- Everything just started flying and like,
you know, you gotta dodge.
(soft music)
- I'm Ambe, I am a manicurist in Whittier, California.
I have been doing nails for about five years,
and more recently in the last year I have
been running my business, Ambe Nails and Nugs.
So for a few years I worked at a salon.
I had a reoccurring client who had come in,
honestly, probably every other month or so, not very often.
She would only come to me when I had a really good deal.
She was the type of person who didn't like western medicine,
didn't like to go to the doctor,
very much believed in just the power of positive thinking.
She also had a terrible, terrible, terrible,
disgusting foot fungus on all 10 of her toes.
When I started doing her pedicures,
I told her about it, I told her she could go
to the doctor and take pills and, you know, get rid of it.
She basically told me thanks but no thanks,
I've been healing this with the power of essential oils
and I'm gonna manifest this into healing.
I didn't know how to say no to this woman
and in hindsight, these were the first few years I was
doing nails and I should have just told her, like,
I can't do your nails, but I didn't.
I continued to see her for years,
I think about three years, and her toes just kept
getting worse and worse and worse.
When it comes to like toe fungus,
what we learned in school is it starts
out as yellow and it ends as black.
So it kinda goes from like yellow
to green to brown to black.
I saw this woman's toes go through that entire process.
I was really trying to hint at her,
like please, stop making me do your toes.
I would tell her okay, you're gonna have
to bring your own tools, because I can't sanitize
your tools with my other clients' tools,
and nothing phased her, and she just kept coming
to me as her toenails just disintegrated.
She also would only tip me no more than one or $2.
- Hi, I'm Xuan Bui, also known as Nail Bandit.
I've been doing nails ever since '06.
I work in salon, I freelance a lot.
I do a lot of behind the scenes,
fashion magazine covers, and I worked
at this salon in Hawaii, just graduated from nail school,
and I was just, you know, getting into the pedicure,
trimming your toenails, file, shaping,
just in the prepping stage in the beginning of the service.
Client is like relaxing, I started to clip the toenails,
and you know, usually we clip your nails
or clip any artificial nail, everything just started flying.
You know, you gotta dodge.
Nail tips, psh, psh, psh.
I was like clipping, trying to hopefully not hit my face.
After that the client, she started jumping,
and I'm like, are you okay?
Do you want me to grab you something?
And she said no, I just don't know what is this.
It's like really irritating.
It was getting tearing.
I looked up, I'm like here, let me look at your eyes.
When she opened her eyes, I was like oh my gosh.
You have a toenail in there, and she said oh my god.
Can you take it out?
So I took it out for her.
Yeah, it was pretty gnarly.
- When I was in school, the school
that I went to was right down the street
from a retirement home.
All of our practice was on 80 and 90 year old men and women.
A gentleman came in for a pedicure,
and I was signed up to do his pedicure,
and he had come in in a white tennis suit,
and he came and he sat down, he took his shoes off,
and he put his feet in, and I took one foot out
and I started, and I put it back.
And then I lifted his other foot out.
I'm eye-level with his knees basically,
so as I lift his other foot out of the water,
I notice something drop.
One of his testicles has um,
come out of his tennis shorts.
I didn't know what to do.
I completely ignored it and I just kept doing his pedicure.
And to this day, I don't know
if he was just a sweet old man
who just had no idea that his balls were out,
or if he was a creep and I hope
it's not that one, but it might be.
- I had this gig that I was called in to do,
an in-house service for a client flying in from Miami.
She was looking for a nail artist at night
because they had some kind of music awards or something,
and she needs to be ready.
I was called and came up to her room
and you know, sat down, and she had really long claw nails.
You thought Cardi B nails was long?
Her was longer.
While I was working, I realized, I noticed
that one nail was lifting, it was like flapping,
and I was like ew, what is that?
It was gonna like fall off, it's like talking to me,
and I look under it, I can see like a nail bed
that's like all yellow and gunky.
You know, it had a lot of discolor, I'm like oh no.
So she had like a nail infection
under than one particular nail, it was lifting.
I can't give that diagnoses because I'm not a doctor degree,
I'm just a nail artist, you know?
I asked her like, so what happened to this nail?
She like, oh, it's been like that.
I've been going to the same lady in Miami
for a while and she told me it's okay.
And I'm like damn, that's a bad nail shop.
I'm so scared to file it, because I don't know
it might just fall off and that'll be a big problem.
It was very uncomfortable and very awkward,
because I wish she told me that she had an issue
with her nail so I can come prepare myself.
I don't want myself to become contaminated
and then next thing you know
all my clients nails start falling off.
Usually when clients have some kind of fungus
or something funky going on that is not normal,
I usually just turn them away.
You're not supposed to work on them,
but I'm like, well I'm here.
And I made it work, and you know, I did the best that I can,
but to this day, I wonder if the nail is okay.
I hope that nail has been fixed
or been diagnosed and treated.
(soft music)