Four of the six stylists moved to Lyudmila Pavlovna’s new salon, and some of the regular clients followed them. People suggested that I urgently counter her salary offer, but the numbers were more stubborn than my wounded pride: my salon simply couldn’t survive that kind of bidding war.
“I poached your employees,” Lyudmila Pavlovna said, carefully placing her fork beside her plate. “I reached an agreement with four of them at once: Olga, Marina, Lena, and Vika. They start working for me in two weeks. I’m paying them almost twice as much, so it all worked out faster than I expected.”
We were having dinner at home with Andrey. An ordinary Thursday, ordinary baked chicken, salad in a glass bowl. Except my mother-in-law hadn’t come over for a family visit. She had come to announce the result.
I looked at my husband. Andrey lowered his eyes to his plate and began smoothing the edge of a paper napkin with one finger.
“Did you know your mother was talking to my stylists?” I asked.
“She told me she was opening a salon,” Andrey replied. “I didn’t ask about specific people. Honestly, I wanted the two of you to sort this out yourselves and not drag me into it.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna smirked.
“What is there to sort out? People go where they’re treated better. Irina, you’ve kept them under all these rules of yours for six years: schedules have to be approved, vacations have to be formally arranged, applications have to be signed—everything has to be on paper. I simply named a decent amount of money. Turns out that was enough.”
I was forty-seven.
Six years earlier, I had opened the salon on the ground floor of a nine-story apartment building, in a space where children’s shoes had previously been sold. For the first year and a half, I colored clients’ hair myself, washed the floors in the evenings, and spent Sundays reconciling appointment records with payments.
Then I finally had six stylists, an administrator named Tatyana, regular clients, and the feeling that the premises had stopped being nothing more than an expensive box full of mirrors.
All that time, Lyudmila Pavlovna had believed I was too cautious.
“You have to be bolder in business,” she used to say at every family gathering. “Money loves people who aren’t afraid to think big.”
Now she had decided to think big ten minutes’ walk from my salon.
“If they accepted your offer, I’m not going to try to stop them,” I said. “But don’t pretend this is about caring for people. You’re opening a competing salon and taking an already trained team. That is exactly what it is.”
My mother-in-law leaned back in her chair.
“I’m not taking anyone. I showed them what they’re actually worth. If someone earns sixty in one place and gets offered one hundred and twenty somewhere else, what else is there to discuss?”
“There’s plenty to discuss,” I replied. “What exactly is included in that one hundred and twenty? What’s the base salary? What’s the commission? How is vacation paid? How can the schedule be changed? When is payday? What happens in a slow month?”
“That’s exactly why people left you,” she interrupted. “Instead of talking about money, you’re listing conditions again.”
Andrey raised his head.
“Mom, maybe that’s enough? You said what you came to say.”
“I’ve said everything I wanted to say,” she replied, reaching for her handbag. “Irina will see for herself. In a couple of months, my stylists will be thanking me.”
She placed particular emphasis on the word “my.”
The next morning, four resignation letters were lying on Tatyana’s desk.
Olga came in first. Marina, Elena, and Vika followed.
None of them avoided my eyes or invented stories about family circumstances.
“Irina Sergeyevna, we really have decided to leave,” Olga said. “Lyudmila Pavlovna offered conditions that are difficult to refuse. I understand this is unpleasant for you, but I have a loan, and my daughter is starting university in the fall. I can’t pretend the difference in money doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t need to pretend,” I replied. “Let’s agree on the dates and hand over the appointments properly.”
Marina visibly relaxed.
They had probably expected a scandal. Maybe they had even prepared themselves for one.
I agreed on a final working day with each of them. Some stayed until the end of the following week, others until the middle of the week after that. We rearranged appointments, called clients, and settled outstanding payments.
That evening, Tatyana closed the office door and placed a sheet of figures in front of me.
“Are you going to make a counteroffer?” she asked. “At least to Olga. Half our coloring clients will leave with her.”
“If I offer her twice as much, tomorrow I’ll have to offer the same to everyone else,” I said. “Otherwise, it will mean leaving is more profitable than staying.”
Tatyana removed the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and pushed the sheet closer.
We calculated rent, taxes, utilities, payroll, supplies, and mandatory purchases.
Even if we cut everything that could be postponed, with that kind of reduction in bookings our reserve would last approximately one month.
“One month at most,” Tatyana said. “After that, we’ll have to start cutting something.”
“Then we have one month to figure out what’s still alive here.”
Tatyana looked at me over the top of her glasses.
“And what about the remaining stylist’s vacation? She has tickets for ten days from now. If she leaves now, we’ll be even more short-staffed.”
“We’re not touching her vacation,” I said. “It was approved in advance. She’s going.”
“Then you’ll have to work behind the chair again.”
“Then I will.”
Two weeks later, four workstations stood empty.
On the first Monday after they left, the phone rang almost nonstop. Some clients asked where Olga had gone. Others wanted appointments with Marina and were surprised when Tatyana explained that she no longer worked with us.
I took some of the hair appointments myself.
My hands remembered everything faster than I expected.
The harder part was nail services and the procedures I had never performed myself. Those clients had to be rescheduled, offered different times, or honestly told that we simply couldn’t accommodate them right now.
By lunchtime, Tatyana had a sheet covered in crossed-out appointment slots.
“Seven cancellations already,” she said. “And three people asked for the phone number of the new salon.”
“If you know the number, give it to them,” I said.
She stared at me.
“Seriously?”
“They came for a particular stylist. I’m not going to hide a person from her client.”
That same day, Andrey sent me a photograph.
Lyudmila Pavlovna was standing in the middle of her new salon between two rows of pale-colored chairs. A sign hung on the wall, balloons decorated the entrance, and all four of my former stylists stood beside her smiling.
Under the picture, Andrey had written:
“Mom asked me to tell you the opening went well.”
I put my phone in a drawer.
That evening, three chairs stood unused, and Thursday’s appointment book was almost empty.
The next day, I arrived before everyone else.
Then I started arriving even earlier.
After a week, I stopped counting how many years it had been since I had spent ten hours a day working behind a salon chair.
But the salon didn’t close.
We reduced supply orders, canceled a new advertising photo shoot, postponed replacing two chairs, and rearranged the schedule so we wouldn’t keep the premises open late in the evening for a single client.
The employees who stayed received their salaries on the usual date.
When one of the two remaining stylists was about to go on vacation, Tatyana asked me again:
“Are you sure we’re letting her go?”
“We already discussed this,” I said. “She has tickets and an approved vacation. If I start changing the rules simply because things have become difficult for me, then how am I different from someone who thinks agreements are just decoration?”
Tatyana gave a small snort.
“All right. Then on Thursday, you’re alone covering two rooms, and I’ll be greeting clients while simultaneously pretending to be a person who has everything under control.”
“Just don’t overdo the performance. We still have utilities to pay.”
We both laughed, even though there wasn’t much amusing about the numbers.
By the end of the third week, revenue had stopped falling.
It was still noticeably lower than before, but at least it was no longer plunging every day.
For the first time, I allowed myself not to open the spreadsheet at home after ten o’clock at night.
And that was exactly when Olga appeared.
She came to the salon at almost nine in the evening, just as Tatyana was turning off the display-window lights. Olga wore a light coat even though the weather outside was still warm. She held her handbag against her side with both hands.
“Irina Sergeyevna, could we talk?” she asked. “I know it’s late. If this is a bad time, I can come back tomorrow.”
“Come in. I’m just finishing up.”
Tatyana looked at me, then at Olga, and without asking any questions disappeared into the back room to check the register.
Olga sat on the edge of one of the client chairs.
“I don’t know how to begin without sounding ridiculous,” she said. “We made a mistake.”
I didn’t answer immediately.
Not because I wanted to make her nervous.
Over the past month, I had imagined this conversation many times, and in every version I had said something sarcastic.
Now that it was actually happening, sarcasm seemed useless.
“What happened?” I asked.
Olga ran a finger along the strap of her handbag.
“We still haven’t been given employment contracts. At first Lyudmila Pavlovna said the accountant was busy with the opening and would take care of everything in a couple of days. Then she said she wanted to spend a month seeing who worked how. She promised us one hundred and twenty. Yesterday was payday. I received forty-seven.”
“For a full month?”
“Almost. She says she’ll pay the rest once the clients fully start coming over. But nobody knows when that will be.”
Olga began speaking faster.
“The schedule changes the night before. If there aren’t enough appointments, she sends us home. If a client suddenly wants an appointment, she can call on our day off and tell us to come in. Marina has twice had to show up at nine in the morning after finishing at ten the night before. Elena asked to keep Saturday free because it was her mother’s anniversary, and Lyudmila Pavlovna told her, ‘Family celebrations happen every year, but you can lose a client only once.’”
I listened, noting only one thing to myself:
A month earlier, I hadn’t known any of this.
I hadn’t been waiting for my mother-in-law to start delaying salaries.
I hadn’t counted on it.
I hadn’t built a strategy around her failure.
I had simply been trying to keep my own salon alive until the next payday.
“And you want to come back?” I asked.
Olga finally looked me directly in the eyes.
“I want to ask whether that’s even possible. I understand the way I left. And I understand that you can refuse. But if there’s a chance, I’d come back. Not at the old salary at any cost. I want to know how much I’ll receive and when. And I want what I’m promised to be written down.”
“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t care,” I said. “It was hard for me. And I won’t forget that four people left at the same time. But if you want to discuss work, then we’ll discuss work.”
Olga nodded.
“Then tell me what I need to do.”
“Come back tomorrow after closing. I’ll prepare the conditions. Not a promise over the phone—a proper calculation and a draft contract. You can look through it and decide.”
She stood up, then paused at the door.
“Marina and Elena are thinking about leaving too. They didn’t ask me to negotiate for them, but if you don’t mind, I can tell them they’re allowed to come talk to you.”
“Tell them only one thing: if they want to talk, they need to come themselves.”
“And Vika has already found another place,” Olga added. “It’s closer to her home, and she decided not to come back.”
“That’s her choice.”
When the door closed behind Olga, Tatyana emerged from the back room holding a register receipt in her hand.
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said. “But for some reason I suddenly feel like getting the personnel files out of the cabinet.”
“Get three of them. We may need them.”
The next evening, all three women came.
Olga sat down first. Marina sat beside her without removing her jacket. Elena placed her phone facedown on the table and kept her hands on her knees.
An identical folder lay in front of each woman.
“I’ll say this immediately,” I began. “I’m not offering double salaries. If that’s why you came, we’re wasting our time.”
Marina sighed.
“We already went looking for double.”
Elena shot her a quick look.
“Don’t start with jokes. Irina Sergeyevna has every right not to speak to us at all.”
“Of course she does,” Olga said. “So let’s listen.”
I opened the first page.
“Here is the base salary. Here is the commission. Here are the two payment dates. The entire amount is official and appears in the payroll calculation. Here is the procedure for approving the schedule. Vacation is paid and follows the vacation schedule. If a shift needs to be changed, it won’t be done by sending you a message at night demanding that you come in the following morning. Emergencies happen to everyone, but an emergency cannot be the everyday management system.”
Marina leaned over the document.
“What if it’s a slow month? Does the base salary remain the same?”
“What’s stated in the contract remains the same. Commission depends on revenue, so that part may vary. I’m not going to promise an amount I cannot guarantee.”
“And what if things become difficult again two months from now?” Elena asked. “Are you going to start reminding us that we abandoned you?”
The question hit more precisely than I expected.
“If I take someone back, I take them back as an employee, not as someone serving a lifelong sentence of guilt,” I answered. “But trust will have to be rebuilt. Mine in you, and yours in me. That’s also an honest condition, even though it can’t be written into an employment contract.”
Olga slowly turned the page.
“This vacation really is paid?”
“Yes. Just as it was before you left.”
“At Lyudmila Pavlovna’s, we were told we could take vacation once we ‘got on our feet.’ The only thing nobody understood was who exactly was supposed to get on their feet.”
Marina removed her coat.
“I want to come back. I’m tired of checking my phone every morning and wondering whether I’m working that day or not.”
Elena kept reading.
“I’m ready too. But I need to know my Saturdays at least two weeks in advance.”
“That can be fixed in the work schedule,” I said. “If changes become necessary, we’ll agree on them.”
Olga closed her folder.
“I’ll sign.”
I took out the prepared copies of the employment contracts.
At that moment, the door opened.
Lyudmila Pavlovna walked in without calling first.
She wore a light-colored coat and the same large earrings she had worn at the opening of her salon.
She stopped, saw the three stylists sitting at the table, and immediately understood why they were there.
“So this is how you decided to handle things,” she said. “You waited until I had a difficult month, then took the employees back.”
Marina lowered her eyes to the folder. Elena straightened in her chair. Olga remained seated.
I stood up from behind the table.
“I didn’t take anyone. They came themselves.”
“Of course. And those little folders just appeared on the table by themselves?” Lyudmila Pavlovna stepped closer. “You spent the entire month pretending to be noble, and now you’re poaching them with contracts.”
“A contract doesn’t poach anyone,” I replied. “It simply states exactly what a person will receive and what is expected of them.”
My mother-in-law looked at Olga.
“I told you I would pay you the rest. We’ve only just started. Every business needs time to get going.”
Olga stood.
“Lyudmila Pavlovna, you promised a different amount and official employment from the first week. I didn’t come to you for an open-ended unpaid internship. I worked.”
“And you were paid.”
“I was paid only part of what was promised.”
“Because we have fewer clients than expected right now.”
“But you promised a fixed amount,” Olga said. “If it depended on the number of clients, you should have told us before we left our previous jobs.”
My mother-in-law turned toward Marina.
“And you too? I hired you without asking unnecessary questions.”
“That was exactly the problem,” Marina replied. “More questions should have been asked. By you and by us.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna turned back to me.
“Happy now? You turned them against me?”
“They’re adults. A month ago they chose your offer, and I didn’t stop them. Now three of them are choosing my conditions. They don’t belong to me, and they don’t belong to you.”
“Easy to talk beautifully when everything is going your way again.”
“A month ago, it was very much not going my way. But I still signed their resignation papers and agreed on their final working dates.”
She was about to respond, but Elena closed her folder and pushed it toward me.
“Irina Sergeyevna, please show me where I need to sign after reviewing everything. I also need to clarify my start date.”
It wasn’t demonstrative.
Elena had simply returned the conversation to the reason she had come.
Lyudmila Pavlovna looked at her, then at Olga and Marina.
“You’ll regret this. When she starts counting every penny again, remember what I said.”
“I count every penny now,” I replied. “That’s exactly why I only promise what I can actually deliver.”
My mother-in-law abruptly fastened her coat.
“Andrey will hear about the way you spoke to me.”
“Tell him word for word. I have nothing to add.”
She left.
Nobody at the table made a victory speech.
Tatyana brought pens, checked the dates on the paperwork, and reminded everyone that their unused vacation from their previous employment period had been compensated when they resigned, and that after being rehired, a new vacation schedule would need to be created.
“That’s exactly why I used to be afraid of you,” Marina said. “Even at a moment like this, you’re thinking about paperwork.”
Tatyana adjusted the glasses hanging from the chain around her neck.
“Paperwork is usually annoying right up until the day somebody needs proof of what was agreed.”
This time, all three women laughed.
A week later, their names were back on the work schedule.
Not automatically in their old positions, but in new shifts that Tatyana and I arranged together with the two stylists who had stayed with me through the hardest month.
Vika didn’t return.
She found a job at another studio closer to her home and once sent Olga a photograph of her new workstation.
I was actually glad that at least one person in this story hadn’t simply returned to the familiar road.
That evening, Andrey told me his mother was looking for someone to take over the lease on her premises.
“There’s almost nobody left to work there, but she still has to pay the rent,” he explained. “She’s angry and says everyone let her down.”
I closed the laptop containing the work schedule.
“I hope now you won’t say this is just some conflict between two women and that we should sort it out ourselves.”
Andrey rubbed his chin with his palm.
“I won’t. I spent too long pretending that staying neutral didn’t change anything.”
I didn’t need to answer.
The next day, Tatyana brought me the vacation schedule for approval.
Beside the names Olga, Marina, and Elena, there were dates again.
Ordinary dates.
Dates that could be discussed in advance, signed, and then honored.
I signed the document and handed it back to Tatyana.