Short Cut to success by Deke Cutter

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As Ed walked into the pub, he looked for his pal and colleague, Brennan, who he had arranged to meet. Brennan had left work early and told Ed that he would meet him at the pub to discuss something important. Ed could usually pick out Brennan’s blonde hair, worn in a long side-parted business cut. Then he noticed a guy with closely cropped blonde hair who had his back to the entrance. When the guy turned around, Ed was stunned to see it was Brennan. Brennan waved at Ed and then ran his hand over his very short hair.

"Brennan, WTF? I almost didn’t recognize you."

"Hey Eddie." Brennan, by virtue of a lifelong friendship with Ed, was one of the few people in Ed’s life who could get away with calling him ‘Eddie.’ "Well, man what do you think?" "Fred (their new boss) called me in today and told me that Fred Senior, had been more laid back about personal appearance than he is and, if I wanted to continue as his deputy, I needed to ‘get with the program.’ And the program is neat, short, regularly cut hair and traditional business attire. Thank goodness, you and I are both pretty well set on the business attire side. For us, it’s just a bit more care if he decides to stick with casual Fridays."

"Alright," Ed replied, but that is an extreme cut. You never even had crewcuts when we were kids and that is almost a buzz."

"Hey, the barber let me keep an inch up front, but I’ll grant you the rest is just what the boss ordered. And I mean that literally. He took me to ‘our’ new barbershop and supervised the cut. The barber is a nice enough guy, but he is Fred’s barber and knows which side his bread is buttered on." Brennan said this as he rubbed the top and back of his head.

"Wait, wait, wait! What’s this ‘our new barbershop’ talk?"

Brennan looked at his friend, "Eddie, he specifically mentioned you and your ‘messy curls.’ He said, those curls will have to go. As a person who is customer and public facing, he expects you to be the next in the chair."

"What, right now?" Ed nervously touched his curls that he spent so much time conditioning and taming each morning.

"No, you are reprieved…until tomorrow. That’s why I wanted to see you today. It’s Friday night and I wanted to warn you that you need to be up early tomorrow, the shop is only open from 8:00 to noon. What do you say I meet you there at 8:30, for moral support."

"And to enjoy the spectacle of me getting scalped?"

"Well, there is that, but he made it clear that he sees us as ‘the vanguard of change.’ There are another 18 guys, some of whom have never had short hair that are going to get a big shock when Fred officially rolls this new policy on Monday." Another two beers each and the friends parted, Ed having agreed to meet Brennan in the morning.

When Ed got home to his condo, he went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. His thoughts went back to his childhood when his mother would fuss over his curls and his father, who kept his own identical curls tightly cropped on the sides and combed back into ridges on top, would take him the barbershop when school ended and get the curls all buzzed off. "I don’t want to end up looking like dad or getting one of his summer specials and ending up skinned tighter than Brennan." He tried to flatten the sides to see what he would look like with shorter hair, but finally just gave in, washed up and went to bed where he tossed and turned for a good two hours before falling into a troubled sleep.

Ed got up, showered, and lovingly combed his long curls one last time. Before he knew it, he was fist bumping Brennan in front of the very traditional looking barber shop, the tricolor pole turning slowly in front. As they entered the shop, Brennan was welcomed as a returning conquest. "Brennan isn’t it," asked the barber. "Getting used to your new look? And this must be your ‘curly colleague’ that Fred mentioned.

"Hello Vinnie. Yeah, I am getting used to the low maintenance cut you and Fred crafted for me. This is my friend and colleague, Ed, ready to have you transform him."

"Hop up into the chair, Ed," Vinnie said, as he shook Ed’s hand, and moved him toward the chair. "I know exactly what needs to be done to make Fred happy."

As, Vinnie got Ed caped up, Brennan said, "with all due respect to Fred, Vinnie, do you have any idea why he is so particular about haircuts?"

As Vinnie, turned on his clippers and directed Ed to a ‘head down,’ position, he responded that Fred had explained to him that after college, he had got a job with a big management consulting firm, to get that experience before his anticipated return to take the reins of his father’s business. "He showed me a picture from that time and his hair was as long as yours was before I cut it." As he talked he was running the clippers up the back of Ed’s head to the occipital bone, clearing away the curls and leaving the beginnings of a velvety looking taper. "When he had been with the firm for a few months, he noticed that the most focused and hardest working guys all had short haircuts and were dressed neatly." Vinnie now folded down Ed’s ear and began to remove the curls around and above his ears. He stopped about an inch a half from where the sides met the top. "Fred was drawn to the short haired men and their neatly dressed female colleagues. They were the ones that volunteered to work late, took work home with them, and generally seemed to want to succeed."

Vinnie continued, "one day at lunch, a couple of the team were going out for a drink to celebrate a bonus they had received. One of the guys said, he would be late because ‘I have to get this mop under control.’ To Fred’s eye, the fellow’s hair looked neat and professional, but he took note. As they returned to their work stations, Fred mentioned to the guy that he (Fred) had been looking for a barber and wondered if his colleague would recommend his. The colleague invited Fred to join him and the rest, as they say, is history. Fred got a very short businessman’s cut and loved the whole experience."

By this point, Vinnie damped down the hair on top of Ed’s head and had combed it back. He then took his shears and cut the top down to about two inches at the front and gradually going shorter to about an inch at the crown. He then took out his thinning shears and blended the top of the sides and back and then chopped through the top. He then blew dry the hair and used the clipper over comb technique to make sure the top was even. He then edged the sides and back with shaving cream and a straight razor. Finally, he took a thick paste rubbed it in his hands and applied it to the short hair on top which he then combed back again. The slightly longer hair at the front gave the cut the illusion of a bit of a pomp at the front, but the shorter hair stood straight. "OK, Ed," I hope you like it"

Ed looked at himself in the mirror as Vinnie held up a nice sized mirror so he could see the back. "Jeez," he thought to himself, "it is short! But at least my ears don’t stick out." Then out loud he said, "you did a great job, Vinnie. I’ll be honest and say it is going to take some time to get used to. But, I guess my pal and I are going to become regulars here if that is what the boss wants."

As the men left the shop, Brennan said, "you know, you do look good with this cut, much better than those summer scalpings your dad always made you get when we were kids. What do you say we hit the clubs tonight and see what the ladies think of our new cuts?"

As it turned out, both men found they were well-received by the women they saw that first weekend. Many of their colleagues were quite surprised by their new short haircuts the following Monday. But, the colleagues were more surprised when Fred called the staff together and pointed to Brennan and Ed, as representative of what he was expecting from male staff who wanted a future with the firm. He also outlined standards for acceptable attire. In the coming month, after which compliance became mandatory, Ed and Brennan sat back and watched their male colleagues struggle with the changes required. By the end of the month both of the vanguard of change were getting their third haircuts from Vinnie and had had some good chuckles about their colleagues.

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