Seriously, shouldn’t I be having my horrific my-hair-is-orange story based on some sort of drugstore box experience?

I usually don’t get my hair professionally colored. I THINK that underneath my layers of box color, my hair is still some sort of dark blonde tending toward red in the light. That’s what my roots look like, anyway. I color my hair strawberry blonde and I am told it’s very flattering. My dad’s side of the family is half Irish, and I have his fair skin and freckles and his mom’s green eyes. So I amp up the red a little bit, but I at least come by part of it honestly.

Anyway.

I very much needed a haircut and since my stylist is on maternity leave and the rest of her salon is booked for the next eleven million weeks, I decided to give the neighborhood chain a shot. I have a pretty simple haircut; all the layers are in the right place and I just needed an all-around trim to tidy it up. And, since I just do a single-process color and the salon was having a special ($20 off? Ooh!), I thought I’d treat myself and get my roots covered and the rest of my color brightened up. Red fades quickly.

How the HELL did I end up blonde yesterday?

“Oh, no no no,” I said when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror after the stylist washed the strawberry blonde color from my hair. “My roots look like they have been bleached.”

“Ummm…” he said. “Let’s dry a chunk of it and see what it looks like then.”

Five minutes later. “No good,” I said firmly. “This looks nothing like the swatch. This is blonde and a little bit of ORANGE. No.”

He shuffled around and brought out the book and we looked at the swatches. I was right. And there was no reason, other than a faulty timer or gross incompetence, that the darkest part of my hair (roots) should have turned out bleach-blonde while the rest was slightly darker and orangey.

He offered to recolor it with a darker shade, and I refrained from making a “hell yes, you’d better” comment and we decided to mix the next 2 shades down to get a better red but keep it from going too dark.

Next step, clown hair.

The stylist applied the second batch of color to just the top 4 or 5 inches of my hair for some reason, let it soak in for about 20 minutes, and then put the rest on the bottom 4 inches for 15 minutes. I must have looked terrified when I looked in the mirror after the rinse, but I waited till he dried part of it before commenting. The result of this half-and-half application? Nice strawberry blonde hair on bottom, clown hair on top.

“That is…bright,” I said slowly.

“Oh no, it’s just not quite dry, and it looks really good. If you touch it up at home ever, you should use one of those Feria reds, those are great.”

“Feria reds look FAKE,” I replied. “I usually use the–” And he set about my head with the scissors.

The cut turned out really well. It looked just like the pictures (which is better than some people have done) and the layers are perfect. I was pleased and began to think that maybe the color was just a surprise and I wouldn get used to it. Heh. It wasn’t until I walked out into the sun that I realized how freaking bright it was. People stopped and stared. Small children screamed. Jesus wept.

This morning, I woke up and still hated it. The top was SO red. The bottom looked so bland next to it. It was all wrong for my complexion. So I went back and talked to the manager, a certified “master colorist,” (by whom I have no idea), and asked what could be done for me. She started talking about corrective coloring and toning and various processes that may or may not work and may or may not take hours and hours. I wondered whether I really ought to trust my hair to a lady whose previous customer was leaving with trashy golden blonde highlights.

“Could I just have my money back?”

“We don’t do refunds on chemical processes unless we can’t fix it.”

“You don’t know if you can fix this, though,” I protested.

“But we have things we can do that will probably make it all right.”

“I don’t want my hair over-processed and quite frankly, I’m not so in love with your color system. And besides, you charge $60 for corrective color, which I assume you will do for free in this case.”

“Oh of course, we want you to be satisfied.”

“But that’s more than my refund would be.”

She told me to come in on Wednesday.

I left without my refund and went straight across to the street to Walgreens, where I bought a semi-permanent color (slightly more brownish-red, no ammonia or peroxide for my poor hair) on sale, and a hot oil conditioning kit. Total cost: under $6.00. My plan was to darken my hair a bit to tone down the red and then let it recover for a week or two before putting in some color breaks to lighten it a bit.

So now, two hours later, I’m working my good haircut and my new reddish-brown hair that is mostly one color. Darker than usual and still a little redder on top than on bottom, yes, but at least I don’t look like a circus freak.

And I will not be going in on Wednesday.