She was only charging her cousin $30 for braid work that required a full day of work, and even after a year of doing her cousin’s hair for free, the relative still complained about being overcharged.
The service industry is tough for small business owners. When you’re selling a service, over a product, oftentimes, customers will get the idea that they can haggle, devaluing the time and expertise required to perform that service. This is extremely apparent in the world of hair styling. For some reason, when customers buy a product, the price is set, and that’s that. There’s no arguing the cost of an iPhone at the Apple store or a laptop computer at the electronics store. The price marked is the price you pay. And yet, when it comes to services, those principles don’t apply anymore.
Suddenly, the proprietor providing those services must be open to discussion surrounding their pricing, and customers lose all sense of normal purchasing instinct.
This goes double for family members of a hairstylist.
After spending a lifetime as a hair style guinea pig to their now-professional family member, relatives feel entitled not only to special pricing but maybe even services free of charge. This is convoluted, though, because despite knowing that a loved one relies on the income from their professional career, relatives will still insist on getting some freebies.
A cousin started to take advantage of the family discount with a family member who was a professional hair stylist. After over a year of coming in on a weekly basis, stealing weekends, and making her cousin work double overtime to get her hair just right, she started bringing along her kids and, evetually, their friends. Now, everyone was demanding free hair styling. They say that if you give an inch, family members will take a yard, but this cousin took more than that, she started negligently stealing her famiyl member’s time and money
So when the hairstylist finally mustered the courage to call her out, she decided that it seemed fair to simply charge her cousin for the products that they used. Frankly, for a service that normally costs upwards of $500, a $30 product fee was still a steal. But this entitled cousin wanted free free, not the new family discount.
Author: Kayitsi.com
