Breaking Free

Is the daily grind eating away at your spirit? Do you secretly wish you could leave it all behind and discover the job of your dreams? Suzy Welch, Best-selling author, television commentator, noted business journalist and Chick-fil-A Leadercast, ‘Voice of Purpose’ speaker, suggests 5 key questions to ask today that will “turn your work into joy.”

Not long ago, I saw an old friend who recently realized she was—at last—totally happy at work, much to her surprise. "I have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up," she told me. Ten years earlier, she had moved from Boston to the Midwest because of her husband's job. She didn't exactly kick and scream, but her jaw was surely clenched and she was trying to hold back tears. She had left behind everything and everyone familiar to her, including a rewarding if not perfect part-time position as a hospice worker. Her two sons, then ages 8 and 10, were similarly glum about the move. But move they had to, and move they did.

At first, as the family settled in, my friend stayed home, convinced that her dream of a fulfilling career was stalled, possibly over. But slowly, due to a mixture of financial necessity and boredom, she began to inch back into the workplace. A hospice offer fell through, so she worked as a medical center administrator for a few years and then as a community college admissions officer. She liked aspects of both jobs, but neither felt like a calling. Eventually, with a sigh of resignation, she took a job as a religion teacher at a parochial high school. I was a philosophy major in college, so this will do for now, she told herself.

Then a funny thing happened. My friend noticed that the career she'd backed into and settled for filled her with joy. She found teaching teenagers exhilarating—and sometimes downright hilarious. As we spoke, she was moved to tears recounting how she helped the son of a poor Iraqi family, a recent immigrant to the United States, get into a well-known university. She described reading each student's graduation essay, titled "How I Want to Live My Life."

"You should hear these kids," she said with pride. "They've got goals as big as the sky. They all seem to know what they want to be when they grow up. I've only just discovered that myself!"

She is 51 years old.

And that is exactly how it usually goes. You can figure out what you want to be when you grow up. You just have to be very grown up to do it.

Sure, there are women among us who decide they want to be federal judges at age 12 and get appointed by age 32. But they are more annoying than average. Most women discover their "exactly right" job through a messy, iterative process that involves years of experimentation and reinvention. They grab opportunities when they zip by; they make wrong turns and run twice as fast to correct them; they juggle the husbands and kids who show up along the way; and, very often, they sacrifice a piece of their own dreams on their families' behalf. Most women search, adjust, and search some more for the right career...until one day, it finally appears out of the fog of life's experiences.

In other words, there are no shortcuts to discovering the perfect job. There is just a journey.

Now, can you hurry that process along and make it less bumpy? Can you actually speed up finding the answer to the "What should I be when I grow up" question?

I think you can, but you need to embrace a practice that requires discipline, candor, and a bit of courage. Simply put: You need to relentlessly ask yourself five questions.

Question 1

Does this job allow me to work with "my people"—individuals who share my sensibilities about life—or do I have to put on a persona to get through the day?

Question 2

Does this job challenge, stretch, change, and otherwise make me smarter—or does it leave my brain in neutral?

Question 3

Does this job, because of the company's "brand" or my level of responsibility, open the door to future jobs?

Question 4

Does this job represent a considerable compromise for the sake of my family and if so, do I sincerely accept that deal with all of its consequences?

Question 5

Does this job—the stuff I actually do day-to-day—touch my heart and feed my soul in meaningful ways?

These questions won't tell you if you should become a veterinarian, work in high tech, write a novel, manage a restaurant, or open your own advertising agency. The questions will, however, guide you once your journey has begun, their answers suggesting whether you should stay in a job and give it your all or get up the gumption to move on to something else. Eventually, the questions, which you can ask about either the job you currently hold or a position you are considering, will steer you toward the career that that turns work into joy.

By Suzy Welch
Excerpt from Getting Unstuck,

Blogger

Yesterday I took a short break while my client's perm was neutralizing. The ladies in the break room were discussing tips, and how cheap some people are. For example, there's this mother-daughter team that comes in for full highlights/lowlights, spends $175 and then tips the girls doing their hair $3 each. (Not unlike those ad clients who insist on the least expensive commercial shoot possible, but mandate that it happen in LA -- with no craft service and a cheap hotel for the agency. You have to explain that a shoot in LA is UNION and that craft service is required by law. Jeesh. Anyway, back to the tips...) I shared the story of the lady who laid out her dollar's worth of change in a row on my station, and how I surreptitiously took a picture of her doing it. (see my post from July 7th, "Tips Again.")

A new girl, whom I had yet to meet, said "Oh, you're the Blogger!"

I would have thought I'd freak out that someone at school knew about this blog. But really I was pretty flattered. Especially when she said she really likes it and thinks it's funny.

Still, I was pretty surprised that someone just "found" it. So I asked -- How did you find it?"

"I do a lot of research. I found it when I was looking at this school."

Two or three people around us asked "what blog, what?" I just answered "I haven't posted in a really, really long time." Since everyone at school talks over each other and has the attention span of a flea, they were all on to the next thing before my secret was out. That's a lot like advertising too. Maybe it has to do with being creative. A lot of creative people together -- they're loud, talk over each other and jump from thing to thing. I always thought that that conversational style was a New York thing. Now I think it has to do with being creative. But I digress once again.

So I told the new girl "Don't tell anyone. I really don't want anyone at school to know about it. I joke around that I'm writing a book that'll be made into a screen play and Tyler Perry will play Rhonda; but everyone thinks its a joke. It sort of is, it's sort of not."

How Starbucks Saved My Life, the book that inspired this crazy journey of mine, is being made into a movie starring Tom Hanks. So you never know.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Yesterday I had a client with really thick, luxurious beautiful hair that hung just below her shoulders. Her hair was definitely her best feature. She came in saying she wanted "a wedge, but didn't want to loose a lot of the length." Now a "wedge," is the Dorothy Hamill cut from the '70's. (The client is 61 years old.) So the consultation took some time during which I began to understand the look she was going for and suggested a long layered cut. But she insisted that she wanted the back graduated, so we finally agreed to a long (just above shoulder length) inverted bob. I parted her off and started cutting the back. She said "You're not cutting off ten inches back there are you?" I showed her how much 3 inches is on the comb (there are numbered notches); then held the hair up in the mirror to show her where I was cutting. She said "Oh good, cause I don't want too much off." Her very dense hair took about twenty five minutes to cut, during which time she kept grabbing combs off my station and parting off and combing her hair. I had to keep telling her that I knew how to part hair and that if she wanted the cut to come out right she had to stop playing with her hair while I was working. I then gave her a fabulous (if I do say so myself) blow-out. Other students, and two instructors, commented on how great it looked. When I was done she said "Oh this is much too long. The kids will say it's not different at all." Since we had had only FOUR clients the entire day and I was extremely bored, I agreed to cut it again. So I took off another two and a half inches. Then she wanted the it set on hot rollers. So we did that too. Even though she didn't pay for it. When we finally finished she said she loved the cut but would come back in two weeks cause she wanted to do something so the curl would hold. I told her that they way to get that would be with a long layered cut! Then we had a 15 minute discussion/consultation about her color.

So many things in this experience were just like advertising clients. Getting crap for free, trying to do it them selves, dictating a process that can never result in the product they want. Jeshshshsh.

When I worked on Borden. We did a year's worth of research to develop a new ad platform for Sweetened Condensed Milk. In almost every focus group we'd have some woman weeping as she remembered her grandmother's pie or uncle's home-made strawberry ice cream. Simply seeing the package could make their eyes start to fill up. And not just one or two times. This happened in almost every group. Advertising gold! Now all we had to do was take all that emotional intensity and package it in a :30 spot. The Creative Team did a masterful job. The storyboards tested well and we where sure people would be making twice the amount of fudge and double the pies they had made in pervious holiday seasons. But WAIT! Right before

production was to begin the Client mandated that we revise the spots to :15's. We spent weeks trying to create :15's with the emotional impact of the :30's. It just wasn't going to happen. We explained the nature of theatre -- and how to have intense emotion you need tension. And tension has to build, and that takes TIME. Client still wanted to "make it like the Hallmark spots." They couldn't believe that what Hallmark does in a :60 or :90 can't be done in :15. Of course we ended up with :15 vignettes that did little more than list the product attributes among a somewhat warm family feeling. No tears among our viewers. And no big bump in business.

You just can't win. If you can, let me know how.

Resume Gold?

I read a little article on Talent Zoo about age-proofing your resume. Apparently this is important for 20-somethings and people over 45. The author suggested leaving off the dates. Does this really work? If I got a resume without dates on it I'd be suspicious right away. "What's this guy hiding? Prison?" I think it's pretty easy to tell from a resume if someone is young and inexperienced. And when hiring for a junior position one doesn't expect a lot of experience. According to the article, the ideal amount of experience is 12 years. Anything older than 15, as well as graduation dates, should be eliminated. My first thought is that for me this would be kind of tragic since the first 12 years of my career were spent on Cheesebrough-Pond's and Procter & Gamble. Resume gold. But I do realize that the gold has now turned to lead and should probably be jettisoned. On the plus side, I do look a hell of a lot younger than I am. People are always shocked at my age. Usually the cashier's at Aldi and the girls at school. "Why Miss Cynthia, you older than my mother. I never would have thought that. For real?"

TV is free

It's true. TV does come through the air, and it's free! Isn't that so much more twenty-first century than having it come through cable and costing $100+/month? With the exceptions of Dexter, Man Men and Being Human it's all as it was prior to the disconnection. Thanks to the gifts of three converter boxes, our old TiVo and Comedy Central on line. We should have done this years ago.

Upside Down

We learned last week that we're now upside down in our mortgage. Reason being that TWO years ago, Hamilton County readjusted our property taxes based on the purchase price of the house in 2006 -- AND THEY NEVER TOLD US. For the past TWO years, Chase (the holder of our mortgage) was taking the extra funds needed to meet the new tax base out of our escrow account. Neither Hamilton County nor Chase ever notified us. Seems to me like this kind of thing should be illegal. Now that the escrow account has been COMPLETELY depleted, our monthly mortage payment has risen $302. We can appeal this assessment; but only between January 1 and March 31st. Long story short, we're screwed. $302 may not sound like a lot when you're making big advertising money, but it's a tremendous amount when you've been unemployed for a year and a half -- and are looking at making very little money for quite a long time to come.

So we're getting rid of cable TV, the land-line, the newspapers, all subscriptions, the Y membership. All along I've been thinking it's some kind of miracle we've done as well as we have since I lost my job. Just by giving up vacations, restaurants, entertaining, retirement contributions, and college fund contributions we were able to get along pretty much as before. And really I've hardly "felt" it -- what with being at school 40 - 50 hours a week, JJ's new school/football, volunteering and church stuff, my life is fuller than it's ever been. But the pinch has come.

Soul Food

As you know, I'm learning about a lot more than just hair, skin and nails at the Western Hills School of Beauty and Hair Design. One of the other things I've been learning is how to cook soul food. I've adopted Ms. Kathy's Corn Pudding recipe and have made it for many a BBQ this Summer. Everyone LOVES it and it is super easy:

Preheat oven to 350°

Mix together:

1 can corn

1 can creamed corn

1 stick of butter melted

1/2 to 1 cup of sour cream

1 package Jiffy Corn Bread Mix

Pour into a medium size casserole dish and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. It's slappin'!

Also try Ms. Margaret's Greens. This recipe takes a very long time, as the greens need to simmer for at least four hours. But if you're a white girl like me, who always loved greens but had no idea

how to make them, this recipe is also very easy.

Use a big, high-quality stew pot.

Cover two smoked turkey wings with water, bring to boil and then simmer until the meat falls off the bones. About two hours. Strain out bones return liquid and meat to pot.

Rinse four to six bunches of collard greens. (I bought too much

thinking it would shrink down like spinach. It shrinks, but a lot less then spinach would.)

Chop the greens by slicing every 1/2" or so. Discard the very bottoms and very tops of the bunches.

Put the greens in the pot with the smoked turkey and simmer for four hours.

Add salt and pepper to taste -- and hot sauce/hot pepper if you like it. Delicious!

Language

Three weeks before Christmas in 1992 my boss came into my office and asked "Do you have a valid passport? They want you to go to Mexico City to lead the Hasbro pitch." Well of course I had the passport, but my retention of high school Spanish amounted to "Mas cerveza por favor." An intensive Berlitz program for relocating executives and eleven months of working in a bi-lingual office fixed that. Buy the time I returned to New York the following October, my Spanish language skills resembled those of a precocious Mexican three- year-old. I had begun to stop translating in my head. I just sort of felt the words wash over me. I'd understand the jist of what was being said and would respond without knowing exactly what I was saying either. But it worked.

I've been in beauty school now for eleven months. About the same amount of time that I had been living in Mexico when I stopped translating in my head. I can now end a sentence in a preposition, truncate my sentences, and use ghetto slang with aplomb. I still struggle with the double negative. No sure I'll ever be able to adopt that one. Whenever I use these new language skills I'm surprised when no one calls me out on it. Some times I find myself actually thinking in this new (to me) colloquial grammar. Kind of like when I was immersed in the Spanish language.

I have an octogenarian client who use to be a Dean at UC. I gave her Newsweek to read under the dryer and told her I thought she'd enjoy the article on Mark Twain, "the release of his memoir, 100 years after his death was the impetus for the article." I thought to myself "I just said 'impetus!' then I looked around to see if anyone heard me.

I need to spend some more time with my own demographic.

Tips again

I just have to share this picture -- of a little old lady who lined up the change, that was my tip, on my station. Really? Really!

Kind of reminds me of the (first) year we got crappy bonuses at Grey. Of course in advertising the bonuses where never more than a few thousand dollars; nothing like banking or law. But back in the day it had been enough to cover the Christmas bills and pay for Summer camp. Then came the year when that afternoon as I was leaving the building I passed my copywriter who said "did you get your bonus?" I said "yes, I'm going right now to spend the whole thing on a pair of leather gloves at Saks." She replied "I just spent my on a haircut."

I shopped at Saks. We got our haircut at Bumble + Bumble. I honestly don't miss it at all. But $1.50 laid out out in change on my station. Are you kidding me Lady?! Next time I'm gonna jack her hair up good.

Time Sheets Again

It's time-sheet time again. All one has to do is add up the numbers straight across and down the columns, then record hours by "management," "course," "clinic," and "non-clinic" for this and the previous month. There are only a handful of students that can do this. The last day of the month, and the first couple of days of the new month are chaotic and stressful as everyone tries to get their time-sheet filled out properly. The few students who are "good at time-sheets" help those that are not. Of course I belong to the former category. But I have lost the patience to help anyone other than my clique from "up the hill." Sara and Jules, however, are running a little time-sheet business. Not sure how much they get paid per time-sheet. The price use to be lunch, but I think it's gone up to something like $10 cash.

Tips

Today I spent THREE HOURS correcting the botched bleach job a fifteen-year-old girl did on herself last night. My niece had a similar situation last summer and it cost her $165 at Dillards to get it fixed. This chick paid $51 and left NO TIP. I am very saldy about it. Prior to the corrective color from hell, I did two color retouches, a cut and a shampoo and blow-out. And I only made $5 in tips all day. Seriously. That sad part is that every single client left looking great and very happy. But no tips.

I think there are a lot of people, especially new clients who don't know that can recieve tips. At the Aveda school they are not allowed to. We are.

Last Saturday I started saving all of mine in an envelope in my locker. When I get to $300 I'm going to buy myself a nice Coach bag.

Just another day at the WHSB

It was a typical week...

On Tuesday, I decided to take my fifteen minute break outside. There's a small covered deck area in front of the school with a bench all around. I went to sit out there and check my email. There were four other students doing the same. As soon as I got seated, Rhonda approaches me with much glee, and told me I should watch a video she had on the phone she was holding in her hand. I asked "Is it a porno?" (I figured it was 'cause, well, Rhonda is kind of like that.) "Only a little" she said.

I think they like to see if they can freak me out. So far they haven't.

So Rhonda handed me the phone. And sure enough it was a home-made porno by Brian. Brian is an extremely handsome, young, gay, black man. He wants to move to LA and be a celebrity stylist. He definitely has the talent, the drive and the personality. So anyway, I'm watching this video and as with most of the crazy out-of-the-box crap, I watched for a few minutes with what I hoped looked like a detached academic intensity. I smiled, handed the phone back to Rhonda and said "impressive." They all went weak (see "Word of the Day" in the side-bar at right). Once inside the girls couldn't wait to tell Brian that I had seen the video.

NO! OMG..." said Brain. Then blushing he turned to look at me from three stations away. "Don't worry about it," I said -- "but I must tell you, that was very impressive and I'm sure you could teach these girls a few things." Brian smiled and said "I know that's right."

Prior to this little event, Brian wouldn't give me the time of day, now he smiles, says "Hello," and is friendly as could be.

On Wednesday I was rolling up a perm on a mannequin head for the 110th time, when Dina looked at me to get my attention from across her station and asked "Mz Cynthia, are mermaids real?" I looked over at her and Dominique (with whom she had obviously been discussing this) and said, "What?"

"Are mermaids real?"

"Are you kidding me? You want to know if there are actually mermaids? Like women on the top, fish on the bottom? Like in The Little Mermaid?"

"Yeah, do you know if they real?"

"Yes, I do know, and No they are not real. It's just a myth."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I am sure." By this time I am giggling quite a bit. Dina and Dominique are too, but I can tell they really are serious. Then I tell them "There is a sea animal called a manatee that a long, long time ago sailors would see off in the distance; and because they have breasts they thought they were women. At least women on the top, fish on the bottom. That's how the myth got started. They have manatees at the zoo. You can go see them."

"Well thank you for that Mz Cynthia."

On Thursday I posted 903 hours. Half way, plus three. I took the 900 hour written exam and got a 98. I got a 98, and not 100, because I didn't know the difference between collagen and elastin. But I do know that Mermaids aren't real.

My secret life

I agreed to work the reception desk this morning from 9 to 12. About 11:00 we got a call from someone looking for Susan Schell. She was in Ms. Lisa's class with me and she's still "up the hill." The school policy when a student gets a call is to take message. We are not to give out any information as to wether or not the student is actually there. I told the caller "I can give her a message and have her call you right back."

"This is Sister Gerta from Our Lady of Lourdes, her daughter's school." Now I know Sister Gerta pretty well. She runs the school office and is secretary to the Principal. I know her from when JJ was applying there and because I'm so active in the religious ed program. Of course she doesn't recognize my voice, even though I answered the phone "Western Hill School of Beauty, this is Cynthia, can I help you?" It's just WAY TOO out of context. I quickly dismiss revealing myself and just have her leave a message. I called "up the hill" to give Susan the message -- but found out she wasn't in school today. Normally we're not to call back with this information. With so may gypsies, tramps and thieves it's best if the school doesn't get involved with a student's whereabouts. But it's Sister Gerta, and I know her, and I know Susan and it's HER KIDS' SCHOOL! So I call Sister Gerta back to tell her that Susan isn't in school today. And ask if she has a home or celll number. She doesn't and she asks me for the cell number. Of course I can't give it to her. (I would have had I had it, but I knew the office wouldn't give it to me no matter what). So we're having this whole conversation and she still doesn't recognize me. And I still don't reveal myself.

I wonder if she thought "... that girl at the school switchboard sure sounds familiar." I'll let Susan tell her.

Queen City

Mr. James started two weeks ago. He works Monday and Wednesday days, and Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

I usually stay late on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get a full ten hours booked. But last Thursday I left at 5:00 to attend an event at St. X (being a St. X Mom could be a whole other blog....) And am I sorry I didn't get to stay. Last Thursday night Mr. James got dressed at school for his late-night job as the hostess at a drag queen club downtown! Not only did I miss it, I didn't even hear about it until yesterday. He got the girls to help him with his make-up and wig and was in full drag regalia by the time he left.

Ms. Cathy, who does not work nights, heard about it all from Ms. Mindy. I have never seen her so upset. She asked me "what would your husband say if he heard about this?" "What would your parents say?" she asked another girl. Ms. Cathy is a bit of a homophobe. A fact which makes no sense at all to me given that two of her four husbands were gay and she's a hairdresser. But she's been teaching at the school for thirty years and deeply morns the days when the school had a stellar reputation in the community. And having a drag queen teacher just doesn't fit in with her idea of what the school should be. But of course all I'm thinking is that "this is going to make for some great blog posts. I can't wait!"

On Monday Mr. James told Rhonda and I all about his other job and even invited us down to the club. But I had no idea that he was getting dressed at school. I'm hoping Ms. Cathy doesn't put an end to it.

Class of 2010

With rolling admissions, the Western Hills School of Beauty also has rolling graduation. The rather pathetic thing is that there are between five and twelve students who begin every month and only one or two who graduate. Since I've been "down the hill/on the floor," every graduating student has been a night student. The night students are very different from the day students. They have full time jobs. Some have college degrees. They are older and MUCH MORE professional. The part-time course takes three years to complete. Some students take as long as five.

The graduations are always really moving. The graduate invites family and friends who gather with students and teachers in the break room. There's food and cake (provided by the family). Each teacher give a little speech about the graduate. The speeches are very personal and quite moving. I always tear up. I imagine my graduation. But somehow I just can't picture my family and friends in the extremely ghetto break room. But when I do there's always a big Bonbonerie cosmetology themed cake.

Business

Everyone at the Western Hills School of Beauty and Hair Design takes the "managers course." The managing cosmetology course includes an additional 300 hours of study beyond the 1500 necessary for an Ohio state cosmetology license. Those three hundred hours are spent in the study of how to plan and run a small business including the regulatory laws and codes for a salon. The core assignment is to write a business plan. The plan must include a mission statement, a company overview, a list of products and services, an advertising and marketing plan, financials for product sales, a personnel plan, a financial plan, a floor plan (designed to code), a location map and resumes for the owner and staff. The instruction for this project is very thin (at best) and the resulting plans are essentially useless. But my business plan is not useless. My business plan is BEAST! I got the assignment back in January, did some research and then spent about twenty hours knocking it out. I was back in my comfort zone and it felt really good. Really fun. Really energizing. When the plan was done, I printed it out on nice paper and had it bound at Staples. It looks awesome and is awesome.

Now everyone wants me to help them with their business plan. At first I thought they wanted my help to actually develop and write their business plans -- to help come up with differentiating mission statements and then building all the rest around that. But no; what they really want is someone to type up their crazy-ass plan, make a logo, print it out on nice paper and get it bound.

Isis had to do a salon business plan when she was "locked up." She takes it very seriously because she already has a significant clientele (from doing "kitchen hair") and very much wants to have her own salon. Having run a successful small business in the past (albeit an illegal one) she's one of the few students who has the right skill set to be successful. Because of this I was pretty psyched to help her.

She gave me her hand written plan to review. My thought was that we'd work together to flesh it out. At first glance it looked pretty good. All the headings are there, the writing is way better than I thought it would be, and there are several pages of financial charts. But where I thought we'd work on it, she thought I would just type it up, add a logo, make it look good and get it bound. We're still struggling with this.

She keeps asking me "Do you still have my plan and when you gonna get to that OG?"

We've had several discussions with me saying things like "I thought the whole point was so this could be really good. So you'd be able to take it to a bank and get a loan. Or a grant! You could totally get a grant for this. You're the perfect profile. I found this organization...."

"Yeah, OG, exactly. You just gotta do it."

Well OG can't "just do it" because after a few introductory sentences almost every section ends with "more content to come later." But really, the biggest obsticle is that her mission statement is COMPLETELY UNSUSTAINABLE. But I can't make her see that.

Me: "Do you really think '...providing affordable make-overs' is a good idea? How are you going to make money doing that? Affordable isn't going to make you any money. And a 'make-over' is a once-every-several-years kind of thing. What you need to get the same person coming back every week, and paying big bucks for something only you can give her."

Then she argues with me that she wants to do "affordable make-overs." And asks me when I'm going to have her plan typed up.

I've been hitting my head against the wall on this for weeks. Months really. So now I'm thinking "Oh to hell with it." I'm just going to type the thing as is, make her a logo, get the thing bound and let Ms. Ebony tell her it'll never fly (no matter what kind of paper it's printed on or how sweet the logo is).

Besides, Ms. Ebony totally gets it and wants me to help her with her business plan. She asked me "how much?" "$2,200" I told her. "I will totally pay you that, if that's what it takes." Her plan will be as BEAST as mine. Actually it probably will be mine. I have no intention of having my own business. I want to work at a big corporate salon that charges $135 for a single process color and makes the client blow-dry their own hair. Something like Bumble + Bumble; where I use to get my hair done back in the day when I was writing real business plans.

Fight, fight, fight

Janet came to school looking for a fight. First thing in the morning, she was sitting at the sation next to the one where I was setting up. As I bent over to get the flat-iron out of my kit, I hear (in a VERY nasty tone) "Miss Cynthia, that is right in my face!" This was said with so much disgust and contempt that my first thought was that somehow Janet had gotten hairspray sprayed in her face. I turned around really having no idea what she was talking about, and asked: "What? What's in your face?"

"Your ass!" she replied with distain.

Attempting to deflect this with humor I replied: "Oh Miss Janet I am SO sorry. My ass is just SO BIG it gets in the way. It's so big I can't keep track of it. Like when you're eight months pregnant and you don't know how big your belly is and you keep bumping into things. That's my ass." I then put all my stuff back in my bag and moved to another station far away from crazy Janet. (The students within earshot of all this thought I was hilarious, especially since initially there was so much tension.)

After lunch, suddenly a fight broke out. Janet and Simiko. It was sudden, vicious and loud. Scary. Janet was screaming and going at Simiko (who was also screaming). Darina who was standing about two feet in front of me, went towards Janet to put a hand on her arm and calm her down. But she'd been doing a cut and had her comb and shears in her hand. Super Scary. As this was happening some students were moving in closer, teachers were running in. I'm wondering "is any one calling the cops?" (and since we had about seven clients at the time "we are NEVER going to get any more clients.") But as soon as I saw those shears I ducked down the hallway and around the corner to the Spa Room. So I missed most of it. Both Simko and Janet got expelled. I had just completed Simko's resume with her that morning. She only had about 200 hours more to go; was going to graduate at the end of June. Everyone is saying it was Simiko's fault. I'm not so sure.

Only once have I ever heard of a violent fight in advertising. A rumor of two secretaries in the traffic department at Y&R. The key is when you see a weapon, get the hell out of there. One evening I was coming down the escalators in the Met Life building into Grand Central and saw a man running at full speed across the concourse. Behind him were three cops with GUNS DRAWN. Behind them was a crowd running to see the action. When I got to the bottom of the escalator, I turned around, went back up and returned to my office for an hour or so.

Yesterday one of the girls told me that "there's a fight every Friday. That's why I don't come on Fridays." She may be right. The Friday before all this happened there was another bad fight up the hill resulting in the Police being called and an expulsion.

Stay tuned and find out what will happen tomorrow. It could be me and that new teacher, Mr. James....

Happy Clients

Marianne was so excited yesterday after she passed her drivers test, that she came in to get her hair done. She had been really, really worried that she wouldn't pass. As the test date approached she had put off paying her gym and pool membership 'cause she wasn't sure she'd be able to get there this summer if she had to depend on someone else for a ride. Weeks ago she went to the eye doctor, who ordered new lenses for her glasses. She picked them up yesterday and went right to the BMV. After she passed, she drove right to the club to pay her dues, then wrote a check for her car insurance, made plans to go out that evening, then came to get her hair done. She was SO excited and happy it was infectious. We got to talking.... she told me about her college graduation three years ago. She majored in theology. I said "I majored in theology!" We had a lot in common.

As she was leaving she told me that she'd be back a week from Thursday because her birthday is on Saturday and she wants her hair done for the party. She told me "I'm going to be 80. Just hearing myself say that seems so weird. I can't believe it." "Oh-my-God" I replied "I feel the exact same way about being 50."

Tea Party

I almost got into a beauty school fight myself yesterday. Sara has the most right-wing, tea-partyish political views of anyone I've ever seen or heard. She's probably crazy and I have now vowed to just ignore her, and leave the room or move my station. Yesterday, in the break room she was going off on how "Obama isn't really an American because he wasn't born in this country, he refuses to produce his birth certificate, born in the middle of an island, or Africa..." on and on with a good amount of anger and passion. Also thrown in there was how he's going to take everyone's money away, put you in jail if you don't have health insurance and make you go into the military to pay off your student loan. So I asked "where do you get this information, FOX News?" So she goes off telling me that she reads everything and watches all the channels and comes to her own conclusions. I then insisted that the president is an American and always has been. She went nuts.

Later, one of the teachers asked my "what the hell was going on back there with you and Sara?" We agreed that she's nuts and marveled at how a young, black woman can have such a twisted view of the political and economic landscape. A part of me wants to engage with her to find out what it is exactly that she thinks about this stuff and why. But I realize I'm better off just keeping my distance.

The Tea-Partiers sure would love to get a hold of Sara. She could be the next "Joe the plumber."

Hair Scare Part 3

When Last we left my f'd up beauty-school hair, I had a blueish streak that I color-corrected back to brown. All was well (except that a hunk of my hair had been fried off). But when I needed a "tint retouch,"(known in layman's terms as "getting my roots done") the color was left on too long (at the teacher's insistence) and my hair was black. (That would be a number "2" on the color scale of 1 to 12, "1" being blue-black and "12" being platinum blond.) So we stripped out all the black and for twenty minutes my hair looked like the picture at the right. Carrot top!

Yesterday was also the closing prayer service for Religious Ed. Teaching that class was such a challenge, but I am so glad I did. It was such a gift to have the time, and to be asked to

do so. The parents, and even the kids, were so appreciative.

It was so crazy to one minute be in beauty school, putting up pin curls on a mannequin head, listening to the girl next to me tell a story of giving her boyfriend head in the bathroom of a UDF (United Dairy Farmers -- a 7-11 like store for all you non-Cincinnatians); and then literally TEN MINUTES LATER be sitting in a meeting with a bunch of women wearing sweat-shirts with teddy bear appliqués talking about what music we need for the prayer service. Totally surreal; but at the same time, so real it's gritty.

The other thing that happened yesterday -- Mars (remember Lamar, from "up the hill?") got expelled. Something about a big fight, girls ripping the weave right off each other's head, cops called and on top of all that it seems he frequently cusses out the Faculty and Administration.

And, did you know, they make Jordon's with high heels?!