Dream: Haircut Bizarre

I suddenly started working in a hair-cut place.  I’d hesitate to call it a proper ‘salon’, since it seemed more like a Supercuts/Great Clips type of place. I don’t recall any training or orientation program nor any interview/hiring process; I just began by doing some jobs.  My station was down at the far left end of the shop.  After I completed the sixth job in quick succession, I gathered it was some internally-significant number because the computer screen at my station flashed the word ‘career’ in red.  This apparently alerted the shop owner that I was an employee who had gotten through the first trial period;  I guess it was indicative of future success if hadn’t quit yet and didn’t have a number of unhappy customers if I completed this preliminary hurdle.  I was instructed to take a mandatory break.  The manager/owner asked the whole crew if anyone was available to take this mandatory break with me.  There was a guy to my right who apparently had room in his schedule.  This just seemed like an internal ritual that I wasn’t yet familiar with, to have an existing employee chaperone the new person who hit this first-six mark successfully.  I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but I guess I just had to roll with it.

I just remember we went away from the immediate vicinity of the shop to an area somewhat distant and elevated.  I recall it was somewhat like a lounge or break-room perhaps; there were tables, chairs, and maybe couches too.  I was expecting some words about the shop, the job, expectations, working with the team, protocol, etc, but heard nothing.  I noticed that everyone who was hanging out in this room had single sheets of paper in front of them with various black & white images that looked like pages out of adult coloring books.  It seemed like it was a 30 minute break that was dragging out a bit; it felt like a bit of a waste, like imposed downtime often can be, so I thought to go grab my set of colored pens in order to do some coloring for the remainder of the break, for a little bit of meditative and yet productive activity.  As I got up I checked out some of the other people’s pages, noticing that they were somewhat similar to mine, so far as style and relative complexity.  Suddenly some woman was there, observing the situation and said some snooty/snarky comment like “None of these look very STEM.”  It was like she was implying that the level of sophistication of these drawings was indicative of a substandard level of value, worth, notoriety, because in her mind the most important thing people could involve themselves with were feats of engineering, manipulation of numbers and formulas etc, since that was where all of the real progress in society came from.  I took a second look at some of the drawings, noticing the level of detail being well beyond typical children’s stuff, and yet conceded that they could have been even more granular in detail.  In the case of my particular page, a scene depicted a man studying at a desk; roughly ¾ of the drawing was of the area surrounding the subject. I couldn’t help but recognize the sense of contrast between the black & white images as plain, flat, somewhat empty in their feeling, compared to the richness and fullness they could realize when colored in with interesting color choices, done in strategic or complementary combinations.  It all would seem to add up to something very much non-trivial.  

So I went back to grab my pens which were back near the shop area; on the way I was running and noting how the trip back and forth was eating up remaining time on the break, so I considered maybe strapping on some roller-blades for the return trip, as I saw some other people riding them on the street ahead of me.  I passed over a large storm grate on the street which had several slats, some of which were bent, so some of the gaps looked particularly treacherous to rollerblade wheels or even bike tires… something I’d have to be mindful of on the return trip.  I got back to the shop, and noticed that only about seven minutes were left on the green font timer running on the computer screen in my station.  I decided to just stay since taking time for the return trip to the break room would leave no time for coloring.  I’m not sure what happened to the last several minutes of the break, but I suddenly was back at my station, and soon got an offer for a haircut job for a young Mexican-Asian girl.  I either got a vision or saw a brief image of a young girl with a head of really thick long black hair, and my first inclination was to decline the job, as I was new to this business, did not have a ton of experience yet, so supposed this was going to be a daunting task.  But then I considered how I needed more experience, and I didn’t want to ‘dump’ the tougher assignments on my coworkers, nor did I want to build a negative reputation amongst them for sidestepping challenges, etc.  As I reconsidered, something happened with the computer and the offer screen, so I had to ask about what the deal was at the front desk.  

I walked over and observed a coworker lady, Caucasian, 30’s, slender, medium-length red hair, speaking with a prospective client, who I assumed may have been the father of the young girl in the offer.  At first I just heard her mention details about the shop, the service offerings, etc, the nuts & bolts type of stuff, but then the guy seemed a bit impatient and demanding, saying “Sell me on why I should like you guys!”  So as she answered, she first spoke about the crew’s passion for the job and outstanding professionalism, etc, and I seemed to walk past into a small adjacent room where I discovered Gareth Bale sitting naked on the floor with his back to the wall, doing some kind of art project with another guy where they were body-painting a brown girl who was laying naked on the ground behind them.  I could only see the brown-lady’s midsection; she seemed to be of average fitness.  I only saw Bale frozen, holding the paintbrush like he was the subject of a still-photo; I was thinking it was so weird to see this going on in this context that I didn’t fixate on it very long. I recall there was something very odd about Bale’s genital region, which at first glance looked like the parts one might expect to see on a fat woman.  At the same time I was listening to my colleague’s pitch to this prospective customer, and she was going on about how absurd and insane they all were as authentic artists, like maybe their fearlessness to try weird things gave them better avenues for creativity.  I wasn’t sure how convincing the pitch was for the customer but I definitely believed they were a weird crew.

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