The Upside of Salon Drama 5.28.18
If you are one of those people who say they hate salon drama, consider my thinking for a moment. Drama is a mixed bag of good and bad, yin and yang. There can be good drama, like when your ex shows up at a party but you are looking really good. Or bad drama, like excessive tweeting. I find that dramatic people can have some real positives. They are often good at sales. Sometimes dramatic people will bring light to an issue that everyone else hasn’t thought of yet, but it really is an issue. Personally, I get bored easily, so drama can be quite entertaining!
When I say drama can be amusing, I mean drama lite, it is like Bud Lite, less filling tastes great. I can't help but quietly giggle when someone is overly perturbed at what other people are eating in the breakroom. “Your going to eat that?!” I hear that in the Gordon Salon break room. Or when two employees roll their eyes at a third, after a conversation about some decade long recurring problem. The nature of drama is that it can be interesting. It is what Hollywood is built on. It can get you to high places, consider how Hollywood and the media helped the current President. The opposite of “No Drama Obama,” in every way but it worked. You may feel you want to stop the Twitter train, but others may love it.
Do you work in a salon where the attention seeker can be heard across the whole room? So everyone can hear about their puking dog, their disastrous dates, every personal family illness, political perspective, etc. Now think about the upside: you don’t have to speak, because they are doing it for you. You won’t have to deal with this client in your chair again because they won’t be back. The salon can save on electricity because the music system can be turned off because you can't hear it anyways.
Consider that some dramatic people are the first to bring up an issue. Now these are the issues no one else was thinking about, but now the entire staff is thinking about. The Drama Queen (DQ) asks, do you believe the way so & so says, please and thank you? Made up issue, not an issue, but now some of the none thinking pets of the DQ are now in agreement that it is an issue. Some real issues that are common complaints in salons are always the temperature of the room and the music. Inevitably there is someone in a halter top complaining it’s to cold in here, and then someone in multi layers saying its too hot. The music is always wrong, and that person is always making a big to-do about the music! Oh, wait, that’s me! I am a DQ about the music, I am never happy, or if I am, it never lasts past one song.
So where’s the upside? The dramatist may be just someone who is more sensitive than others, like a canary in a coal mine. Now I know this may drive you crazy leaders and managers, but you have to advise the self appointed king to come to you first with all issues. I love comments like, “The girl who started today, she is not going to work out!” It is important to consider that your resident, know it all, could be right. The new girl might not be right for the culture of the salon, but then again are we prejudging? I like to dig into their thinking and bring the DQ back into objectivity. That is never easy for a true DQ. The new girl gets 30 days of rope to climb up to the next level with or to hang herself with. The dramatist could be right of course, but if she convinces everyone to hate the new girl before she can correct her outfits, the new girl quits, and now you have no one to sweep and boss around.
Some DQs, are good at sales. They are very entertaining even while pissing people off. Often they are to scared to stop talking, they must fill all communication voids. Mass talking can often result in a sale of more services and more products. This may be the only true good of a classic DQ. Of course there are attention seekers who don’t sell anything, because they are to busy talking about who has been thrown off the island and are way to excited about that fiction. Those people don’t belong in your business. You want to get those people a new job at your closest competitor. “Poison from within.” as my father use to say.
Salon drama has its upsides. Consider a very expressive hairstyle that gets everyone's attention. That is drama too, but correctly channeled. Or when a staff member gets big raves for normal behavior, they are more likely to repeat it. Or the client that sings your praises for a simple service on YELP or other social media. And isn’t that part of the point, that social media rewards the dramatic. Welcome to the world we live in. Just think if you are dramatic enough, maybe you too can be President someday.