Beauty salons overbooked before Eid

Beauty salons in Jeddah are operating at full capacity to accommodate the large numbers of Saudi women lining up for various treatments. Customers are not happy with the Eid rush, while beauticians are overworked with no overtime compensation.
“I booked a salon and spa appointment two weeks in advance just to secure a place. I arrived 30 minutes before the appointment to avoid the receptionist pushing someone else before me and I ended up waiting two hours before my treatment began,” said Amal Jamal, a stay-at-home mother. “I was very upset but I didn’t have another choice, so I had to wait. I stayed six hours at the salon just to get my hair and nails done.”
Quantity over quality is the motto for most salons and spas during the Eid festivities. “Salon management encourages us to book as many appointments as possible because they know women are desperate to look their best during the holiday season,” said salon receptionist Dareen Al-Ghamdi. “When customers arrive, we are instructed to calm them down and offer them other services to hit two birds with one stone; this way we can profit by offering them more treatments and distract them with other treatments.”
Al-Ghamdi said she does not approve of this system of over-booking clients because it exhausts the entire staff on board. “During the last ten days of Ramadan, we don’t go back home until fajr prayer; we are tired and on top of this all, we don’t receive any bonus or over-time money for all the work we do,” she said. “This is the high season for salons and spas and you find many new beauticians in different salons because they sometimes hire people just to fill demand and accept new costumers,” she added.
During the high season rush, accidents also occur more frequently, as staff members are requested to work faster to accommodate clients.
“When we are swamped with work, customers begin to get more irritated and receptionists in turn put more pressure on beauticians to finish quickly.
However, when work is rushed and staff is stressed, the quality of work is compromised and sometimes accidents occur.
This is what we fear the most, because it shows that we cannot work under pressure,” explains Ashwag Rashid, a salon manager in Jeddah.