Beauty And The Blog

You know! You go to a spa, excited to have a relaxing and rejuvenating facial treatment. You look over the menu of offerings, some look good, some look suspect, some a tad too exotic to know WHAT they really are. You select the service you think will most meet your needs. OR you meet with the esthetician, discuss your needs, she recommends a service and, well she’s the professional, right? So you agree and off into spa bliss you go. Or do you? Something go wrong? Something go OUCH?

I want to hear what happened to YOU! And how did you handle it?

I’ll go first:

This happened years ago when Microdermabrasion was new and the latest, greatest thing for facial rejuvenation yet. I’m not saying it isn’t good, it can be very good for certain skin types. And it should have been good for me.

Since I am an esthetician I was interested in looking into this procedure so I could decide if this was something I wanted to be educated in and offer as a service to my clientele.

I checked out several vendors of the product and machinery. Decided to give two a close look. So I booked an appointment at one of them, a spa that offered the service as a specialization and also had a facility for educating licensed estheticians on the service and use of the equipment. Take their course, purchase the equipment, nice and tidy.

It wasn’t. Nice. Or tidy. I THOUGHT, and why wouldn’t I, that an esthetician with experience in microdermabrasion would provide the service. Especially since the establishment knew I was an esthetician and looking into the purchase of equipment and education.

Wrong. The woman seemed to know what she was doing at first. But not too far into the service, as crystals meant to exfoliate my skin were being shot out of  a hose to my skin at rocket ship velocity, I knew I was in trouble! It burned like crazy, like a rug burn. Now I knew enough to know that microdermabrasion can be a little uncomfortable. But this was beyond a little uncomfortable. So I asked the woman to stop, I asked if she would check the settings and make sure that she wasn’t using too strong of a flow of crystals. She assured me all was as it should be. So I, stupidly, let her have another quick go at it.

STOP! No more, done. She wasn’t happy, I was really not happy! I asked her to please apply a masque for soothing and calming the skin. OK. What does she do first? She places a HOT, damp towel on my face. Oh my God!?? My face is raw and she is now heating it up and it is stinging like crazy. That was it for me. I said I wanted to get dressed, we were finished.

She left the room. I got up, turned on the light. Looked in the mirror. Nooooo! My face was beet red and looked as if  sand paper had been rubbed all over it. Looked ready to bleed. My face was a pizza.

I left without paying, obviously. And of course I did not take that course! Later the owner of the establishment called me to apologize and invite me back so one of the “senior” estheticians could do a service for me (the esthetician providing my service was just finished with her training, I was her first, uh, victim). No thanks.

It took a week to heal. It scabbed. And I couldn’t go to work and scare my clients! I eventually did find a great place to learn microdermabrasion, and purchase equipment. And I did fine with it, thank God!

So what’s YOUR story? Your turn……

OH~ No names please, that wouldn’t be right.