softening colour of too-dark hair

hi -
ok this is the story. my natural colour is a mid-brown,
i went into a - supposedly great - salon over the
weekend to have some gold/orange/brassiness/
whateveritis (from a former colour job of a year ago)
neutralized & a tiny amt of highlights put in for some
dimension.
i told the girl that my hair pulls orange like crazy, so
to please make sure that the highlighted hair is
bleached to a pale yellow before putting on the
colour, otherwise the orange will bulldoze its way
through in a matter of a week or 2.
i told her i basically just wanted my nice mid-brown
hair back. no xtra orange, red, auburn...just brown.
well she hated me having a voice apparently, so i sat
there like a 3-yr old letting her do her thing.
well, the end result were orange stripey highlights
and a weird, grey-looking brown overall........
i paid the gazillion $$ and left.
called back this a.m., told them i wasn't happy &
needed it redone, ie: a colour put on top to get rid of
the carrot-top mess. basically i said, go as dark as
you need to get rid of the brass/gold skunk stripes.
ok, soooo...now i have 'brown' hair, which is basically
nearly black. i know the 1st few days can be a
shocking experience, but i'm back in my ball cap, so
it's not a good sign.
so my question is, i'd like to wash the excess gothy
goop out a bit w/ a clarifying shampoo - i know it
works to a degree - but i'm terrified that the orange
crap that was supposedly neutralized will just come
alive and take over my head again.
would the gold come thru that quickly if i applied a
few shampoos in an attempt to 'soften' my look?
i'm 37 yrs old....i can't DO this ultrafreakyjetblack
thing at my age; it just washes me out.
i don't want to get get more highlights, or bleach
anything out - i know it'll look better soon enough... i
just want to soften my look, cos at this point, i aint
gonna NOWHERES without a hat on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(i know this post could've been a whooooooole lot
shorter, but i figured it might be helpful to give some
background; thanks!!!!!)

It depends on which you feel is worse, too dark or too orange.  You shouldn't have to live with either if you don't like them.  Have you tried darkening your makeup (eyebrows/eyelashes especially) to go with it?

If it was me I'd use the clarifying shampoo, or the baking soda mixed half and half with shampoo (moisturize the heck out of it afterwards, both are super drying), and see what happened (but then I never worried too much when mine went a funky color - I wore it around anyway)  Then if you do get some orange coming through, you can get a pigment depositing shampoo in ash brown to counter it.

The problem here is that orange itself isn't that hard to get rid of, you just use a green based light brown dye...but since you said some of your hair was gray and yellow in various stages before, this hair is trickier to work with because its more likely to go green from that.  You will have to be careful if you venture into the land of dye by yourself since you have opposing colors on your hair (both gray and orange).  So in that sense, I agree with kalika...its probably better to just go to a different salon.