I don’t like the way you spoke to my daughter.. that’s wrong.
By: Jude C. Ifeanyi
Tags: Life Lessons, Words, Bias, Emotional Intelligence, Life

I don’t like the way you spoke to my daughter.. that’s wrong.

A Tiny Life Moment On “tasting your words”

Photo by Miguel Orós on Unsplash

The Moment

A man walks into a unisex salon with his wife and 2-year-old daughter, all in good spirits…the chief hairstylist walks in, says a couple of words, and total silence...

The man’s wife speaks up trying to give answers to the questions made by the chief hairstylist, 2 mins in... Her Husband interrupts and addresses the stylist…

“I don’t like the way you spoke to my daughter.. that’s wrong. You came in, and the first words you say are… “I don’t like doing children’s hair… Does she cry?… Your bill is #2000 naira…”

“ Why would you assume she would cry?… She has been here before and we all had a good time..”

“I have come here before with my whole family and we all had a good time, we came here excited and you just talk to a small girl like that. My daughter is 2 and she doesn’t cry when her hair is being made...”

At this point, everyone in the Salon including myself stop and pay attention… The chief stylist tries to defend herself while the rest of us offer up apologies on her behalf... She never does.

2 mins later.. the man. Calmly walks out… Followed by his wife and daughter…

Everyone in the salon is tensed… Other stylists don’t want to call the offender out even though we all agree in our minds she was wrong with her approach… Why would we? She’s still defending her right to say what she said.

“.. what did I do that’s wrong... I just asked her if she cries and that I don’t do children’s hair… If Dem wan go make dem go...”

I sit there… biting my tongue… knowing anything I say would not make a difference as she already feels justified in her action. What’s more worrying is, As the chief hairstylist, she just set an example and no one can tell her how to run her business.

The Reflection

Now, I try to see things from other people's perspectives nowadays and put myself in “what ifs” scenarios...

First, What if I was a father and someone talked to my daughter like that.. I might have reacted worse and even as level headed and calm as the man reacted, he got no apology, and rather than stay pissed somewhere he isn’t appreciated. he takes his family and walks away.

What if I was the chief stylist, Would I have said things like... “I hate making children's hair to the hearing of a child/customer? “ Even if I hate making children’s har of one bad experience, is there a better way I could have approached and asked the dad and mum if the baby cries? if if she does could I have asked the parent if they can keep her attention while I made her hair?

Would I assume because a child I worked with in the past cried and was difficult, does that make all kids difficult?

It got me wondering how many times we use one instance to pre-judge every other instance and defend our right to do so.

If you have an ugly experience with a black man then we pain all black men badly. if you have an ugly experience with a cop, we tend to paint all cops bad.

This leads us to treat people differently than we should, without getting to know them. Our biases and past seem to influence how we respond.

I can’t judge if she is a good person or not based on one incident as that would be committing a similar mistake to what she has done.

There’s a saying that says “Nobody knows what's wrong with them but it is obvious to everyone else”

This is because we tend to defend our positions with emotions and this can be misleading

We might have the best intentions but how we go about expressing it can make a whole lot of difference

The Takeaways