Managing Your Time: When Receptionist Books Your Appointments Too Close Together

It happens, but when your receptionist books your appointments too close together it is bound to cause you a bit of stress. You have a 1:30 hour long facial and then a back-to-back 2:30 facial, but the receptionist mistakenly forgets to add enough time in-between for your earlier appointment to have to time to get dressed, and to give you time to clean up and prepare for the next client.What do you do? It depends on your spa, but there are a couple things you can do. You can have the receptionist call the second appointment and ask them to arrive 15 mins. later due to a scheduling conflict, or you could hope that the first appointment arrives earlier and you can take them in earlier giving yourself additional time. Depending on what your actual menu says about the time frame for each facial you could cut down on the service time allowing yourself extra time between appointments. My particular spa says a facial is 60 minutes, but it also says that 60 minutes includes changing time allowing for a little wiggle room.  Worse case scenario is telling the client that you are running behind--especially since you weren't the one who inadvertently double booked without a clean up time--I think this is the last option--you don't want to alienate clients. None of the above are ideal options; it would be far better if receptionists could remember to allow clean up time in between appointments, but they are human and make mistakes. It is up to you to figure out a solution and roll with the punches. Remember, not to be nasty to the receptionist, instead kindly remind them of why you need that time--most receptionists have no idea what goes into cleaning up and room preparation for each client. 

In the future, always remind your receptionist how much time you need for clean up time and room preparation. I like 15 mins. in between clients. Before my first client, I always arrive a half hour to an hour early just to get in the mode.