My 2pm has been showing up at 1:42. Not every week, but most weeks. And she’s not the only one. Over the last couple of months I’ve noticed that the people walking through my door are arriving earlier than they used to. Not five minutes early. Fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty.
I don’t have a clean explanation for it yet. I’m sharing it because I want to know if other owners are seeing the same thing.
Clients arriving early, five out of twenty-one
When I opened six years ago, most of my clients rolled in right at their appointment time, give or take two or three minutes. A few regulars had a habit of cutting it close. One always apologized for being late even though she wasn’t. That was the rhythm.
Now my waiting bench is almost never empty. Someone is always sitting there, scrolling on their phone, a coffee in hand, sometimes two appointments ahead of when I expected them. I checked my booking calendar for last week and five of my twenty-one clients arrived more than ten minutes early. That’s almost a quarter of my book.
A Salon Geek thread I stumbled across while I was trying to figure out if I was imagining it had stylists in the US and UK describing the same pattern. Clients showing up fifteen, twenty, even thirty minutes early, sometimes half an hour.
What I think it might be about
A few things are swirling in my head and I’m not sure which one is real.
One theory: remote work changed the shape of people’s days. A Robert Half remote work report put the share of hybrid companies at around 75% in 2025. If a client is working from home on a Tuesday, the buffer she used to build in for traffic now just becomes extra minutes on my bench.
Another theory: anxiety. A piece from Apptoto explains how appointment anxiety drives early arrival, especially for clients who are self-conscious about their hair. Arriving early is a way of managing the unknown. The early ones in my chair tend to be the clients who were nervous at their first visit and never quite lost it.
A third theory, and the one I’m least sure about: people are out of practice being on time for small social obligations. Three years of Zoom where you joined the second it started, and maybe the mental math of “when do I need to leave” just got rewired.
I’m not saying any of these are the answer. I’m saying I keep rotating through them while I’m shampooing, trying to figure out which one fits the client in front of me.
What early arrivals cost me, and what I’m not doing yet
Early arrivals cost me something I didn’t used to spend. A client sitting on my bench at 1:42 for a 2pm is watching me finish with my 1pm, and that creates a quiet pressure to rush. Even when I don’t rush, knowing she’s there changes my focus. I glance up. Small leak of attention that adds up over a day.
I used to think of my buffer time between appointments as protection against running behind. I’m starting to wonder if it also needs to be protection against running ahead.
I haven’t changed my confirmation texts. I haven’t put up a sign that says “please arrive no more than five minutes early.” Telling a nervous client she’s too early feels like the wrong move for a business built on making people feel welcome. But pretending the shift isn’t happening feels wrong too.
For now I’m tracking it. Writing down arrival times in my notebook next to my Monday morning numbers check, seeing if the pattern holds. I’ll know more in a month.
If you’re seeing the same drift at your front desk, I’d love to hear what you think it is. Because I’m still sitting with it.
