I’m not really one of those girls who always focuses on how she looks, but my split ends were bugging me. They felt like a horse hair brush on my face while I was sleeping. I had to get a trim.
I just moved into this town where my new warehouse job is, so I wasn’t familiar with everything around here. I looked on Google Maps to find the closest, cheapest salon I could find. I found one five minutes away with reasonable prices, and had walk in appointments.
So I drove to the salon and walked in. The place looked nice enough, only a few years weathered down.
“Hi,” beamed the lady behind the counter.
“Hi, just a trim please,” I said.
“Okay, $25 please.”
“What?” I said in my usual quiet voice.
That’s not the price they listed on their website. And while I don’t get my hair cut very much, I always thought that you pay for them afterwards.
“Oh, our prices just changed, ma’am, and you pay first.”
This lady could read what I was thinking. It was spooky.
“Um, okay,” I said as I paid her.
She then motioned me to an empty chair. Wait, I remember, they were all empty.
The trim didn’t really feel like a trim at all. She just chopped off big parts of my hair. Again, I’m not an expert on hair, but I could tell that something about this didn’t feel natural, that she was new at this.
When she was done, I was shocked. My normal medium-length brown hair turned all short and choppy, and not in the cute way. I was upset.
When I came home, I did not hesitate to write a negative review on their website. It’s one thing to get a bad haircut, but no money should go towards something before you try it if you don’t know how it will turn out. I decided to take a picture of myself to use as proof of how bad it was, and as a warning to others to never go there.
Five minutes later, I got a reply from some guy saying, “Aw it’s okay hun, you look cute.”
For some reason when I signed in to write a review, the website gave me notifications whenever my review would get a reply.
And then another came saying “heyyy baby grl, wut r u wearin? 😘😊👅”
And some more of those creepy replies were coming in, none of them having to do with my hair. What the hell was going on? I didn’t get it. I didn’t try to make myself look pretty, no makeup or anything, just me in my room the clothes I went to the salon in, my hair still wet, my mess of a hairdo in shiny, stringy wings all over, the lights in my room showing more of my hair than my face which had very disappointed glare, which one of the commenters pointed out.
“Oooooooh ur cute when ur angry. °w°”
I thought it was going to stop soon, but it never did. Enough is enough. I decided to write another comment:
“Guys, please, I’m just trying to show you what a crappy job they did to my hair. I’m not here to amuse you. Please be respectful. Thank you.”
But the guys in the comment section were way less friendly than I was trying to be. My phone was buzzing twice as fast than before, and I got twice as many replies than before.
“No one gives a f**k about your stupid a*s hair b***h!”
“JEEZ, B***H, we just want to f**k, give us a break.”
“Take a f*****g compliment, C**T.”
Those were only a few of the disgusting words I witnessed. I just couldn’t comprehend it. I was trying to be nice. And if they didn’t want to know about the service that the salon provides, why would they be commenting on their website? This wasn’t a dating site, and even dating sites would have more appropriate language. Whoever was in control of the chat room on the salon website, they must not be paying attention to the treatment of the reviewers.
Even as I was thinking about it, more and more came in. I couldn’t take it anymore. I logged myself out and crawled into bed. I had work tomorrow anyways. It was a little harder for me to sleep than usual. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I was never that much of a social person online, and I had no idea that people could be that nasty behind a screen. Those commenters left disturbing thoughts in my head, crowding it like crows that wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept waking up and screaming to nightmares.
I worked the opening shifts, and they opened super early in the morning. I left my house at 3am, covering myself up for the cold and wet early morning weather, completely covering my new hairdo with a beanie.
I saw that a big black car was parked on the street across from mine. I haven’t lived in my new neighborhood for long, but I didn’t remember there being an extra car across the street from where I lived. I tried not to think about it.
As I pulled out of my driveway and drove off, I noticed the car tailgating me, high beams on. He didn’t pull into any other lane. When I changed lanes, he followed me close behind. It was pouring outside, and everything was black, making it look like a pair of big, bright glowing eyes was following too close behind me, like a demon in the night.
What was up with this guy? Then I got a heavy feeling in my stomach, and an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Is it… it is! It’s one of those creepy jerks who replied to my comment! I just knew it! I remember of the comments saying “I’ll find you…” How the f**k does he know where I live? Wait… does the salon website track down the location of their commentators? What the hell did I just get myself into?
It was a good thing I played baseball in high school, and that I just so happened to always keep my lucky bat in my car. “You’ll never know when you need it, kiddo,” my dad would tell me. So I grabbed it real tight and readied myself.
When I pulled into the warehouse parking lot, just as I suspected, the guy in the big black car pulled in right next to me. He was a big guy, not too muscular, but he had a big belly, and looked tall and strong enough to snap my neck in half.
I got out of my car, bat in hand, and as he was coming towards me, WHAM! Right in the side of the head. I kept on hitting him until he was unconscious and bleeding. All of the fear, anxiety and frustration built up inside of me had burst out like a volcano.
The rain drenched me all over as I was breathing heavy with exhaustion and relief. I put the bloody bat back in my car and walked into the main entrance of the building, leaving the son of a b***h where he was lying to die.
Later in the day, my manager pulled me from my station and upstairs to human resources, showing footage from security of me hitting the stalker into unconsciousness. I tried explaining to my manager that the guy was stalking me and wanted to r**e and or kill me, but she somehow couldn’t see the threatening way he was approaching me.
“You’re on suspension,” she told me as she dialed 911.
I was arrested, owed the court $5000 for assault in the 4th degree, and was sentenced a year in prison, being released early for good behavior.
On the other hand, after I told them in detail about the mysterious salon and their website, they shut them down.
I learned my lesson. No more writing reviews ever again.