PARTING SHOT: Cheating on your hairdresser never pays

The news travels quickly from dryer to dryer and, before you know it, you’re getting an angry call from your regular miracle worker wondering why you haven’t been in.

“Were you disappointed with what we did last time?” she asks, coyly. “Are you growing your hair out for the holidays?”

There are enough clues that suggest the underground pipeline has been at work and, suddenly, you’re stuck. “No, I’ve been really busy,” you sheepishly say as you look at yourself in the mirror. “I was out of town last month and I just stopped at a place for a quick trim.”

Never mind you went to the hip new designer in town and you’ve had the appointment for three months. That “trim” is so radical you look 10 years younger and you’ve already signed up for three more months of cuts.

“Oh, where’d you go?” she asks, clearly tightening the noose around your razor-cut neck. Realizing she knows enough about you to testify in court, you swallow hard and make a quick decision: Lie and say you went to a place out of town or tell the truth and suffer the consequences.

You split the difference: “I got a gift card that was about to expire and had to use it.” The shop doesn’t even issue gift cards. She knows it. You know it. The place practically advertises it. But that doesn’t stop the dance.

“Oh, who’d you see?” she inquires. Now, here’s where the situation gets even stickier. She knows they brought in a designer – from Minneapolis, no less – because she didn’t go to the seminar he was teaching. She knows he specializes in that blunt cut you happen to be rocking. And she realizes you aren’t using the products she recommended for your straw-like hair.

But, you proceed on, pretend you don’t know the name and aren’t really happy with what he did with your hair during that spur-of-the-moment cut.

“It’s fine, I guess,” you say with all the conviction of a Menendez brother. “But he doesn’t cut it like you do.”

“Did you need me to fix it up for you?” she asks, sending a cold shiver down your spine. “If he didn’t get it like you like it, I can always make it right.” A long pause ensues and then she adds the clincher: “At no charge.”

You are so cornered at this point you might as well confess to crimes in three states. “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” you say, playing along. “I’ll just let it grow out and you can deal with it next month.”

Now, here’s where you’re really screwed. You’ve committed to an appointment, but you already have one with the new hairdresser.

Do you:

1. Cut off all communication

2. Fake an illness

3. Write a letter

4. Become a monk, who doesn’t cut his hair.

The right thing, of course, is to ‘fess up and plead for mercy.

Instead, you check parking lots for her car, hoping you don’t run into her in the potato chip aisle at the grocery store. Distance doesn’t help.

Instead, the whiz from Minneapolis returns to the big city and you’re back where you started.

Best advice: Buy the shampoo your old hairdresser is pushing and get back in her good graces.

Cheating may be fun. But it never pays.