unhappy client

When I take notes on clients at work I often will put little things in the margins to help me remember them. Because there are a lot of things that we can't simply write in the notes. We can't write that the client is fat, so we write that you may want to lower the table a notch.

But when I saw this little scribble on the side of an old note I was scared. I couldn't remember what it meant (because it is NOT one of my normal scribbles) and so Leah suggested that maybe my pen wasn't working and that was all it was. No, if I was trying to get the pen to work I would have done it on scratch paper, not the notes. And in the notes I had written that she was a difficult client to read and was not sure that she had enjoyed the massage.

The first time I worked on her I drew that symbol. But then she came back in and requested me. I saw the symbol got scared. After I was done working on her the second time I REMEMBERED what that symbol meant--- it meant that the client was a swirling vortex, energy sucking black hole of miserableness!

She is getting a massage for Christ's sake! What's not to be happy about? And I was going all out, being so friendly and nice and trying to draw her out of her shell.

Nope. To this day I have never seen her smile.

So she came in for a third massage this weekend. A 90 minute. And requested me. Which you would assume she wouldn't do if she didn't like me and my massages, right? And she just seemed like she was miserable. And didn't smile. And I was like, "Whatever, I'll just give it my all and if she doesn't like it then she doesn't like it."

So at the end she comes out and still looks unhappy and I ask her how she was doing and she goes, "You rock!"

Yeah!!! She did like it!

I just find it interesting how some people don't express their emotions very well. Or they don't realize how they come off.

Of course, with massage it is also hard because the more seriously relaxed you get, often the less you smile just because smiling takes energy and so you would rather not put the energy into it.

But that's what makes my job fascinating and challenging... it's not just about a client's body and tight muscles, you need to deal with their personalities and quirks and moods and energy levels and a million other things (that they may or may not tell you about, say they got spanked a lot as a kid, which is why they freak out when I go anywhere near their butt, but I don't know that happened, all I know is that they are freaking out when I go near their butt.) My job is exhausting and so cool at the same time.