Mike Rose Hairdressers

Mike Rose interviewed people with everyday, blue-collar 
jobs in The Mind at Work. His chapter on hairdressers is particularly eye opening. To be sure, hairdressers need to acquire a set of technical skills—for cutting, coloring, and styling hair. And many, perhaps most of them, see what they do as requiring a 
fair amount of creativity. But what makes the job meaningful, I think, is the skill they acquire in interacting with clients. What does a client mean when she says she wants this haircut a little “fresher”? How do you talk a client out of a haircut that looks great on the long, angular face of the model whose photo she has brought in but will look terrible on the client’s pumpkin-shaped face? How do you help clients feel good about their