Now, my hair is not dry-as-straw as she made it sound. In fact, less than 24 hours beforehand it had been colored and given really good conditioner, better than my normal stuff, so it was actually in better shape than usual. However, she stopped me after I’d been working all day, had run a couple of errands and didn’t actually have a brush with me. Naturally, in that state my hair wasn’t showcased very well.
Someone mistaking my wind-blown hair as being unhealthy is one thing, but what really bothered me was her approach, how she said I could become “like her.” Peer pressure has never worked with me. When faced with someone insisting I conform, I usually do the exact opposite, to differentiate myself, and to piss them off. I don’t care what everyone else is doing. Just because everyone else is doing it does not make it right. If everyone jumped off a cliff, I’d stand on the edge and shake my head in amazed bemusement as they fell to their deaths.
To take this even further, I don’t want to be like everybody else; simply because I know that I am not. Every time I’ve tried to fit in with the crowd I have failed; I’m just not the conforming type. As a result, I’ve stopped trying. Plus, the whole idea of conforming is repugnant to me now, and it truly offends me when I am asked (or ordered) to alter myself in some way that makes me similar to anyone else. Being told I should be like her for the benefit of my hair has got to be most self-centered, egotistical, annoying sales pitch I have ever heard.
Also, why would I want to be like a person that works at a mall kiosk?!? Call me an elitist snob if you want, but this is a job I’ve never even considered looking into, no matter how bad the job market is. The stuff they sell at most of those places is crap. Salespeople in general can be really pushy – they have to be, it’s part of the job. But saying I look like crap and she doesn’t, just to sell another bottle of snake-oil hair products, is really stretching the integrity of the sales profession. I don’t buy this garbage, the product or the pitch.