Episode 002 - Miss Handled

Get ready to be BOTHERED about this story about a nail salon that revealed itself to be giving second-class treatment to a young graduate student. She discovers this one day after seeing the red carpet rolled out for a wealthy looking older couple.

Join comedian Julie Kim as she tells this short story and her many reflections and thoughts about what this could have possibly been all about.

🎧 Listen to the 15 minute version.

Primer (the puns begin)

This is a story from about the year 2012.

In 2012, I spent most of my time studying and researching in a graduate studies program.

It was possibly the least glamorous period of my life, except for the entirety of my childhood (replete with glasses, a few obligatory perms from Korean lady hair salons, blah clothing, and an ill-fitting identity). Eventual upside: to be seen.

Even so, during those years I got my nails done on the regular because it was one of my only little aesthetic treats to elevate my usual rotation of joggers, sweats, and tired eyes from all the studying (and distractions from studying).

Not being the most organized or naturally put-together person, the nails literally added polish. I would also say that it was a form of addiction: Once you go shellac, you don’t go back. 💅

Nail salon etiquette  

For two years I had been going to a small nail salon close to where I lived in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. It wasn't a fancy place. In fact, it was on the more broken-down end of the spectrum. Like most of the men I’ve ever dated. LOL kidding but you know I’m not kidding.

The prices were reasonable. The lady who I assume was the salon owner  was kind to me and gave me a warm smile every time.

I had become used to their kind of informal style of working. They spoke in abrupt ways that I thought were maybe cultural and as such not a thing to take personally. There were things banging and clanging all the time, loud conversations to each other in their language, sometimes almost yelling in my face in ways that jarred me every time.

I also assumed that they treated all their customers in a similar way. I never said anything and didn’t mind too much because I knew that I was not at a spa at the Four Seasons. I accepted them as they were.

I was a good customer. I visited every two to three weeks. I gave a reasonable tip. I wasn’t talkative or social, and always brought something to occupy me (a research article, a video on my phone to watch with headphones).

I don’t think small talk or even big talk is an assumed part of the service, on either party’s part. Some might find it detached or rude, but I think some people would appreciate my being in my own world in the mani or pedi chair. I don’t pressure anyone to have a conversation with me or otherwise take up their mental energy. They seemed to accept me as I was too.

Preferential treatment and an added layer of gloss  

And then one summer afternoon, things changed.

While I was getting my nails done, a very fancy looking older Caucasian couple came into the salon. They were dressed as if they were on a cruise. They were first timers. They were greeted like royalty as they walked in, with grand and gracious gestures from the employees. They were immediately ushered  to sit in side-by-side pedicure chairs.

this is a stock photo but also actually them

A pedicure chair, if you don’t know, often looks like a giant recliner with massage functions on the butt and back and shoulders. Sometimes there’s an arm rest that lifts up so that one can slide in, and sometimes there’s a tray attached to the arm rest. It’s a robotic aesthetic and when I’m in one I actually feel like I’m a Transformer (a more powerful but more relaxed female one).

A staff member took the lady’s purse and placed it gently on a stool next to the pedicure chair. She lifted the side arm rest and assisted the lady into the chair. Someone else assisted the man into his chair, as she smiled and seemed to nod and smile with a deference I had never seen in that salon before. I swear I think she fucking curtsied to the lady. Like she was the/a Queen.

Two nail technicians came over and promptly sat in front of each of their feet. They smiled and sat up straight, projecting top tier professional service. There was no loud talking or yelling or clanging in the place.

At one point the man’s nail technician paused, put on a beaming smile with her whole face and said to him: “your wife is so beautiful”. He said thank you and she nodded as she held that generous smile.

Let me tell you: the wife was just okay.

LOL kidding she looked good. But my point is that the compliment was not just a compliment. It was extremely ingratiating behaviour and so obvious.

And then, one of the nail technicians politely asked them: “Would you like some tea? Or some coffee? Or some water?”

I sat there with my mouth more agape (it was mildly agape before), looking around as if I was literally in a hidden camera show. No one was around to receive my looks and join me in my appalled disbelief.

I said: “You have tea and coffee and water?”.

And one of the ladies laughed and said “Yeah, Julie! You know that you can ask for that anytime.”

I said: “No. I didn't know that. You've never offered it to me.”

And that was when I knew that we were done, this nail salon and me.

How To Break Up With Your Nail Salon

After two years of investing time and money into this nail salon, I knew it was time to break up. With bare minimum effort, as if I should have known to ask for what I was never offered, and to have seen other first-timers treated like royalty without having to earn it, I knew I deserved better. And this is exactly what I said in my head for the rest of the appointment, on repeat.

So I did what any respectable woman would do: I paid, I tipped…maybe a little less that day; I don’t recall, but I hope so. I left and just never went back. I ghosted them, not that I assumed they would notice.

i actually wore a ring that said "believe" to that nail salon

But the incident stayed with me for a while. I alternated between feeling offended and disappointed and then betrayed, about the blatant differential treatment.

Businesses are supposed to treat all customers equally well, aren’t they? In my idealistic mind, I was as valuable as this fancy couple, and probably more since I was a regular customer.

It made me reflect on my outward identity, and how I was perceived in the world.

How many other times in different settings was I perceived as a lesser valued customer? In what ways has this played out for me in other situations, even at this salon before?

What was it about me specifically that said “hey treat me less than!”??

Red flags that I missed before breaking up with my nail salon

Thinking back, I recalled something that should’ve been a red flag for me.

A few months before, I was at the end of an appointment and was wanting to book my next one.

I said: “How about Friday afternoon?”*

And one of the technicians, who was working on another client at that time, harshly yelled with a scowl: “No Julie, we're busy on Fridays!”

The only interpretation of her abrasive comment was that I should book a time where they're not busy so they can take other customers.

Maybe this nail technician took my flexible and all-over-the-place schedule for granted, and decided for me that and they're just like, oh, you clearly can come in anytime. And technically that is true when you're a grad student and not so much tied to a schedule, but it’s also a curse and partially the reason why I flunked out of one program and quit the other. Am I gonna just drop that and say nothing more? Yes because I’m tight on word count and big life mistakes require their own blog topics. More on this another time.

The nice nail technician I was scheduling with (the same one I mentioned at the beginning) above, said something to her that I didn’t understand, probably reprimanding her for being so overtly rude and unreasonable to me. I then made my appointment for an upcoming Friday, to satisfy myself at the moment. Because when someone tells me I can’t do something, I just have to prove them wrong.

* note in the audio podcast I said Mondays but reflecting back, I believe we were talking about Fridays.

Living with privilege and living by our perceptions of privilege

The fancy man and the woman are not villains in this story. They didn’t flaunt anything, and they didn’t act entitled. They were not rude and didn’t ask for anything (not that they wanted for anything in that appointment). 

I don’t begrudge them. But I wonder with interest, not jealously, how nice it must be to be treated so well just because. Is it like pretty privilege? Or like being a celebrity? 

They must think they live in a wonderful world where people perk up and only be nice and courteous to them and treat them with respect and tell their wives or tell them that their wives are beautiful, even though they're just normal looking. 

Maybe the ladies working at the nail salon thought like an older, more well-to-do Caucasian couple expected or needed a higher standard of service to feel like they were served properly. And maybe they thought that would translate into a big fat tip from that wealthy duo. That couple probably did tip more than I did.

Everyone working in the nail salon put on totally different personas for this older, affluent looking couple. They changed the whole vibe of the whole place for this couple. I don’t think they had a signal or a code to tell all of the team members. They just automatically elevated their “professionalism”.

These were people that I saw regularly. I brought them chocolates for Christmas. The lady who ran the place would tell me about her daughter in university and once asked me to help her find a job.

I wonder if the nail technicians would have acted the same way to an Asian woman who was dressed super fancy, with a designer handbag and heels and a business suit. I think maybe.

I wonder if the nail technicians and the rest of us simply act according to how fancy they think the someone is if it correlates with a [JK2] level of respect we owe them or a greater return in whatever currency is at hand.

My experience at the nail salon reminds me of several examples of how we as people have a mental hierarchy for preferential treatment in different parts of life. From friendships, the workplace, family dynamics and more.

Dealing with feelings of betrayal

For a short time I felt a bit sad for the nail salon team. They pandered to this wealthy-looking duo (I can’t confirm whether or not they tipped much more than I normally would’ve), but then thought of all the ways that the rest of us do this all the time.

Maybe this was just business? Like how some companies put on shine to dazzle new customers, while treating their existing customers less well because they’ve already “got them.” Prime example: the standard fitness gym. People sometimes take this approach in romantic relationships and friendships.

My parents ran a convenience store when we were growing up, and sometimes they took undignified treatment from customers, smiled as the customers made ignorant comments and complained about the already-low prices that had my parents making almost no profit in some cases.

I’ve also been guilty of treating people well because of perceived or engrained social dynamics or conventions.

I cringe to the point of nearly vomiting every time I think of how I automatically treated older male figures in corporate jobs of the past, but then forgive myself just a little because doing otherwise would have objectively seemed odd or dissenting with negative outcomes for me. This is how screaming in the shower was invented, by the way.

Sucking up to people in higher positions can still feel like an implied part of the job, for lots of people including men (like Greg from HBO's Succession, except less hilarious IRL). I’ve laughed at a man’s corny and stupid joke because he held the keys to a promotion or reference. I had a female executive boss when I was a student who treated everybody horribly and thought that was her right, given the barriers she'd overcome in her own career. I had to pretend I was ok with that treatment, and that didn't notice her thick mustache. That was my first acting gig, I guess.

Being treated as lesser than at the nail salon conjured up feelings I had once as a teenager.

I had a friend who decided that she really wanted to befriend this older girl. She was trying so hard. She would follow this older girl around and put on a totally different personality for her. She had a fake laugh used for anything the girl said, and she would bend over backwards to fit in. She was pretending to be someone she was not - so hard. It was obvious and gross. At first I was hurt, but conveniently I quickly lost respect for this friend and was glad to see her go.

This is also how I felt as a child, even if I didn’t voice it consciously even to myself, being treated harshly and without kindness by my mother when a male sibling got gentle parenting, affection, and affirmation. I'd think: "Oh, I didn't know you did that."

Perhaps this is how I developed a heightened ability to detect this type of unequal treatment. And perhaps I’m extra sensitive to it and call out false positives.

But not all the time and not in this case.

Asian on Asian informality?

I've wondered about the matter of familiarity or informality among Asian people in situations before. Sometimes when you're an Asian person and you're dealing with another Asian person, things are more casual and relaxed. This can be a good thing.

When I was a kid I would go into a store, and the storekeeper would say “Oh, you're Korean!” “And I'd be like, yeah, but sorry I can’t speak (Korean).” And they'd usually shame me a little for what they saw as a rejection of our culture and then say: “you can have that for free.”

BEST possible kind of Asian-on-Asian familiar interaction! I have pretended to be a lot of different kinds of Asian to benefit from this. KIDDING. But imagine? 🙌

And the other side of the coin. I have experienced super informal service from another Asian party to the point they are unprofessional or rude. Not that I'm keeping track but here are five examples:

1. I once hired a new cleaner for my home, referred by a friend. She was an Asian female cleaner. She walked in, looked around at my small place, and said: “Julie, how old are you?” She could instantly tell from the look on my face that I was not into this. We did not last very long.

2. More recently, a different Asian lady cleaner came by to help us out after we had a baby (well, I had a baby), who would comment to me how messy our place was. She once interrupted my work to ask me to hold a garbage bag open while she put a smaller one in it. But to my non-Asian husband, she never said anything to him and she never interrupted his work.

3. Years ago I hired a mover. He was an Asian man. He came in, he dropped his stuff on the ground, looked around and said: “How much was this place? It must be half a mil.” Like I was his fucking friend or cousin (in which case I’d still think it was rude, but a lot of my older relatives ask all sorts of questions that I find nosey and share too much as well). Note that I was paying for the mover’s time as he was asking me about the real estate market.

4. I used to live in a building where the cleaners hired by the condo strata were Asian. They were Korean, like me, and the woman in charge was an older Korean woman. She never acknowledged me, which was fine as she was working. One morning I entered the elevator, and she was there wiping down the buttons and walls of the elevator (non stop – love the hustle). She did not stop her work when I got in, and kept on with the cleaning as we went down. Enter a white-looking man, wearing a suit. She stopped cleaning. Stood still and even nodded to him slightly, giving him the space and peace to enjoy his elevator ride down. At least she didn’t curtsy?

5. Years ago in Toronto, I worked in the financial district. I would go to a Korean place at the food court for lunch. The customer in front of me was a tall older Caucasian male (I’m not looking for these examples, they just happen). As he paid, she smiled and nodded and asked if he wanted a bag. He accepted a bag. Then she rang me up, no smile or frilly gestures. I asked for a bag and she said angrily “why do you need bag??” It wasn’t a question. No bag for me. 

In this case with the nail salon, I wonder if it could have been at least partially a case of Asian-on-Asian familiarity. The bad kind, without a discount. I effectively took my own discount that final day, leaving less of a tip.

Pretty privilege and preferential treatment

It has definitely not benefited me in public places to dress down. I have been to other places and been noticeably treated differently when I haven't been dressed up.

Within the last five years I went to a local grocery store in my pajama pants and was severely mistreated as I was mistaken for a homeless woman who had shoplifted the day before (this will be a future episode for sure).

I have also been the fancy person treated well just last month. I was in Toronto doing a mini press tour for my upcoming cross Canada comedy tour (dates and tickets here – I am my own sponsor 😂). I was doing national TV and radio. I had hair and makeup done, and I was wearing this gorgeous Versace dress and heels. I looked amazing (I’m not going to self-deprecate). Ten fire emojis.

I was walking in the hotel with the dress and three inch heels and noticed that people were smiling at me and moving out of my way. At first I thought they were like “Oh, no. Woman in heels, like, we don't want to knock her over.” but that was projecting as I was struggling to walk without pain in those shoes.

For that short time period, I could feel that these strangers had respect for me, knowing nothing except that I looked put together and again, amazing.

But it also felt weird and unearned. Maybe that’s its own kind of imposter syndrome. I think it’s more about the fact that this is not right!!!! Right?

What would I do differently?

The way I broke up with my nail salon wasn’t remarkable or dramatic. I didn’t need them to know how I felt or what they did. I didn't need them to feel badly or to "teach" them anything. I didn’t leave a negative review. I don’t even think I’ve told anyone the name of the salon, even when relaying the story to friends. These are ladies trying to make a living and I get that we all do what it takes. 

But the differential treatment was too much and too obvious for me, especially given ‘the booking incident’.

I took my money somewhere else. Removing myself from their client roster was my quiet resistance.

I spent at least $1400-$1600 a year with them (that’s hands and feet every three weeks or so after tax and tip…I am just now realizing this and will be re-thinking my life choices). If anyone knows of a good, and I mean an actually good, alternative to nails that isn't sanctimony about just being my real natural self, I welcome it!

Never judge a person by their cover

I also think we should all have more caution nowadays, as for a long while now people have been dressing down not giving AF about a lot of things on a day to day basis including what we look like (or.. just me?). We can't often tell if someone’s wealthy or otherwise beneficial to you from looking at them, and even if we could, that's “not very nice” as my small child would say with a tiny finger wag.

I think after that day I became more conscious of differential treatment I’ve given or might continue to give to others based on their appearances or other factors. I hope I don't. I hope you don't, but you can do what you like of course.

If you're out there reading, please know that I accept you. I don't care how you dress or how rich you are. Just buy a ticket to come see one of my shows.

Also please like, subscribe, and comment as you see fit. Even if it's your first time. Bite the bullet, not your nails.

Thanks for reading. 

If you haven't checked it out yet, here's Episode/Blog 1.