Did You Check In Online?
“Welcome to GreatClips. Did you check in online?” She’s new, a receptionist or manager I haven't spotted in the four years I've been coming here for my bimonthly six-dollar haircut.
“Um … what?” I’m startled. This isn't the usual GreatClips interaction, in which I give them my phone number and they recite my usual: buzz the sides and back with a number-four clipper, thin it out on top, and try not to jab my poor busted cauliflower ears with the shears.
“Online. Do you have a smartphone? You can check in online.”
“Um.” It’s the weekend after New Years and I am fuzzy in several senses of the word. “I’ll check it out. Thanks.” Then we go through the familiar phone-number-and-usual-haircut dance, and she tells me it'll be fifteen minutes. Maybe. Assuming nobody who has checked in online shows up and goes in front of me.
And, bam, just like that, I'm anxious. I don’t immediately know why, so I sit and observe. It’s an unusually crowded Sunday at GreatClips; there are a lot of parents with kids that need haircuts before they go back to school. After a while I get it. It’s loud in there—kids are loud—but the low end cuts out every time someone else walks in and talks to the receptionist.
“Did you check in online?” All adult conversation ceases. We’re all listening intently, ready to recompute our entire Sunday morning strategy if the answer turns out to be Yes and our wait time jumps to an hour.
Fortunately, nobody has checked in online this morning and I’m in the chair in thirteen minutes, not the estimated fifteen. I ask my stylist about the online check-in thing, and she says they’ve had it for months, but somebody up the corporate franchise food chain has recently insisted that Signs Be Posted and the Question Be Put to all customers.
I tell her I think it’s added remarkably to the level of stress in the room. She shrugs and keeps buzzing away. The receptionist, however, happens to be close by and she gives me a big nod-and-thumbs-up in the mirror, and mouths the phrase “Oh, yeah.”
On the way out I have a bad feeling about my future at this particular GreatClips. I will never use their app; I’d feel like an utter douche, cutting in front of groups of parents with kids. But I imagine there are plenty of type-A Palo Alto moms and dads for whom every Sunday has a hyper-scheduled agenda, and they have already installed the app and will most definitely be Checking In Online next time, just to avoid that stressed-out feeling.
