Care for a haircut?

I had a simple haircut over the weekend at a beauty salon (the cultured and the cosmopolitans call them the hairstylists. But the usual tendency is to address these people as barbers, sadly). I was charged Rs.150 for a job that took the man 15 minutes. He did not seem like a person holding a post-graduate degree in computers or management. He had enough arithmetic knowledge to calculate the balance he had to give me. But he had 8-10 people waiting in line for haircut. Now, this was just an haircut, mind you. I saw the same guy charge a gentleman Rs.650 for a haircut and dyeing just a few minutes earlier when I was waiting for my turn. During this time I reflected upon a lot of things, the foremost thought being, how does a salaried professional, especially from the IT industry, fare better than these folks? Can I say I have a better dignity of labor? I don't think so. Dignity of labor is what we perceive we have, so that we can justify our reality in support of the dreams that fuel our desires. It fuels our ego so that we can walk with our head held high in a hypocritical society. But the truth is far from that, which is not my point of discussion or contention now. But I realized that the one probable reason why we lead the lives of a salaried professional, fearing the markets, expecting the unexpected recessions, and running out-of-breath in the rat race is this perceived dignity of labor within the boundaries of this hypocritical society. Thus our perception of ourselves leads us to believe that the profession of a barber is much below in standard and dignity, without the realization that he is his own boss, probably earns more than me, and works by his own terms and conditions without the fear of ever becoming redundant because the hair keeps growing! So the next time you want to angrily ask someone if he was plucking hair (I don't want to translate this into Tamil, out of decency), think twice, because he probably can make more money than you just doing that.