Nail Salons: Not All It's Cracked Up To Be
Nguoi Viet, Commentary, Tinh Tran Furey, as told to Cynthia Anh Furey, Posted: Mar 12, 2004
In 1990, I found the lure of the nail salon to be irresistible. At the time, I had a great job in aerospace, but as a single mother to a 9-year-old girl, I believed that it would be helpful to have a second income in a job that I could possibly do at my leisure on the weekends.
I had heard about the flexible hours and tips in nail salons from two of my sisters, and they seemed to be having fun, so why shouldn’t I try it too?
During this time, it seemed like everyone I knew was talking about nails. What my sisters liked the most about the job was that because they had limited English vocabularies, it was a career that they could excel in while learning the language. However, as I soon found out, working on nails isn’t for everyone, and the lure slowly lost its luster. I found a beauty college in my area and was soon taking classes five nights a week for three hours. This routine started to wear out my nerves. I was working overtime hours at my aerospace job, then I would go home and take care of my daughter and then run off to go learn the tricks of the nail trade.
We were required to complete 350 hours of practice work, and it took me more than three months to finish this requirement. One of my daughter’s favorite moments was when my sisters and I would get together on Sundays and work on each other’s nails. Sometimes we would give my daughter manicures, and once, I convinced my sister’s boyfriend to let me give him a full acrylic nail set complete with cherry-red hue. He made me remove it all before he left the house, for obvious reasons, but it was a fond memory of ours nonetheless.
Yet these fond memories soon changed, as I never had time for myself. My daughter was having trouble with mathematics at school, so I spent a lot of my time at home trying to tutor her in the subject, and then rushing off to the beauty college for the Saturday afternoon practice. Clients would come in and we would be able to work on them, instead of the little plastic fingers that we were used to in our weekday classes.
From the very first client I had at Saturday practice, I knew that the nail business was going to be hard for me. I worked on a manicure for 45 minutes, and I didn’t even get a dime as a tip. What happened to the good tips that I was promised? And as for the easy work, there is nothing easy about meticulously tending to client after client, making sure that their hands leave the salon in perfect condition. And soon, I had physical ailments come one after the other, which was hard on me as well as my daughter.
Different chemicals that are used in the process of doing various nail projects — acetone and alcohol, to name two — were starting to make me dizzy and nauseous. My back ached at the end of the day, and I couldn’t bear that I was missing a lot of my daughter’s life. After all of the good things that I had heard about the business, I hadn’t experienced a single one.
I have much respect for people who are still in the business. It may not seem like a hard job, but after trying it, I know that it definitely is. My sisters are still in the business and they continue to rave about how they love it, but I’m not so sure it was for me.
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User Comments
Zahira on Mar 14, 2004 at 05:01:48 said:
Your article seemed quite long just to state that the nail business was not for you. Did you think that people were just turned loose on the general public without any real training? I trained for that proffesion back in 1983 and I can tell you that today one does not get the same kind of service that we were trained to give back then. As a matter of fact, I recently went to a nail salon to have a manicure and pedicure done. The result was frustrating to say the least. The technician did not speak english well enough to understand what I wanted. And I received cookie-cutter service, at best. And by the same token, if it took you 45 minutes to give a manicure, while I can appreciate your sense of thoroughness I dare venture to say that this was a business that simply was not for you.At any rate, I can applaude your efforts.
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