Historically, in the United States, the barbershop was a meeting place. It was a place you went to talk and relax. It's weird in the modern society of fast cuts and what not.
But barbers tend to go into that business because they like talking to people. And you're right, every barber I've ever had has pried into my life. But I've also been more willing to share life experiences with barbers, and listen to their experiences than any other profession. Not sure why.
I think for many men this may be the only professional they engage whose job involves touching the body and doesn't presumptively involve pain. (Not everything a doctor does will hurt, but one wisely assumes anything a doctor does might. This does make a difference, I think.)
"Intimacy" is a word and concept much misunderstood in this culture as relating only to sex, but at root it has to do with the passage of social and personal boundaries; its root intima refers to the inside of something, and so "intimacy" more usefully describes a spectrum of closeness or a point thereupon.
In that frame, the work of a barber is very slightly more intimate than that of many professionals. I don't know whether it's for having helped create that context - nobody makes you sit down in the chair - in which folks feel a little easier about speaking of things they never ordinarily would. But if I wanted to explain the "barbershop effect" I think it's something I would want to investigate.
After a tip from hispanophone colleagues in California, I started going to their hairdresser: it was Monday only, $5 or $10 instead of $30, and that was because the girls only took 5 or 10 minutes instead of 45. That was when I learned that the traditional barbershop package consisted of, say $10 worth of haircutting and $20 worth of rag chewing.
> barbers tend to go into that business because they like talking to people.
There's someone on staff at my local grocery who once told me she likes working the register because of the human contact, so whenever she's there and there isn't already a line I head for the register instead of the self-checks.
I hadn't understood the social power of smoke breaks until my welding instructor admitted he had been convinced for the first week or two of class that I was a tweaker because, given a bunch of rods to weld, I'd disappear into a booth and not come out again until I'd welded them all[0], no matter how many smoke breaks the other students had taken in the meantime.
It's a pity that when we realised the cancer sticks[1] aren't so healthy, we just got rid of them instead of trying to replace them with an activity that also allows colleagues to down tools and socialise for a well-determined short time.
(in the Old Country, anyway: over here, many businesses have a coffee break/round of snacks at ~9 and ~16)
[0] apparently one of the prereqs of becoming a welding instructor is knowing all the places in a booth lazier students will attempt to hide their unwelded rods
