The Owner's Saturday Arrangement
You are three months into your first job at a Michigan salon. On Friday the owner introduces her cousin, who has no license and no school enrollment, and explains that on Saturdays the cousin will take walk-in acrylic clients while you 'supervise' from your station. The owner says the cousin will pay the salon a flat fee and that supervision makes it legal. She also hands you the tub disinfection log and asks you to fill in the last six weeks, since the inspector is coming Monday and the record 'should look complete.' The salon's establishment license is current and posted; the cousin has nothing on the wall.
1. Does your 'supervision' make the cousin's work legal?
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No. A license is personal. Only a licensed individual may perform nail services for compensation, and a licensed person standing nearby does not transfer authority to an unlicensed person. Student or apprentice-type practice happens through enrollment in a licensed school and its supervised clinic, not through a private arrangement in a salon. Paying the salon a flat fee also does not create a license.
If you 'supervise,' you are participating in unlicensed practice in a licensed establishment - exactly the situation that puts your own license and the salon's license at risk, quite apart from the client safety issue (the cousin has no infection-control training). Your correct answer is a clear no, stated once to the owner, in writing if possible.
2. What do you do about the request to backfill the disinfection log?
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Refuse. A disinfection log exists to prove what actually happened on the days it says; writing entries for days you did not work, or for tubs you did not process, makes the record false, and a false record is worse than a gap. If a client were later infected, that log becomes evidence, and your name is on it.
Offer the legitimate alternative: start today's entries accurately, and if the salon has kept any real records (receipts, dated photos, other staff signatures), compile those. If the salon genuinely did not log, the log stays blank for those weeks and the owner deals with the consequence. Document that you declined the request and why. The judgment the exam tests is that 'it's just paperwork' is not a defense.
3. Outline your next steps, including who you contact and what you protect.
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First, tell the owner directly and in writing that you will not supervise or work alongside an unlicensed person and will not complete records you did not perform. Second, keep your own documentation: your license, your service records, your own sanitation log entries, and a dated note of the requests and your refusals.
Third, contact the Michigan Bureau of Professional Licensing (LARA) to report unlicensed practice - that is the agency that regulates licensing and investigates complaints. Keep in mind realistic consequences: the owner may be angry and your job may be at risk, so have a plan before you escalate.
Do not resolve it by quietly doing the cousin's clients' nails under your name, and do not accept a compromise where the cousin 'only does fills.' Protecting your license is the priority; a job that requires you to break the rules is not a job you can keep safely.