Suggestions anyone?

I want to start off this post by being excited because this is officially my 50th post! Yay! Go me!

Okay, with that out of the way, I'm ready to move on to the meat of this post, and I'm afraid it's going to be rather of a rant. I apologize in advance, but I'm hoping that my rant might bring about some suggestions, so after you read this, please feel free to comment if you know something that would help me out.

I have now lived in Salt Lake City for four years, and I have yet to find a decent place to get my hair cut! I've gone places that did a decent cut, but service and styling my hair (how do I know if I really like it if I can't see what it looks like once it's dry?) are seriously lacking! I've been annoyed by this once before (and have avoided that place like the plague ever since) and was determined to find a good place, but sadly it hasn't happened yet. Here's my latest hair cutting story.

It's now been over three months since I got my hair cut. That's a long time, and it had grown out. I liked it just fine, but I could tell that it had lost its shape so it needed to be cut. I hacked it off short in August and have been loving the look, but I sure do enjoy having slightly longer locks so I have options as to how I can fix my hair, but this is beside the point. Anyway, my plans on Friday fell through, and with my good friend Smirk, I found myself wondering around Bountiful. I saw a Great Clips and remembering that my very dear Speak has one of the Great Clips that she really likes (I should've called her to check because this is the one she had a terrible experience at--just my luck!), I decided to stop in and see how much a haircut would cost.

I should add here that when I say haircut, I mean the whole package deal--wash, cut, dry and style. It pet peeves me to no end when you go to a hair cutting place and they want to charge you extra for every little service. Grrrrr! I am willing to pay for that service for the peace of mind to know that somebody good is taking care of me, but I have yet to find that here. But I've branched into a tangent, so I'll continue my story.

I only meant to inquire at Great Clips, but before I knew it, the lady was taking my info down and pretty much scheduling me in. I didn't notice the sign with the prices right above our head (my bad, I know) or I would've put the kibosh on that. The haircut itself is only $13, but they wanted $5 for the shampoo and a whopping $16 just to style it!! What do they do, load your hair with product or something?! The last time I checked, styling my hair does NOT take that much product, even expensive ones. In fact, all it takes is blow drying it, putting a spray to protect it from the hot styling tools and straightening it. None of those equal $16.

Again, not having seen the sign, I didn't know about this great rip off in price but found myself scheduled in about half an hour. I asked her if they would at least dry it, and she said they wouldn't let me go out in the cold (it was around 40 degrees that night, so it was quite chilly) with a wet head. I thought this meant at least a full dry.

Nope! I was mistaken. The lady who cut it said my hair looked pretty clean--don't worry, it was because I had washed it that morning--so I opted not for the expensive shampoo. The lady cut my hair (this is another aside but I found it funny that she kept saying Yeah in this really nasally voice that I found kind of annoying) and she was okay. She finished and started drying it, but she stopped halfway through. She asked if it looked okay, and I peered into the mirror and nodded my head. I couldn't REALLY tell because, well, it was still damp. If I had been able to, I would've been upset that she left my bangs longer than I told her to and the sides looked funny, but I was already irritated enough that I didn't notice.

I promise I am not an excessively cheap person. As I mentioned before, to me, a haircut is a service and I will pay to have someone that I know is good do it. That's why I try my hardest to have my hair cut when I go home to Idaho all the time because the lady I like has been doing it since I was 16, and I trust her (and her sister who also works in the same salon) completely. Plus, they put it as one specific price and don't charge extra for every little thing. I would rather go to one of them and pay for the haircut "package" so to speak than pay someone whom I don't know is good an exorbitant fee to maybe do a good job. Yikes!

Do any of you, faithful blog readers, know somebody in the Salt Lake Valley who is relatively good and costs a reasonable amount of money? I'm getting seriously desperate here! Please help me avoid having another bad haircutting experience!