Bad Haircut Meditations: Lessons for Work and Life

I have a bad haircut. Entirely my own fault. I can’t blame anybody else. Except for God, maybe, for making me follicly challenged. Some (balding) people joke that “God made some heads perfect, others he covered with hair”.  I am not completely bald, but the remaining areas of my upper surface are slowly depopulating. And the hair that does remain becomes seriously rebellious when length exceeds a quarter-inch. 

Due to time-constraints and higher priorities, several years ago I had to make peace with myself on this topic. I had to accept who I am and realize the truth. Sporting fabulous hair is not and will likely never be one of my strengths. One advantage of being a man is that people tend to be more tolerant of bald or short-hairedness (relative to bald women – I’m not saying it’s fair). For me, the cost-benefit analysis of continuing to wage an ongoing hair battle was too heavy on cost and too light on benefit.  So several years ago I made my decision: simply buzz my head on a regular basis.

For over twenty years now, I have owned a Wahl hair clipper set. My Wahl has served me well. I own the household/consumer model. Not a heavy-duty commercial/barbershop model. Not the fancy Aero Clipper model approved by NASA for use on the International Space Station. Just a simple, easy to operate, reliable piece of personal hygiene technology that has always been there when I needed it. 

A few weeks back, my clippers started to make some clicking/clacking noises and intermittently stop working. I did not think much about it, and it did not strike me as overly problematic. I would just unplug/replug the clippers, shake the unit a bit, and it would start up again. In hindsight, that should have been a red flag for me. But I wasn’t paying attention. 

Yesterday started like any other day. Slightly different because I needed to go to work physically at the office. But I’ve been doing that twice a week for a couple of months now, so not a big change. I’m still primarily teleworking, though some of my projects do benefit from being physically present. After my normal morning habit of relieving myself, washing hands, and eating breakfast, I began my “today I go to the office” personal hygiene routine. That starts by shaving my face with a non-electric, stick razor, which was quite normal and uneventful. Then I transitioned into head-buzzing activities. First a swipe on the left side, then on the right. Then the unexpected happened. The clippers died. Totally.  Entirely.  No amount of unplugging/replugging or shaking would resurrect them this time. 

I quickly ran through my options. First thought, I could use the stick razor on my head. Other men sometimes do that. But that seemed time-consuming and risky because it was a new process for me. Maybe people that razor-shave the tops of their own heads by themselves regularly can do this no problem, but for me it would be a new endeavor which under time pressure might be easy to botch – either cutting myself or missing key parts. Due to past experiences where my head has encountered conflict with various external hard objects, my upper surface might be bumpier or more indented than most, so what works for other people might not be transferable to my experience. Second, I could make a run to WalMart or another store that is open early to buy a new set of clippers. But that would also take time and I was not even sure whether they would even have the clippers I like. Third, I could stay home. But that would make my work efforts for the day more complicated. Fourth, I could wear a hat.  A bit abnormal as the primary hat I wear at work is a hard hat, not ideally suited for indoor desk work. I do also own a stylish (in my opinion) straw cap that is an amazingly handcrafted work of art given to me in India more than twenty years ago. That is one fantastic hat, but I did receive funny looks the last few times I wore it at work. Fifth, I could just own my mistake and live with it. I did not plan properly or heed the warning signs of my clippers impending demise – and ended up with a bad haircut. This last option is what finally I went with, combined with placing an Amazon order for a new clipper set.

While pondering my situation later in the day, I realized that my lessons learned in this incident might be good to remember and might be helpful for others.

WORK AND LIFE LESSONS FROM MY BAD HAIRCUT INCIDENT:

1)     USE YOUR SENSES. If you see/smell/feel/taste/hear or are otherwise notified of signs of upcoming equipment failure, then don’t ignore it – proactively take care of it! Check the tires if the car is bumping or pulling to the side, change air filters for HVAC after wildfires, keep the computer current with antivirus and the latest updates, routinely check the batteries in the smoke detectors, add fuel before the vehicle reaches empty, etc.

2)     For IMPORTANT PRIORITIES, HAVE A PLAN. Priorities vary by person. Particularly plan for what you care about. I love my family and want us to be safe. We have candles/flashlights ready for power outages, etc. We test our smoke alarms and know locations of fire extinguishers.  We need our car for transportation, so we routinely have it maintained and keep it appropriately fueled.

3)     When something goes wrong, BE AWARE THAT DELAYS MAY HAPPEN. If a large-scale disaster event affects numerous people, then it may not be possible to just run down to Home Depot or Lowe’s to pick up repair items – because everybody else might be doing the same thing! Even if you individually are sane, that doesn’t prevent others from behaving irrationally. I’m still traumatized by the COVID-driven toilet-paper shortages of 2020. 

In my bad haircut incident, the lead time for replacement of clippers was not a huge concern as this was a very localized event. Thankfully, thousands of people did not experience simultaneous clipper failure. And using Amazon Prime, I was able to even have free shipping and same day delivery for replacement clippers. I chose again Wahl brand, because my last set served so well for so long. A company that has been continuously improving their technology for over 100 years tends to have solid and reliable products (or a highly-tuned branding or marketing engine that makes people think so).  At the end of the day, I had a bad haircut, but survived. And have learned something out of the experience.