The Nick Behind the Ear at 2:40

1. Stop. Set the razor down on a clean disposable towel, not on the station surface.

2. Protect hands. Put on gloves before touching the client's blood. If gloves are not at hand, the barber should not have been shaving without them within reach.

3. Control the bleeding. Apply firm pressure with a clean, disposable towel or gauze. Keep pressure on; do not dab and release. When it has stopped, cleanse the area with an antiseptic wipe, apply a fresh adhesive bandage, and ask the client to keep it covered.

4. Contain the waste. Blood-contaminated disposables go into a lined, closed waste container; the blade goes into a sharps container. Do not drop bloodied towels into the open linen bin.

5. Hand hygiene. Remove gloves, wash with soap and water, then sanitize.

6. Clean, then disinfect. Blood and hair must be removed before any disinfectant touches an implement - organic matter inactivates the solution.

7. Reset. Fresh cape, fresh neck strip, new blade, disinfected clipper, clean towel, hand hygiene, then the next client.

Why the order matters: pressure before cleanup prevents further contamination; gloves before contact protect the barber's own cut; cleaning before disinfection is the step most often skipped.

• Razor blade: blood-contaminated and single-use. Into the sharps container immediately. It cannot be reliably cleaned and must never be reused on another client or on the same client later.
• Clipper blade: remove it from the clipper. Brush off debris, scrub with soap and water, rinse, dry, then fully immerse or thoroughly wet with the EPA-registered hospital-grade tuberculocidal disinfectant for the full 10 minutes on the label - not a spray-and-wipe. Reassemble with clean hands.
• Comb: same clean-then-disinfect routine, fully submerged for the labeled contact time. It cannot simply go back into the jar if the jar's solution is contaminated.
• Jar and solution: the solution now contains blood, and blood inactivates disinfectants. Discard the solution, wash and disinfect the jar, and refill with fresh solution. A jar that has received a bloodied implement is no longer a disinfectant bath.
• Towel: blood-soiled. Into a closed, labeled linen container, laundered separately with detergent and bleach, never returned to the clean stack.
• Cape: remove immediately; it is not reused until laundered or disinfected per the manufacturer. A clean cape and a fresh neck strip go on every client.
• Neck strip: single-use; discard.

Common failure: a 20-second dip. Contact time is a label requirement, not a suggestion.

It depends on the condition of the wound, not on the bandage alone.

He may work only if the cut is completely covered by a waterproof dressing that stays dry and intact, and he wears a glove over it whenever he might contact blood or body fluids. If the wound is weeping, draining, inflamed, or the dressing cannot stay intact, he must not perform services that could expose a client - he should be reassigned to non-service work or sent home.

Exposure follow-up: if his cut contacted the client's blood (through a soaked bandage or a break in the glove), that is an exposure incident. It must be reported under the shop's bloodborne-pathogens exposure control plan, the dressing changed, hands washed, and he should seek medical evaluation about post-exposure testing. A shop of any size with employees should have this written plan, gloves, sharps containers, and a spill kit on hand before an incident - not after.

For the client: the nick itself is not something the barber diagnoses or treats beyond first aid; if the client is on a blood thinner, has a bleeding disorder, or the bleeding does not stop with pressure, stop the service and advise the client to seek medical care.