Umm miss can I ask you about your hair?

So if you live in Chicago, and happen to be walking on Michigan Ave, E. Chicago Ave, or on the Evanston campus, you may be approached by someone uttering those words as you pass by. Run, don't walk by.

These men and women work for a sales company that promotes hair salons in the Chicago area. I will admit that this fall as a naive poor graduate student walking on NU's Evanston campus, I got talked into purchasing a gift card for a salon near where I live downtown. Later that night, when I got home from class and looked at this salon's website and its reviews I found online, I was appalled. In no way was this a place I would ever be a patron of. The reviews were horrible, and the website was very low quality. Plus going to a bad salon could have some pretty severe consequences. I can be vain, especially about my hair, so getting a bad haircut would throw me into a tailspin.

So this uttering of "miss can I ask you about my hair" greets me daily on my walks to work, and especially if I hear these words before I have my coffee, I can assure you I give a scathing glare as I pass by both because it is annoying on its own to have an aggressive salesperson in your face in the morning and because its a reminder of my being conned out of $50 earlier this fall. For anyone who knows me well - you know that I am not a happy camper in the AM, particularly before I have had my morning cup of coffee =)