I stepped off the bus apprehensively, as much because of the salubrious surroundings of the South East London town, as for the day that faced me.

My heart pounded as I pushed open the salon door.
“Good morning love, you must be the work experience girl? Our beauty therapist is off sick today so you will be taking all of her appointments”
Smile smile…
WTF?
I told myself, “Okay, this is what you’ve been training for” I failed to remember that I hated it after the first term. “But to carry out ‘real’ treatments on people that were paying ‘real’ money for it?” I certainly hadn’t expected this and I certainly wasn’t prepared for it!

First client, an eyebrow shape. Great! I hadn’t done many of these at college, there are only so many eyebrows available.

I cleansed and warmed the eyebrow area with hot pads and started
Pluck! “Did that hurt? Oh I’m sorry”
Pluck, “Sorry”
About twenty plucks later I started on the second eyebrow.
Pluck,pluck- ooh I started to get the hang of it.
I stood back to look at my work….then I noticed…..palpitations started, beads of sweat appeared on my brow and nose and my hands started shaking.
 The eyebrows were uneven, very uneven and odd.
OMG was my first reaction- what could I do? I never wanted to do this stupid job, why oh why did I even agree to do this , what have I done? I’m probably not even insured.
Think, think.
“I’m just going to take a couple of strays that I missed the first time on the other side- okay?”

Pluck- is that even?
Pluck-arghh why can’t I get them to match up?
Pluck- she’s not going to have anything left soon.
Pluck- I wonder if she’ll sue.
Oh no, I really need the toilet now, I wonder if I can sneak out of the window?
Why oh why am I doing this?

I swallowed hard, I couldn’t possibly pluck any more hairs out, she’d already lost the majority of her eyebrows to my tweezers.
I cooled the area and took a deep breath as I handed her the mirror to ‘admire’ my handiwork.

Amazingly she seemed pleased, I’m not sure if she was too embarrassed to complain but she did give me a tip!
I have never plucked another eyebrow hair from anyone other than myself ever again.

This post has been written for Sleep is for the Weak Writing Workshop #10  Prompt 4- “Tell me about a time you did something yourself that may have been better done by a professional and went a bit, well, wrong”

Excuse the RT  buttons all over the place, no idea why or where they’ve come from!