This is the second time in my life (outside of being in Bali or Thailand) that I have plucked up the metrosexual courage to get my nails done and I wasn’t even dragged out screaming by the wife either. I was proud to tag along and show my support on an otherwise very non-manly excursion to a nail salon.
My first impression on entering Elite Nail Bar in Booragoon’s Garden City was confusion. A long “bar” stretches the length of the room like a giant….well….bar. I was the only man in a fairly packed room of ladies, which was….well….wonderful! I was ushered to a barstool by my prospective nail clipper and tried to look around without feeling like I was leering or perving at everyone. All the staff were Asian and decked out in official looking red uniforms. Except for the young male manager. He was allowed to wear jeans and a T-shirt. Obviously different rules apply to the different sexes.
My main concern was, why there were rows of dusty wine glasses behind the bar, a few bottles of Johnny Walker, three loaves of bread and two bags of potato chips?"
Were we going to have a party?
When I entered the shop, the staff gawked at me, like I was a dollar bill ready to get up and run from the room. And now I know why.
For $30, I had a hatchet job done on my nails. It was appalling! How could anyone with scissors and a file do such an incredibly bad job. My beautician must have been trained at a kindergarten school for origami!
With deja vu on my side, I actually recall asking my wife, “How do you know whether these people have trained or not?” Clearly it wasn’t such a dumb question. Yet my wife was more concerned about whether they sterilised the equipment. I forgot to tell her that at the end of my session, my lady picked the debris off her scissors with her own nails and then promptly put them back in a cover, presumably to be used on another unsuspecting victim!
When my wife complained to the manager, they kept repeating, “But it is cream varnish. It’s cream varnish.”
Well I was buggered. It looked pink to me. And like a tractor had applied it.
“We can fix for you,” came the chorus from the red coated brigade.
That buggered me too. You’d need a spatula to fill in the divots!
Needless to say, “NO!” I will never go back to this place again. In fact, it has put me off the whole concept of going into a nail salon at all. I’m keeping my metrosexuality in my pocket from now on.
My only consolation was when I got home and my 12-year old daughter gave me a pedicure after a really warm bath. We had a really long chat (which I never do) whilst I repaired my finger nails myself. Both were infinitely better results than anything Elite Nail Bar could produce.
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