Ask any woman with a full head of highlights and she’ll probably tell you that her hairdo didn’t come cheap. In a neighbourhood such as Centretown, you’re looking at $100 to $200 for a woman’s haircut and colour at your average salon.
Then, when you get up to the till to cash out, you’re confronted with what seems even more painful: the tip. According to some people, you should leave your hairdresser 15 per cent at least. Others say 10 per cent is fine, while many just say your tip should reflect your level of satisfaction.
It might seem old fashioned, but it seems outrageous to have to pay a standard 15-per-cent tip for service that merely met expectations. Is a tip really necessary just because blonde highlights didn’t come out bright purple?
At the same time, hairdressers deserve to be properly compensated for their services. Hair appointments can take a long time, and most good hairdressers have credentials and training backing them up.
A happy medium would be for services like these to implement a mandatory service fee included in the bill, and indicate so on their price list. This fee would go directly to the person working on your hair for doing the job right. In a situation where a customer was extremely dissatisfied with the service, a manager could drop this fee from the price.
The salon would make clear exactly how much is expected for the total service, eliminating the awkward song-and-dance that customers currently have to do when paying. An included gratuity isn’t likely to deter customers either.
If someone is choosing to go to a swanky salon rather than a less expensive barber shop, they’ve already committed to spending some money. A standardized gratuity would just help customers to know what to be prepared for when they go to pay.
This would also be beneficial for the hairdressers themselves. If a gratuity was included in the price, these services would be guaranteed a tip no matter what, eliminating the possibility for people to walk away without leaving them anything.
Some might argue that if hairdressers knew they didn’t have to work for their tip, they’d start getting lazy and the level of service would go down.
While in a restaurant this might be the case, it helps to keep in mind that individual hairdressers typically have a reputation to keep up.
Most hairdressers have a set of clients that continue coming back to them, and an included gratuity wouldn’t encourage them to deliver hack jobs.
Think of things such as car mechanics, computer repair shops or plumbers. All of these are services that require skill and training, but you don’t usually tip. Market competition ensures they will make an effort to do the best job possible, and it would be the same case if hairdressers included the cost of service in their price.
Service fees would put an end to the stress that tipping can cause for customers who aren’t sure what is customary for this kind of service while ensuring the hairdressers are fairly compensated for their work.
Eliminating the custom of tipping from the salon industry would be a win-win for everyone.