Open Letters: Skincare Connoisseur
Posted on: January 26, 2012
Dearest Skincare Connoisseur,
It’s wonderful to meet you and I am happy to make a new client. Though, after 5 minutes of talking to you it is clear that you are here for all the wrong reasons.
I’m happy that you take very good care of your skin (a fact you’ve repeated every other sentence), and it’s great that your dermatologist has you on Obagi and Retin-A. The question I have for you is, why are you here to see me?
I’m not putting myself down, I do great work for people. You should be so lucky as to spend an hour with me. But I’m no fool. On the totem pole of skincare, I know where I stand. I work at a corporate massage chain doing facials, which essentially means I can provide a facial that will be relaxing but also mild enough that there is slim to no chance I can accidentally hurt you and bring down the company in a colossal lawsuit.
It sounds like you already have a team on the case as far as your skin goes. So that leads me to the only logical conclusion I can think of. You are here to prove to me and to yourself that you know more than I do about skincare.
I know how the next hour will go, you’re going to talk about the spas you go to around the world. You’ll drop all kinds of names from Fredric Brandt to Howard Murad. When I admit to not being familiar with the obscure skincare line you use you’ll smugly tell me about how you have to order it through a Canadian website because it’s made it Switzerland and they don’t sell it in the US.
In the end, you will win this battle of wits. Hopefully you can leave with your ego sufficiently fluffed. Just know this: it was a fixed fight.
If you boil it down to it’s most basic elements, my job is to make you feel satisfied with your hour with me. I have 2 minutes in the beginning of our time together to try and suss out what you wanted when you walked in. It took me 30 seconds to figure out what you wanted and what our dynamic needed to be for you to feel happy with your experience. For financial reasons I do hope you come back, but I’m fairly certain you won’t. You’re not the type to be a repeat client. You prefer to go from place to place, engaging in some intellectual sparring with your therapist.
If I had actually challenged your wealth of knowledge that you are so very proud of, would you have been happy with your experience?
Just remember how happy you were with yourself when you left.
And that I’m fucking great at my job.
You’re welcome,
Monika
