20 People Who Deeply Regret Trusting Their Barber That Day

A good haircut can make you feel like a movie star, but a bad haircut... well, many of us left the salon with a fake smile and the hope that the mirror was wrong. From crooked lines to completely unexpected styles, some men have learned the hard way that blindly trusting a barber can be a dangerous game. Today, we bring you the most disastrous stories of haircuts that left their victims wishing they’d worn a hat for a month.

"I had really nice curly hair on top, about 3 inches long. I went to a local barber to get a trim."

"I made it clear that I wanted the top about 2 inches long and to take the sides in a bit. 15 pounds later, and I walk out with a grade 3 buzzcut and a bowl cut for a fringe. I am mortified."

• There’s a point in every haircut where you think, “If he or she stops here, it’s going to suck.” One time someone did just that. The hair wasn’t even, the cut wasn’t straight, it was just a disaster all around.
  So I told them to go on like that and even though I ended up with a little kid’s haircut, at least all the hair was even so it could be styled as it grew out. I just wore a baseball cap for the first week or two. I got used to cutting my own hair, and that experience was a big reason why. @Too_Too_Solid_Flesh / Reddit
• I have a funny story. I went to a barbershop, and the guy who cut my hair was new, so he did the job not very well, without any interest. Since I was traveling, the disastrous result did not bother me much because no one knew me in the new country.
  Two months later, to avoid the man, I decided to go to a new place 500 meters away. I noticed that the guy looked very, very familiar, but it was only when I noticed the mess he was making that I asked him if I had seen him before and he said yes. He had left the other job and started there.
  I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that he had ruined my hair for the second time. But since I was traveling again, I didn’t mind. I just hope it’s better next time. @Mysterious-Tap-3987 / Reddit
• I hadn’t had my hair cut in months, so it was pretty long. I decided to try another place in my town.
  The guy had no idea what he was doing. He basically wiped out the back and sides of my hair with the clippers, barely touched my bangs, and then took random pieces out of my hair to finish it off. I think he was trying to give me the trendy haircut that I didn’t ask for anyway, but he failed at even that.
  I had to go to a better place to get it done, and even then it was the shortest I’ve had it in years. Every time I hear about a guy going to that place, it’s because they butchered the hair. Somehow they’re still in business. @Eadweardus / Reddit

“My MIL cut my son’s hair without asking...”

• I moved to another area, found this salon nearby and gave it a try. The stylist asked me what I wanted.
  What I wanted was medium length, a little over the ear. She kept saying "Uh-huh, uh-huh, ok." And then proceeded to give me the exact same little boy haircut that every other man sitting in the chairs behind me was getting.
  I stopped her - I literally had to put my hand up and stop her from doing the same thing to the other half. I said, "This is NOT what I asked for at all." She said, "Please let me finish! I can't let you walk out of here without your hair looking exactly like every other man."
  That blew me away. I just said something like, "I don't care, it's my hair, not yours," and walked out with only half my hair cut. My mom took pity on me and made it up to me, well enough. @Unknown / Reddit
• One stylist made several HOLES in my hair all the way down to the scalp. I went back another time and another stylist tried to "fix" it. That's when he told me that the first stylist was very angry and made mistakes in my hair because of a plumbing problem in his apartment, so he was very nervous. @stilldeb / Reddit
• In high school, I had a Justin Bieber haircut with the bangs in the front. I thought I was hot stuff. So I went to Ohio to visit my family and decided to get a trim while we were there.
  Mom took me to a barbershop, where an old guy took clippers and cut my bangs in a straight line right above my eyebrows. I was devastated! I got up and walked out. Worst thing that ever happened to me. @Rough_Rhubarb_5733 / Reddit

“I just got a haircut. How bad is the back?”

• [edited] In the seventies, I was on a boat in New Zealand and was about to fly to Australia to get married, so I decided to get my hair professionally done for the big day. Two days later I arrived in Adelaide and the first thing my future wife did when she saw me at the airport was to look at me dumbfounded and then proceed to yell at me: "You could have at least cut your hair!"
  Looking at the wedding photos, I realized what he was referring to: the before picture looked like it was from a "Do you have flyaway hair?" shampoo commercial, with layers and feathers and wings going every which way. @robfuscate / Reddit
• When I arrived at the place, an elderly lady was the only person available, and she motioned for me to sit down. When I did, she didn't ask me a single question and immediately started spraying a MASS of water on my head. She must have pumped the sprayer 20 times or more, I swear, water was dripping off the sides of my head. I was so soaked.
  I started to tell her what I wanted, and she just said "Yeah, uh-huh, sure" in a disinterested voice. Then she combed my hair in a middle section on both sides of my face, put her hands on either side of my forehead and SCRAPED my hair back so that it was completely flat against my head, like Alfalfa's in Little Rascals.
  At that moment, I freaked out that this was her plan for my hair and couldn't control the "What the hell are you doing?" that came out of my mouth. She looked at me through the mirror, smiled and said, "Trust the process, honey," and moved on, justifiably oblivious. She proceeded to cut me with scissors, barely removing any of my hair, and it looked much worse than when I came in. I don't know how, but somehow she managed to cut it so that my hair was roughly the shape of a square, I really don't know how she did it.
  I was honest, told her it wasn't nearly what I wanted, and she said, "I have another appointment soon, sorry, I can't fix it." The store was empty. Then she got super pissed when I didn't tip her, but I didn't care anymore. I went to a real barber the next day and got it fixed. @Tripondisdic / Reddit

“I hadn’t cut my hair for almost a year, and now the barber did a terrible job. There are hairs that didn’t get cut and now I just found this.”

• When I was 17, I was an usher at my older sister’s wedding. My parents told me to get my hair cut. The length was fine, they just wanted it neat. So I went to the salon.
  After I sat down, the girl who was cutting my hair started making small talk and asked me if I had any plans for the weekend. I said I was going to my sister’s wedding. Then a large chunk of hair fell into my lap as the girl said in the flattest voice possible: “I was supposed to get married this weekend.”
  I sat very still and just let her finish the haircut. I had grown my hair out, and she cut off over 6 inches of hair and left it short enough that my hair wouldn’t lie flat. I have never said anything to a hairdresser since. @arvidsem / Reddit
• It started when I got out of the hospital after breaking my leg in half and spending a few days there. My girlfriend at the time decided that a new haircut would go great with my titanium shin, so she took me to the fancy hipster hair salon where her friend had started working.
  Still groggy from the rather strong painkillers, I sat back in the chair and completely tuned out. I may have even dozed off a little. After a while, I woke up and, oh surprise, found myself with a not-so-pleasant black mohawk with a blonde tuft.
  I still have no idea who the hell thought that would look good, but the fact is that I wore a hat for about a month before my hair grew long enough to get rid of the dye. @Unknown / Reddit
• I went to a barber school last year to get a cheap haircut. It went pretty well and then the boss came out to finish my haircut. He intended to use a razor to clean up all the edges, but what he ended up doing was cutting my neck several times. I just remember the student saying “sorry” to me while her boss was trying to demonstrate how to use the razor. @btags33 / Reddit

“Asked my wife to cut my hair.”

• The day before freshman year, I went to get my hair cut. I asked her to just trim it a little bit. She did some crazy stuff where she made a STRAIGHT line over my ear and then turned it into a perfect right angle behind my ear. I was pissed off after I saw it, but I didn’t want to go to school bald, so I took it.
  Then my first day of school I got a lot of weird looks... so I just went home and told my mom to take me to get it done. @CDC_ / Reddit
• I was in a barbershop when I was about 12 years old. There were a couple of families in there waiting for their kids to get a haircut, a couple of them I knew. I was so relaxed that I just started drooling randomly, looking around to see if anybody noticed, so the guy cut a chunk out of the back of my hair.
  I had to go home, have my mom shave my head down to the bottom and miss school for over a week. @perhapsvampires / Reddit
• It was the night before starting a new school in 6th grade. I wanted the whole Nick Carter undercut look. The barber unevenly cut one side at least a full inch shorter.
  Needless to say, there was no time to fix it, and I was mortified. I just realized I had repressed that memory. @sma_nor / Reddit
• I finally got this girl’s number and that night I was taking her out to a movie and a nice restaurant. I bought new clothes, new shoes, and planned to get a new haircut to impress her. All would have gone well if I hadn’t met Tom.
  I walked into his barber shop, which was near the mall, and it looked kind of cool, like an old-timey barber shop. The kind where you talk about sports and joke with the small town mayor or something.
  Tom waved me in and sat me down in a chair. I told him very clearly what I wanted, which was just a trim. Tom was an older gentleman who looked like he’d been cutting hair all his life. But Tom fooled me.
  The haircut I ended up with made me look like Jim Carrie from Dumb and Dumber, except it was dramatically uneven in the back. @saltnotsugar / Reddit

If these stories teach us anything, it's that a bad haircut is like a toxic relationship: at first you think you can fix it, but in the end you just have to give it time to heal. And if something similar has ever happened to you, remember that hair grows back... but the photos on the Internet last forever. Want more anecdotes about disastrous aesthetic choices? You can read this article here and continue to enjoy other people's hair dramas.