happy new year!

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 07.

I tried to go to a barber-pole shop for this one, but for some reason, I always get my haircuts on Sunday, and the only barbers open on Sunday are "Great Clips".

Got a relatively poor cut today, but it was free. The story goes a little something like this:

At GC they want you in their database. Really badly. The stylist bugged me all through the cut: "you get a free haircut after 10, and we won't mail you anything, blah blah blah". No thanks, said I.

Now, because Corporate Central can't conceive of the possibility of anyone not wanting to be in their database, the stylists are required to "login" a customer before giving them a cut. But they don't want to turn you away if you haven't got an account and don't want to create one, so if you refuse to be in their database, they log you in as some random customer -- sometimes as whichever customer was just there a moment ago.

At the end of my cut today, the stylist informed me that since it was my 11th cut, it was on the house.

I boggled.

"Uh, you know that's not me, right?" I reminded her, though I thought it should be unnecessary to do so, since she had bogus-login-ed me no more than 20 minutes earlier.

"Yeah."

"I want to pay," I said, because that's the kind of guy I am.

"Can't," she said. Evidently, once The Wheels have been put in motion, there's no turning back. I was Joe Random User, and JRU was owed a free haircut, and I was going to get it and there was no other option. She would not accept my money and it was obvious that (for some reason) she was not motivated to try and get it.

Okay then. Hooray for automated bureaucracy.

So I got some person's free haircut. Presumably, when he comes in next time and asks for his freebie, they'll tell him he had it last time. The time he had two haircuts the same day.

The stylist then printed out something and gave it to me. "What's this?" I axed. "It's your haircut guarantee," she replied. "Oh, so if I don't like my haircut, I can get my money back?"

She didn't laugh.

I tipped her generously (a lot more than 20% of $0) and left to go shower my free haircut off the back of my neck.