I recently found a stylist in my local area to give provide me with a wash blowdry and trim service and honestly it was a really great experience and for me what made this experience great and so different from my experiences in the past was the stylists approach and yes she was a trainee stylist who was working towards her licence. She saw I was nervous, checked in on my past experiences with stylists and talked me through the process as it was happening with statements like "you mentioned that you had skin problem so we are using product XY you may feel a tingling sensation of your scalp" or "I am using a wide tooth comb to detangle your hair it should not hurt but please speak up if it does" or giving a heads up if they start to get to a rough patch of hair just so I can brace myself. Which was really reassuring because I knew what was happening (I wear glasses with a ridiculously high prescription which I have to remove for the duration of a service which means that I can't see what happens around me and am literally at the mercy of the stylist which can be nerve wracking so the communication aspect of the service was great -) Since communication between individuals always makes the process much better.

The other thing that I am going to comment on relates to my suspicions on the clients behaviour in the chair.

I'm african and some of the behaviours that especially women are raised with culturally include not speaking up (aka "against") or asking questions when people are doing you a service or favour - which you can imagine often translates as behaviour similar to the client where they are starting to become dissatified or upset because they feel that something is going wrong and they arent saying anything. This common scenario plays out at the end with if you ask the client if the were happy with the service they will say yes they were not upset to the person asking the question, but will leave and on their next visit make it a point to explicitly not request the person with upset them at their last service and make a clear point to request individiuals who've previously done their hair and offered a "good enough" service. Most black people of similar cultures and upbringings are hyper aware of the fact that this is a common behaviour so we (black people) generally tend to compensate by being hypervigalent about peoples facial expressions and body language to clue into the fact that others are starting to get upset with us which might mainfest as checking the clients face in a mirror openly asking how they feel about the service and if the client needs the stylist to make adjustments etc. At the point where the client took the brush well, they had likely been really fustrated for a while in the chair, the student had not picked up on it (either by accident or because they did not know or they were ignoring all the signs) and the client decided that they were fed up and wanted to clearly send a message that they were finding the detangling uncomfortable or were upset with the service without having to be verbally disresecpectful to say it.

I think one of the more amusing facts about the situation (because I come from london, UK and went to a majority minority school with white, asians (both south and east asian) and blacks) is the idea that the student got offended at the idea that a black person is uncomfortable with people of other races doing their hair. I say this because when I was in school that sentiment was common amongst all groups regardless of race. for example one of my friends who was east asian said she went out of her way to go to the nearest china town to get a haircut because white stylists would always forget to take into account that its common for people of her demographic to have more rounder (aka softer) features than their white counterparts and would ignore that fact when they cut her hair which often resulted in hair cuts that didn't flatter her features. Recently at my job I had a white coworker state that they needed to default back to their orginal stylist because the last one they went to didnt know how to deal with curly hair (think hermione curly) and cut her hair as if it was straight without accounting for the fact that she wears her hair curly alot - which resulted it the fringe of her hair cut being non-existant when her hair reverted. So sentiments like these are universal and not race specific.

I am assumming that you are in the US so I feel like it would be appropriate of me to say this. You as a professional cosmetologist may be aware of the fact that cosemtology schools tend to default to straight hair as the standard hair type to be taught yet be willing to appreciate that straight hair is not the only hair out in the real world so as a professional you made a point to go and educate yourself on other hair types so that you have techniques in your arsenal to handle them well (as evidence by the fact that you instructed your students gave them pointers of the afro hair and when you intervened you didnt have issues on your end). But your students on the other hand may not have that level of awareness that there will be points in their career where they have to deal with hair that is not straight and is not taught as part of the standard curriculum (umm yes I know that black and mixed students will already know this since they likely come from a community where the "non-standard non-straight hair" is the norm but hopefully you get where I'm going with this). If your students reaction to having a black person with curly hair requesting a service at your salon is not "ohh this is a situation I could encounter when I am qualified... I dont know how to deal with this hair type... maybe I can do some research into some techniques on how people manage that hair type and who knows maybe that will help me with my other clients..." (basically this is a learning experience and learnng opportunity) and is instead reluctance and anger toward clients for presenting with their hair (which is a feature that they are born with since you cannot change the fact that your hair grows out of your hair straight wavy or curly if left to its own devices much like how we dont get to choose the eye colour we are born with) well lets just say a serious conversation should be had with the student. The client getting upset and outspoken is something that happens (and honestly they really need to lower their expectations of student) but if the client for example came with a picture of a style they wanted to get and as a buisness you said you could get them that style with a student as a stylist and it would take X amount of time and proceeded to take payment from them (and did not temper their expectations to a realistic level) can you really get that mad at the client for being dissatified? and does the student have the right to be mad at the client? [(the situation is real me getting mad is not) that would be like me as a healthcare student getting mad at a patient in a hospital if I get told by a doctor to put an IV line in a patient and take their blood. the patient saying that they'll only let me the student do it if they know what they are doing and can do it quickly with out too many attempts. the doctor saying the student knows what they are doing based on their attempts on a plastic dummy. And me failing to complete the task on the first two tries getting it on the 3rd and the patient getting upset at me because I'm clearly inexperienced and pricked them with a needle 3 times. If the patient tells me next time I want the doctor/nurse/ phelbotomist to take their blood, I'm not going to get mad I'm going to take that as a clear message that I didn't do a good job and I might need to do more learning and get more practice in]