, and goes to the sink with her mug of whatever the hell she was drinking and tops it up with water, and tells me “two more minutes please”. WTF?! Again, I get that it’s not a five star salon – it’s in a shitty strip mall next to a carpet and hard wood flooring store – but COME ON. I was sitting there in literally an empty salon for over 10 minutes while they were laughing, chatting away, and eating their damn lunch. Annoy me. So she finally comes out, and does my feet, chatting away on her cordless TELEPHONE the entire time.

Finally, my toe nails dry and I’m ready to go. I get up to pay, and the girl at the register tells me $36.75. I almost lost my damn mind. In my excitement to be the only one in the salon, I failed to look at the prices and was beyond irritated that I had to pay almost $40 (you’re damn right I didn’t tip her ass) for a pedicure at a shitty salon. $40.00 to wait while an employee (who is paid to work there!) finished her lunch and stunk up the entire salon with her food, talked on her phone to someone that she was either really mad at, or really happy with (I couldn’t figure out if the inflections of her voice were positive or negative), charged me GST, I paid in cash and she didn’t give me a receipt. Oh, it is on.

So for those of you who don’t know, GST is a federal tax on goods and services. Businesses that charge GST need to have a GST number printed clearly on their receipt. Something that I guess is even more important when you are paying in cash and there really isn’t a paper trail of that money. I have gone to 100 different salons and paid in cash and was never given a receipt. I didn’t care those 100 other times because I wasn’t ripped off at the cost, and the woman doing my nails didn’t make me wait for her to finish her lunch. This was going to be the hill I died on.

So I tell the woman, can I please have a receipt. And she’s like, “oh if you want a receipt, you need to pay by debit card.” WTF? No you don’t, give me my damn receipt. So I repeat again, “I’d like a receipt. You charged me GST, you put my money in your Fisher Price cash register, give me a receipt.” By now her coworker had joined her and she tells me that the receipt tape is out and that’s why they can’t give me a receipt. So then I’m like, “Okay, can you write one out for me? With your GST number on it” she looks to the one other customer in the salon, and she’s like “I’m very busy, I don’t have time now,” So this is the point of the story where I actually lost my mind. I look at this woman right in the eye like a maniac, and tell her “I will be back at 5:00 p.m. today. Have my receipt ready for me.” And walked out of the salon.

I got into my car, took a deep breath and was like, WTF was that about? Seriously, I think I was so annoyed at the entire experience and instead of complaining about that, I decided to complain about the one thing that I knew was absolutely the rule and quite frankly the law. But seriously, I’m crazy. Needless to say, I didn’t go back to pick up my receipt – I figured it was probably best to just drop it. However, if I ever do go back (truth be told, she did a really good job on my feet) and she pisses me off again, I will definitely be paying with my debit card. That will show her.