Client Eight is a shy 16-year-old girl with a small bit of acne around her hairline. (Hair products, people. Hair products.) I ask if she has any concerns about her skin and she immediately starts talking about her break-outs: “I hate them! They never go away! They look so bad!”

Under the magnifying lamp, they do look huge. (Because it’s a mag lamp. But sometimes I forget that. Like when I discover that what a client thinks are blackheads are actually hairs — this happens more often than you’d expect. Not to give you something to be paranoid about. Except I think I just did.)

Plus we’ve been getting the upselling talk. Yes again. If we don’t write down that we tried to upsell a service on the client’s form, then Miss Susan highlights that part of the form and passes it back to whichever teacher is listed at the top as our coach.

I’m not too clear on what “getting highlighted” really means, but Miss Stacey makes it abundantly clear that she does not want it to happen to her. So I suggest our fancy acne fighting facial. Eight asks the price (it’s $50) and then there is an awkward pause while she contemplates paying double what she was expecting.

“It’s totally up to you,” I say, beating a hasty retreat.”The European is also a great facial!” It’s really not. But I’m not about to take a kid’s babysitting money to dodge a yellow marker bullet.

Miss Stacey hears me mention the acne facial and swoops through the curtain to study Eight’s skin. “She definitely doesn’t need that facial,” she says. Miss Stacey is never one to mince words. “It will make her break out even more. Don’t do it.”

Humbled, I perform the regular European facial and make sure to give Nine lots of compliments about her pretty eyes and cute earrings. Because now I’m terrified that I’ve made her more insecure about her (TINY when not under a magnifying lamp! And no, you can’t see those blackhead hairs either in real life!) breakouts than she already was. Plus I’m the schmuck who tried to make money off a minor. With a treatment that would make her “problem” worse.

Gross.

When I fill out my form, I write that I tried to upsell Eight to the acne fighting facial and she refused. And to be honest, I’m giving Miss Stacey big points for preventing me from upselling a useless (even harmful) service. (I’m subtracting a point for diplomacy, but that’s really between me and my ego.)

But it’s a tricky dance we’re doing.

Because I have to try to upsell something so we don’t get in trouble later. Except some clients don’t need anything more advanced (read: expensive) to solve their problem (read: insecurity). And suggesting something completely unrelated (“by the way, did you know we cut hair here?” or “hey, how about a mud wrap?”) is just transparently pushy.

“You have to write something,” says Miss Stacey, when I ask her about it later. “Otherwise we get highlighted.”

I think that might be code for a new way to use my favorite Beauty U rule: Make Stuff Up.

Tip: $7 (on the $25 European Facial. So I guess she doesn’t hate me.)

Tip Jar Total: $55

[Photo: “Jill Glindermann, winner of the Sun Girl Quest at Suttons Beach, 1953,” via Flickr because she looks like she’s liking what she sees in that mirror and because I am obsessed with old-time-y “bathing beauty” photos.]