A Sydney hairdresser found her claim for compensation given a short back and sides by the court after alleging she injured herself while cutting the hair of a particularly tall customer. Claiming her salon failed to provide her with a height-adjustable chair, the hairdresser said she suffered the tonsorial trauma after stretching up to reach the pate of the six-foot tall client. Forced to stand on tip-toe, she had obtained a pair of platform shoes to help her wield her scissors, she told the NSW Supreme Court

Already on the fringe of frustration with back and shoulder pains, the hairdresser said the final cut came when she felt her neck crack and she experienced pins and needles in her right arm. She alleged she was forced to leave work — no longer able to give a mullet or a mohawk — and was apparently unable to wash her own hair for more than a week. (Obiter expects, however, that her pals at the salon would have done the decent thing and helped her out with that).

It seems her complaint, however, never came within a hair’s breadth of success, according to AAP reports. While the judge accepted her claim that her chair was faulty, he saw no causal connection between her work and her medical problems. A film of the hairdresser moving freely about the salon and driving a car helped him reach his decision. And he added that her claims for social security while working full-time didn’t exactly help her credibility.

Cutting to the chase, “Whatever problems are said to continue now are imaginary rather than real,” His Honour said.