What is a Barber?

Bree talks about what it means to be a barber from several perspectives and in a variety of capacities.

Transcript

Bree 0:04

Welcome back to Philosophy of the Barber. I am your host, Brie Neal. Today is a little bit different than our last several episodes. I am run solo. Uh Cassie is off dealing with life. Um So today I'm doing something a little bit different. Um I really want to discuss, well, monologue, about what is a barber and its many different facets. So a while ago, for Love and Giggles, I wrote an essay on the on the subject, and so it kind of helped me form my my thoughts and opinions and really think on the different perspectives and aspects of what it is to be a barber. Because I've been doing this for over a decade, and I think the question uh all of us will ask us ourselves at one point or another is why are we still doing this? Um so I'll read some I'll read the essay and then I'll go over some maybe expanding thoughts that I've had since. What does a barber do as a practical function or trade? The word barber comes from the Latin word barba, meaning beard. Barbering has been around almost as long as mankind. Ancient cultures once believed that cutting and shaving of the hair and beard would help fend off evil spirits, for which barbers were held in high esteem. Later, barbers were assistants to clergy who performed early surgeries. Eventually, the clergy were forbidden to perform these tasks, and the barbers took their place, known then as barber surgeons. There have been many textbooks and other publications over the last hundred years covering this history in much more detail. Suffice it to say, aside from a few accessory services, which vary depending upon the century, at the core barbers have always cut hair and shaved faces. Further, the profession does not consist of simply removing hair. A haircut is not defined by the hair one removes, but by the hair that is left. Therefore, a barber must also effectively communicate with the client and determine how much hair that person wishes to remain on the head. This requires asking the right questions, discerning what the client means by their answers, and confirming with the client that they understand their desires. After which process, uh the barber must then categorize the desired result into a procedure to thus implement. All the while the barber must also engage in pleasant conversation for the duration of the service. Now what role does a barber serve in society? This can be answered in at least two parts society from person to person, and the community as a whole. I will distinguish these two by way of the barber shop and the individual barber. Barbers are often described as having the finger on the pulse of the community. Barbers have dozens of conversations with people from all walks of life on a weekly basis. This grants them access to an interesting cross-section of opinions, experiences, and professions. The individuals that sit in a single barber's chair are endlessly diverse and intriguing. The connection and conversation that occur when a client and barber are both at their best is unlike any other. There is a certain amount of trust that a first-time client presents openly to their professional, and when the barber proves themselves worthy of that trust, it opens up a path to genuine human connection. When true connection between people happens, it allows the barber to serve many roles. Therapist, confidant, listener, support, friend, etc. Over the years, barbers listen and learn about their clients' family, friends, colleagues, work stresses, medical concerns, personal struggles, celebrations, achievements, tragedies, and many more. Unlike most other service professions, this connection isn't one-sided. Clients also get to know their barber in a similar way, though barbers may typically keep a certain professional boundary with the majority of their clients, in order to foster such a meaningful connection, reciprocation is requisite. The barbershop has long been a community gathering place where neighbors and strangers come and share a common experience. News seems to pass fastest between lips in a barbershop, faster than any journalist could scribble down. Not that they ever would. Rumors, connections, and details left unwritten in the local paper are shared within its walls. Generations past have instilled the timeless understanding that what's said in the barbershop remains there. There is something intoxicating about the joy and enthusiasm displayed in a barbershop when friends and colleagues bump into each other, when long-lost schoolmates cross paths, when business connections are made by simply sitting next to one another. What other place does one go to put themselves at ease, knowing you are about to walk out looking your very best, and all you have to do is sit there and enjoy conversation? What does being a barber provide the barber? First and most obvious, a living. Of course, a profession isn't much of a profession if it doesn't pay you well enough to live. Beyond that, what must a profession provide someone with in order for the person to sustain themselves in it? Purpose, connection, challenge, artistic expression, fulfillment. Let's start with purpose. As a barber, your purpose is to make your client look as good as possible. For as long as possible, with little to no help on their part. You as a barber are given roughly a dozen opportunities to fulfill that purpose every day. Maybe more depending on how quickly you cut and how long you work. Every head that you work on is a fresh canvas, a new set of variables to contend with, a different personality to connect with. Barbering is not a laborious profession, but it is detail-oriented and constantly engaging. You will feel tired at the end of your workday. You will not feel like your time has been wasted doing mindlessly trivial tasks. You will be able to take pride in creating something of value for each client you serve. You make people feel their best and by extension help bring out the best in people. You help them achieve their goals by supporting them through your genuine care for them and their appearance. A barber is a professional person who cuts hair and shaves faces. A barber is a keeper of community gathering space, a therapist of sorts, a friend, and a support. A barber is a person who can take pride in the positive and lasting effect they have on the people that they serve on a daily basis. There is a reason people find it harder to find a new barber than to find a new doctor. In some ways, they are trusting their barber with far more. Now, I'd first like to focus on the one-on-one connection barbers can have with their clients. Now, I recently um discovered that a friend of mine and longtime client uh had passed away. And not only did he pass away, which was completely unexpected at the age of 60, but he passed away several weeks ago. And it took me a long time to find out, because uh this particular person did not connect with many people. He had a personality that upon first impression would give the vast majority of people a very unpleasant feeling. Uh now, he had attributes that were certainly on the spectrum. Uh there was some problems with volume control. Uh content of one's speech from time to time in a group of people in a single room. But I mean, eventually I had my own space, so that was no longer a factor. But it was what was referred to as my customer. So when we refer to, at least in my old shop, when we refer to somebody as your first name, like your Bob or you know, your Mike. Um for us as barbers, that meant that pretty much everybody in the shop had had them in their chair, and for whatever reason, you as their barber um connected with them and were able to connect with them when everyone else found them intolerable. So my customer was my Chris, and I d I don't know why, but for whatever reason, uh I had enough patience and uh understanding to be able to work past the abrasive personality that comes up first when dealing with him, and because of that, I was able to foster a friendship with him that will say was not an equal friendship. Um I for several years was simply his barber. I only interacted with him roughly once a month, um, you know, in the barber shop, and but what he took from that and identified to me was that I was one of the first friends that he made when he moved here. Now, he moved to rural New Hampshire, where we are, and he moved into a town that's more rural than where the barber shop was. So for his barber that he saw once a month to be one of his first friends, uh my brain immediately goes to how sad that is, but also to how much of a compliment that is to my efforts, which were not extensive by any means. I gave him, I would say, perceivably basic kindness and restraint. Um so for that to have such a positive impact on his life was it it was a lovely compliment for me to receive, though as somebody who's not going to take in compliments, I would to this day probably argue against like I could have done more as a friend for him. But to him, what I did do was enough. So because I was one of his, we'll say, three friends, and he lived here for over a decade, and for it to take weeks for me to find out that he had passed. And furthermore, to know that I spoke to him hours before he passed was It was very difficult. It still is. It's a little fresh. But to be able to make those connections with people, especially as an introvert, the vast majority of my human interactions occur here in my barbershop. And for me to be given that opportunity in this profession, I consider that to be a great gift. And I don't think it's highlighted quite enough by people in our profession the role we play in filling up people's cups with kindness, love, affection. We don't really know the effect we can have on other people's lives unless they're open enough to express it directly to us. So I certainly hope those of us in this profession don't take that for granted. And also to remember that, like, that is why we stay in this profession. Is it's not because we love cutting hair. I mean, it's cool and all. Uh, you know, hair is like any other medium when it comes to displaying art. But I don't I don't know about every barber. I can only speak for myself that though I am naturally a creative person and I do appreciate creative outlets, I do a lot of things and have little to no training in any of them except for barbering. Um it's it's not what sustains me and gets me excited to come to work every day. I get excited to come to work because I recognize the names on my appointment schedule, and I go, yay, I get to talk to this person today. I wonder how they've been, or we always have such great conversations, or you know, they have you know taste in movies. I wonder what they've seen lately, or you know, I wonder what they've read. Some sort of opportunity to learn from another person's experience, their vessel of knowledge that they have and continue to fill. So I'm hoping that future generations of barbers that come to the profession see that, yes, it's a trade. Of course, you can learn how to cut hair. And anybody can learn how to cut hair. Whether or not you do it to someone else's liking, that's entirely subjective based on that person. You know, that's why the barber license doesn't measure whether or not you're good at it, it only measures whether or not you can do it safely. Because good is entirely subjective. I could do the same haircut on two people, and one could think it's the best thing in the world, and the other one could feel like they got scalped. Like that's entirely their end. But from a fulfilling and meaningful perspective on why barbers haven't been replaced by robots, even though they predicted it, you know, back in the 40s and 50s. Because, number one, um, how many people are going to trust sharp objects run by a machine that close to their head? I'm gonna say slim and none. But two, it's about human connection, it's about being open with people and practicing exercising trust in someone else, and then receiving back, with giving that trust, receiving back the the care and attention that a barber gives. And then the human connection of shared experience. Like, that's that's why this is philosophy of the barber is like that is what keeps me coming in and looking forward to every day. And realistically, I could do that in a number of different professions, but they would manifest in a slightly different way depending on what profession it is. And your clients or customers may also manifest in different ways depending on what you're doing. So I think the exact equation of someone the vast majority of the time soberly walking into my barber shop, into my space, that I have control over to make a beautiful location that I look forward to coming to and spending lots of time in. And I get to showcase that talent, that that beauty to anyone who voluntarily comes in to my establishment. And then for them to go communicate to me what they're looking for to make themselves feel their best. Now that's that's a communication that is so important because honesty, honesty with oneself and with your barber. If we could apply that same honesty to our other relationships in life, I think a lot of us would be better off. Like, how seemingly mundane of a task is going, oh, you gotta tell your barber what kind of haircut you want. Well, there's a lot of micro-tasks prior to that. Like, first you have to be honest with yourself into what you want. Actually, before that, you have to educate yourself on what options you have, you know, understanding your own hair, and sometimes people come in with expectations that don't fit the uh boundaries of their what their hair can do, and then it's us as a professional who have to educate them on it. But realistically, it's the alright, know what options you have available to you based on you know what hair you have coming in, going, okay, well, we can only go shorter unless you rock the extension game and then power to you. But as far as a typical barber, you come in and you bring in what you got to work with. And then being honest with yourself on what would make you feel the most confident, what you think would look good on you or you can pull off. Like, some people might have a you know a half desire to grow a mustache or just kind of play with it, but unless you're committed to like having full confidence in having a mustache, that is the only way it's gonna stay on your face for more than a week. Because I don't know what it is, but especially with mustaches, if you are not fully committed and willing to defend that, your friends are gonna hound you until you remove it. They're going to give you endless grief. So you have to be honest, and then you have to be confident in your decision. And then, so once you've been honest with yourself, you then have to be honest with your professional in order to achieve that properly. So there's a lot of steps to communicating effectively. So, I mean, if we applied this, which I feel like people should apply this to a marriage or friendship, number one, you have to not be in denial. Like you have to not be in denial that you're losing your hair around the crown. Alright. Or if you are, alright, we can do haircuts based on that. But for the most part, like, don't be in denial. Know what you have and know what you don't have. So that you can achieve the best result with the tools at your disposal. So if we did that with friends, it's the you wouldn't have so much frustration or uncommunicated expectations of people that create the frustration when they don't measure up to that expectation that they never knew you had of them. Imagine the fights that would be avoided, and imagine the problems that could be solved so much faster if you were just open and honest with the person you were talking to. Now I've seen recently um some reels and and videos about um clients coming in, first-time customers coming in, you know, wondering if you can cut their kind of hair, and uh like questioning whether or not your skill set is is what they're looking for. And I would say that it's important for clients to understand basic human interactions first and foremost. And I mean whether it's uh with a barber, medical professional, checkout clerk. Store, like anybody, you're interacting in a professional capacity. Or in public, someone is being paid to do their job. Especially if you are going there for a service. Number one, it's your responsibility as a client to do your research ahead of time. Like I'm not just gonna go to uh well, anywhere that provides a service without first looking at their ratings, their work if they have a portfolio, if the service is visual, um, asking around to see if anybody has like uh recommendations for places to go for things. Like, how do you know if a massage therapist is a good massage therapist? Like, that's not something you can see. You have to you have to trust the opinions of other people who have experienced it. So I would not go to a massage therapist that I had no prior knowledge of, and just going in cold and just be like, well, I guess we're gonna roll the dice and see what they can do. I would never do that. So I don't see why anybody would ever do that with a barber. Especially Well, you know what? I take that back. Um I still don't think you should do that when going to a barber. But if you've never had a quality barbershop experience, and there are plenty of people who never have, because there's generations of franchised establishments that cut hair. And there's plenty of people who, you know, went to the same place that their mom took them when they were a kid. Like, there's there's plenty of opportunity for people to go other places that could end up being less than satisfactory to them. So they are still unaware that the barbershop experience what it is and that it exists. So ignorance is still an acceptable position to be in. But to stay in willful ignorance is that person's choice. So to bring that ignorance into a barbershop by questioning the professional's skill set before you've bothered to put forth the effort to even check and see what their skill set is. And even more so, if you're not willing to trust someone at first impression at their word, that is speaking volumes about you as a person. Not about the barber. Because you're questioning without cause that person's word as to whether or not they're telling the truth about how good they are as a professional. Now, if you've sat in somebody's chair and they said they can fade, and they end up jacking your haircut up, I get that. But just like somebody who's been cheated on in a previous relationship, you it is unfair for anyone in the future for you to put that baggage on them. That's not healthy, that's not okay. So that first step from the client has to be willing to give that trust. And yeah, again, just like dating. You open yourself up, and there's always the possibility that you're gonna get hurt. The same thing with a barber, because relationships between humans are simply relationships between humans. It doesn't matter the context. The principles still apply across the board. So, if a client's not willing to put forth that trust, alright, you're starting this entire situation off on the wrong foot. You're putting that barber in a defensive mood because guess what? You're just questioned their word. That that's a personal attack in a lot of ways. You go. Like, you're that's them as a person. That's not their professionalism. Like, you're attacking them as a person because a person's word is who they are. Whether or not they as a human being are trustworthy. So that's not like questioning whether or not they have a skill set, you're questioning whether or not they're being truthful about their skill set. That's a totally different level. So I can understand a barber immediately getting defensive when a first-time customer is coming in and asking that. So if you're going somewhere for the first time, don't do that. That is a terrible, like, step one to any relationship. You were just setting yourself up and the other person to fail. So if you're not willing to invest that first ante to be like, alright, I'm gonna trust you, I don't know you, but I'm willing to try. And they will reciprocate. They will give you their best. And I love that I saw comments on this subject of people that love taking that as a challenge. It's the, oh, that person uh seems doubtful. Well, I'm I'm gonna blow their socks off with this fade. That is a phenomenal mindset to have on that sort of interaction. And I mean, I I'm kind of the same way where if I find out that you have an expectation of me, my goal is either to meet it or exceed it, depending on what end of the spectrum it is. So if you have a high expectation of me, ooh, I I really want to meet to exceed that expectation. But if you have a negative expectation of me, I I also strive to meet that one too. So, yeah, I I would say be careful the expectations you set for people, and whether or not you c communicate that directly to them or they find out through other means. I'd say the best people will meet or exceed whatever expectation you have of them. So I'd say it's best to keep a high expectation of people. Cause we are endlessly capable of meeting and exceeding those. I mean, we are. We're fantastically adaptable species. So I would recommend using that truth to your advantage. And certainly, you know, don't set them ridiculously high. Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna set it at the moon, go ahead, jump up there. Well, that's just being vindictive and delusional. But reasonably high expectations are I'd say a good thing to have of people. And then, especially from a barber perspective, if you connect with somebody who fails to meet your expectation of the haircut, but you've connected with them as a person, you are far more likely to go back and want to work with them to get them to the goal you have in mind. Because you've made that human connection. Like, you can have a fantastic haircut, the best haircut you ever had. But if you had no connection with that barber, the likelihood of you going back is pretty slim. I'd say it's maybe 20-25%. But if you connected with that person and they gave you an okay haircut, you're totally gonna go back, because you loved the experience in the chair. And you'll be like, hey, can we not go as short on the top this time? Or hey, you know, I was kind of thinking that uh that was that was a little tight last time, it kind of irritated my skin. Can we not go so tight next time? So those types of feedback, you're willing to give them that opportunity to grow into what you want them to be from that service perspective, because you connect with them on the human level. And that's important. Alright, I'm gonna get off my soapbox for now. I think 30 minutes is enough for you to hear my voice uninterrupted with anything else. Um, hopefully next week we will have Cassie back for some more conversations on topics on the profession. Uh, feel free to, in the meantime, find us on whatever platform you prefer to listen to us on. Subscribe to the channel or the playlist there, and we'll see you next week.