At the nail salon yesterday...

[Anonymous]

This teen guy always does my nails. I go there every other week and get a full mani/pedi with one of their extra massages. While he goes to swipe my card I fold the cash/tip and place it kind of under the lamp on the left side. He comes back and while I sign the slip he gets the money and tanks me and then he proceeds to paint my nails.

Yesterday, instead of him I had a teen girl doing my nails for me. She was clearly very new to the whole thing, I could see she was not very sure about what all she was doing. After all the bumps along the way (she had a very hard time understanding English) we got to the point I was going to pay right before she painted my nails for me. Like I always do, I folded the money, placed it on the side, she came back with the slip, I signed it, pointed to the cash and said "tip" gave the pen/slip back to her and she frowned. She moved stuff around so I don't know if she noticed the money there while I signed and I could not see it anymore. She went back to the register to put the signed slip away and started talking loudly in her language to the manager and then again to 2 other nail techs who were there just chilling. I was the only one in the salon. They were all staring at me and smiling. I'm no idiot, ESL myself and I can pretty much read minds just watching body language. I let it go for a while and they were all going back and forth in their rant. I was not sure if she didn't see the money at all or maybe she was not happy with the 20%... It was almost funny watch her all angry talking and giving me a fake smile looking at me assuming I could not understand what she was saying.

She came back, painted my nails - did an extremely poor job, I asked her to fix it and went to sit under the dryer. While I was there waiting they kept talking loud and staring. The teen guy walked in and greeted me. She went straight to him in the same tone talking loud, all worked up and he looked at me with a ? face. I told him "oh, can you please make sure she got the tip from the corner there?" He smiled at me and pointed her the spot where I usually keep the money. She blushed, grabbed the money and ran to the back. And stayed there until I left. I wonder if she will ever talk about me in my presence in her language again.

I told DH this story when I got back and he mentioned that Seinfeld episode about the Korean nail techs... we laughed together.

I like that salon a lot, they're new so not crowded and cheap. I just wish they would put some effort into learning English.

Any funny nail place stories to share?

[Anonymous]

The day before my wedding I was getting my nails done with my bridesmaids and my nail tech was a guy. He caught us talking about the wedding and asked how many guests there would be. I told him (it was not a TINY number), and he literally laughed out loud in my face and told me at his cousin's wedding (he was Vietnamese) there were over 700 guests and 20 courses for dinner.

In high school, my mom would take me and my sister to get our nails done with her. The owner of the salon always did her nails and kept asking my mom when she'd have a boy. She always seemed so disappointed and sad for my mom that she was saddled with two girls and no boy.

[Anonymous]

There is a Seinfeld episode about this. Funny!

OP, my favorite is when Spanish speaking people assume you don't know what they are talking about - a HUGE percentage of Americans choose Spanish as their language learned from preteen ages!

Moral of the story: NEVER think someone does not understand what you are saying (and never pretend you don't understand what the other person is saying) - your tip (or job) may depend on it!

[Anonymous]

A guy I know told me about a time he went to see a friend and they were talking in his native language. In his native language he said, "Who the f*** is this f***ing dumb s***" about the other guy in the room. His friend answered something like, "I don't know who this POS is." Obviously they didn't think the other guy understood them because he didn't react so they continued talking in their language. But before leaving another guy came into the room and said, "What's up?" and starting talking to the other guy they had called names in the same foreign language.

[Anonymous]

At the nail salon last week, i encountered what I highly suspect was one of those "happy ending massages." I have never been to his place before. I walked in and there was only one woman there. She agreed to do my nails but clearly wasn't happy about it. About 15 minutes into it a guy walked in with a lot of blign on him. The woman doing my nails ran to the back and out came another woman and a white guy with a big smile on this face. He didn't look like got a wax (parst his face weren't red) and said a few words to the guy with a lot of bling and left. It all looked pretty suspicious. Of course there is no way to know, but it definitely crossed my mind.