spa hells

had a lovely friday off. normally i spend one of my two days off running random errands. on this particular friday, celestial actually had the day off so we kept each other company. met up at grand central at noon and headed down to chelsea. we stopped at t-mobile where they miraculously fixed my phone, shopped at shoegasm (yes, that is really the name of the store), then grabbed lunch.

after warming up over a bowl of soup, we braved the cold again and headed to bloomie nails on w 23rd and 7th ave. . . i had been looking forward to this for a couple weeks as it had been years since my last manicure and/or pedicure. mostly b/c i am too cheap to pay for something i can do a decent job of myself. however, my very generous and thoughtful friend theng got me a gift certificate for my birthday.

i asked for a mani/pedi and celestial requested a mani + 10 minute massage. we picked our colors and sat down. eugene, a quiet and young woman straight from korea helped me. before she put on my polish, she gave me the bill and i handed over my gift card.

eugene shot me a look of confusion. i explained that i had received a gift certificate within the past month and showed her the business card including the location we were at. this started what became a frenzy of chattering and debate in korean, chinese, and english. an authoritative associate came up to me and insisted that the gift certificate was not valid at their store. she explained that the owners had changed over and bloomie nail and spa belles are no longer affiliated. my argument that the business card i had been given the certificate with included the bloomie nail locations fell on deaf ears. i reluctantly pulled out the cash and asked to speak to the manager.

this lead to yet another frustrating conversation where it came up that this problem had occured before but out of respect for the spa belles owners being "korean too" they had not wanted to make waves and complain formally! instead they allow spa belles to continue to falsely advertise by continuing to use bloomie nail's name and consequently confuse their customers. i somehow felt cheated out of my relaxing afternoon and ended up canceling the pedicure.

my blood was boiling and it wasn't until later in the afternoon, after some more window shopping with celestial and grabbing a drink at markt that i had cooled down. i guess i learned my lesson to always confirm everything. . at the very least, eugene did a fabulous job and i have a new favorite nail color- russian navy!