Health insurance, 401k, paid vacation, here I come.

Six months ago, if anyone had asked me if I would consider going back to work in a salon, I would have replied an emphatic "No."  I liked the freedom of being self employed.  I had lots of high hopes and vision for opening my own shop and becoming the amazing boss I always wished for.

But somewhere over the last few months, something began to change.  I had been itching to do something more and I assumed that meant it was near time to make the big move and go from renting a small back room to acquiring a proper store front location and hiring a staff.

I started working on a business plan, researching prices on leases, renovations, equipment, salon furniture, blah, blah, blah.  The more I thought about what I really wanted, though, the more it began to look like I just wanted to be part of a well-functioning business, rather than at the head of one.

Coming at it from another angle, I was also trying to figure out how I would finance this expansion project.  Self employed, I get by.  The potential is there to get ahead, but to do the amount of business that would allow me to get ahead causes the rest of my life to slip out of balance.  Sure, seeing more clients only adds a few more hours a week to my "behind-the chair" time, but it also adds a higher level of activity outside of the shop with extra phone calls, emails, text messages, supply shopping and whatnot.  In other words, if I was making the kind of money I really want to make, I'd be working way more than I want to work.

The simply solution is to charge more money.  It's been two years since I raised my prices, so I'm well past due for that.  But I'm pretty sure I'm already charging the maximum I can given the environment in which I work.  It's just a fact in the salon business that mad hair skills are not enough to command top dollar; you also need atmosphere to justify your price, and atmosphere costs money.

These are the things I was hashing out when I decided that I was tired of hashing out things like this.  I suddenly had a deep desire to take a break from thinking about it so much and to just be able to go to work and come home and not think about it again until it was time to go back.  I wanted to collect a paycheck that someone else had calculated for me.  I wanted someone else to decide what color the walls would be.

I also realized I wanted structure.  The freedom of self employment had become a prison.  Because I didn't have a structured job, I never really left my work.  A day off didn't feel like a day off.  It just felt like a day spent putting off a bunch of stuff I really needed to do.

So I sent my resume to a couple of places around town.  One place I had worked at before and two places where I didn't really know anyone.  I got a phone call from my first choice place a couple of days later to set up an interview with the HR manager.  That interview went well enough that I was asked back to meet the owner.

The second interview lasted three hours.  It was two hours in before I realized I was being offered a job.  We laughed a lot.  The owner said it was the most fun she had ever had in an interview.  Of course, I said a couple of things that were really stupid and made me seem like a jerk.  I guess I can be kind of jerk sometimes.  But I guess I also said enough smart and funny things to cover up my jerkiness.  It's funny how as I laid awake last night unable to sleep it was only the jerky things I kept replaying in my mind.  I mean, a three-hour interview and I spent maybe 75 seconds being a jerk.  That's not all that bad a ratio, I guess.  Still, I pray that all my jerk speak would be stricken from everyone's mental record.

The reputation of this particular salon is that it is high-end, expensive and snobby.  The truth is that while they do strive for a tremendous level of customer service, they have a broad range of prices available and if the disposition of the owner truly sets the tone, there can't be anything at all snobby about them.  She is one of the most delightful people I have ever met.

In short, I am being offered a job and I'm 99% sure I'm going to take it.  The only thing left is a technical interview wherein I'll take a personality inventory and bring in a model to demonstrate my level of competency.  Yes.  That is scary to me.

The whole thing is scary to me, actually.  I've had some really disappointing experiences working for salons.  I've had some really miserable experiences working with other hairdressers.  But I have enough evidence of God's hand in all of this that I think I can trust that it's the best thing for me right now.

As far as all those hopes and visions for owning my own shop someday, those aren't canceled.  This is just part of that plan, I think.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I might love working at this place and never want to leave.

All I know is that after my interview yesterday, I was excited enough to throw up.  But I kept it together.