Michaela makes a fair point about hair type mattering here. What worked for me on tighter fades was running the clippers over the bulk like normal but leaving the nape line a little longer, then going in with scissors to shape before I hit it with the trimmer. Gave me way more control on guys with cowlicks or uneven growth back there, and I stopped having to go back over spots twice. Still do it the fast clipper way on straight hair though, so yeah, it depends on who's in the chair.

That Mesa guy basically handed you a whole new way to look at your own books. I had a similar thing at a small show in Sacramento where a dude pulled out a Hulk 181 with a chunk missing from the corner and said "everybody wants the 9.8, nobody wants the story," and now I actually read my beat up stuff instead of just bagging it. The hunt for perfect slabs kinda killed the hobby for me until that moment.