COVID-19 PROTOCOL

Hello everyone! We cannot believe it’s been so long, and we are SO excited to see you soon! We hope you have all been doing well and staying safe and healthy. We want to give you a better idea of what to expect at Steven Papageorge Salon before you come in. This is a long email, but we are requiring for everyone to read it before coming in, so please read it all! When you arrive for your appointment, please wait in your car or socially distance outside of the salon. Our doors may very well be wide open, but that will be to circulate air. Please wait to come inside the salon until you get a text or call from us letting you know that your stylist is ready. We will only be taking clients by appointment. To schedule an appointment, give us a call at (847) 864-2655, schedule online at stevenpapageorge.com, or send us an email at stevenpapageorgesalon@gmail.com. We will not be taking walk-ins at this time.  Once coming into the salon, you will be required to either use the hand sanitizer on the front desk or visit the restroom to thoroughly wash your hands. Your stylist will be ready once you are told to come into the salon. This means that he/she will have already finished their past client and has fully disinfected his/her station, chair, shears, brushes, has swept up all hair, and has washed his/her hands. The shampoo bowls will also be disinfected as soon as the client leaves them; this means that you will be directed to the stylist’s station while they disinfect the shampoo bowls after and if they wash your hair, but they will be with you again shortly after that.  We will all be wearing face-coverings, and we are requiring the same for you. All clients must come in wearing a face-covering that secures behind the ears to make it possible to do their hair unless they have a medical condition or disability that prevents them from doing so. If you forget your mask and need to purchase one, we will be selling them for $1.  We will have a consent form that we will require everyone to sign upon arrival if they do wish to be serviced at Steven Papageorge Salon during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will hand it to you to sign before any service is done. If you do not feel comfortable signing or being serviced, we completely understand, and you will be required to leave without being serviced with no hard feelings on our end. We do ask though that if you do see this as a possibility to please cancel your appointment/s now, and wait until you feel more comfortable about being serviced. Our stylists will have their temperatures read every morning. If a stylist is sick or symptomatic, they will not be allowed to work. If any of you are sick or symptomatic, PLEASE call ahead of time and let us know. We will be allowed to deny anyone who is sick or symptomatic service.  Doorknobs, handles, and our restroom will also be disinfected multiple times throughout the day. We’ve already situated a trash bin outside of the restroom so that you can use a paper towel to open the door and throw the paper in the trash bin right after. WE ARE THINKING OF YOU!  Some clients are used to changing out of their clothes and into robes to receive color services. The changing room will permanently be off limits to clients, and color robes will be directly administered by the stylists. You will have to place the robe over your clothing, so please wear appropriate clothing to receive color services. We recommend older clothes without hoods. You will not be able to receive any hair services if you are wearing a hood. PLEASE WEAR HOODLESS CLOTHES!  Clients will also be asked to remain six feet away from other clients and stylists other than their own. There will be tape marks (six feet apart) on the floor to let you know where we would like you to stand if there happens to be a line at checkout. Tape marks will also mark six feet between stations. Please be cognizant of these. We are now designating certain hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays as no blow-dry times. We will not be blow-drying (other than the front of the hair to see color and cut bangs as we have been doing) from 10:00am-2:00pm on Wednesdays; on Thursdays we will not be blow-drying (other than the front of the hair to see color and cut bangs as we have been doing) from 2:30pm-6:30pm. We will also not be doing beard or mustache trims. We will also not be doing any facial waxing other than eyebrows or facials. We are not sure when we will be offering these services again due to people needing to wear face-coverings. As for payment of services, we are only accepting debit or credit payments. We are promoting contactless pay. Here is a video on how to use Apple Pay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXewMuRiZ3U. Our checkout system is also able to use a tap checkout method for many different cards. If you are not able to do either of these, you will be required to insert your own card into our Square device and sign our iPad; both of these will also be disinfected after each and every client. If you choose to leave gratuity, we will still only be accepting cash tips that you will have to directly place on your stylist’s station. The front desk will not have any cash at this time to provide you change, so please plan accordingly if you wish to provide gratuity.   Pricing will be different as well, and we want to be completely transparent with you all about it. As for color services, we will have to charge accordingly based on how much color is used. We understand most root touch-ups come in every 4 weeks; that being said, the price will need to increase for the first root touch-up based on how much extra product needs to be used. This has always been and will always be our policy with color; there is nothing different here, it just may seem different to you, as you are most likely used to coming in more frequently and having less product used on your hair. If you have box-colored your hair, this may need to result in a color correction which would be priced as a color correction and not as a standard root touch-up. The stylist will decide if it is a color correction or not, and they won’t know until they are actually working with the hair. Our haircuts have also increased $5 as they do every two years, so this was planned to happen at this time with our without COVID-19.  We did know though that we would have to raise prices somewhere due directly to COVID-19’s effects of working at a lower capacity, having to extend appointment times to properly disinfect after every client, having to pay for PPE, and for increased prices of the products we buy for the salon, so we wanted your input. After placing a survey on our Instagram of 1,532 followers, 49% of people said they would like all service prices to increase AND to be charged a COVID-19 fee to ensure the salon remain successful while 50% wanted to pay just a COVID-19 fee (1% wanted to pay for other options we had including an option for no extra charge!). We greatly appreciate so many people being understanding of this current situation and even preferring to pay a price increase for services and a COVID-19 fee. Even after seeing your strong response to this idea and being financially advised to both raise prices and include a COVID-19 fee, we are, for the moment, just deciding to charge a COVID-19 fee that will go away once we are able to resume operations as they were prior to COVID-19 at normal capacity. The COVID-19 fee is $3; if you are coming in more than once a week due to us not being able to fit you in on a single day/time slot because of decreased capacity, you will only be charged the $3 COVID-19 fee on your first appointment of the week; if multiple family members are receiving services, everyone will pay $3. If, after some time of being open, we do see it as necessary to increase color and waxing prices as well, we will revisit the possibility and notify you. For now though, we just ask for your support and recommendation to friends to keep our prices as mentioned. Thank you in advance for understanding. This is uncharted territory for us, and we will continue to learn what is best for all of us as we go forward. Your safety and our safety are our top two priorities at this time. We thank you for your understanding and loyalty over the years. We are excited to see you all soon! Have a great Memorial Day Weekend, and stay safe!