Lola is Fucked Off

Well, we’d taken KOTM down for a while because we couldn’t keep up with the sheer number of Knuckleheads and the fact that we were trying to present a more positive vibe and we felt like maybe some folks didn’t quite understand the humorous nature of these posts (Don’t ya just love run-on sentences). After what Lola here pulled, we felt the need to address the level of sheer nuttiness that we encounter and why we would rather people who agree with her stance just go ahead and pass Lighthouse Tattoo right on by.

Ahem, on our consent/release forms we include a section that asks people to agree not to leave negative reviews on social media about us. We do that because we want people to address any issues they may have with us instead of passive-aggressively attacking us on the INTERNET. In short, if you don’t feel like you could legitimately leave us a 5-star review, we’d like to know why. IF, after addressing the issue, you don’t find satisfaction, we’d rather you simply didn’t come back. Trying to hurt our business with a negative review is sorta shitty and we don’t take kindly to it. As a matter of fact, we tell anyone who leaves us less than a 5 star review that we’d rather they just go someplace else. Why? Because we do our best, everyday, to make sure people leave here happy. If there’s a hiccup in service we take care of it immediately. If that doesn’t work for you, you’re probably completely fucked off, like little Miss Lola here.

What’s Lola’s fucking problem? Well, that we even asked.

She came in with her guy to get a piercing and once she saw that part of the release form she decided to leave without getting the piercing and leave us a 1-star review for the trouble. Lola, people like you are the ENTIRE fucking reason we have that on our paperwork. WOW. Mind you, she didn’t even ask why, she just jumped to her own conclusions, called the section ‘peculiar’ and said we should just offer a positive customer experience instead of having that in the paperwork. Well, Lola, we DO offer a very positive customer experience, it’s just that not everyone who enters Lighthouse Tattoo is a viable customer, as you and you’re shit attitude toward service providers would indicate. Holy shit this is like a Mobius Strip of fucked up: We ask you not to do something shitty to us that people tend to do from time to time because their mental health isn’t where it should be and that pisses said person off, so they do the EXACT thing that we ask them not to do BECAUSE we asked them not to!

Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy

Or maybe it’s doing it’s job of preventing fuckfaces like Miss Lola here from actually getting a service from us, THEN deciding to start shit on the INTERNET. Mission Accomplished, bullet successfully dodged. WHEW!

Now hear this: If you think that it’s weird to ask people to not be publicly shitty to a business on the internet without at least trying to address an issue first is wrong or a problem for you in any way, Lighthouse Tattoo is not for you. As a matter of fact, we’re absolutely fucking sick of people like that and are (successfully) trying to weed those motherfuckers out DAILY.

She didn’t even ask what that part of the paperwork was for, or why we felt the need to include it. Well, now you fucking know Lola.

An Unfortunate Trend...

Okay, how to make this short?

Sometimes businesses offer promotional events. Typically these events are used to drive additional sales. Lighthouse Tattoo does things a bit differently by offering promotional events that COST us money. I know, we’re dumb. We do enjoy giving back to our community and it does tend to allow us to reach a broader client base than we normally would with our super lazy social media presence, though, so maybe it’s not all at a loss.

Ahem, buteverysinglegoddamntimewedowealwayshavetodealwithafewdummies. I mean, seriously! You can’t make this stuff up. Some people act like you don’t have anything better to do than answer stupid questions. So we tried a little experiment this last time, and it worked out swimmingly!

Here goes: After posting abour a $10 piercing day the promotion really takes off on Facebook. Dozens of shares and hundreds of comments in less than a day and we know that a deal of that magnitude is going to garner a ton of interest. As with anything, though, you have to take the good with the bad and every SINGLE time we do anything like this it brings a bunch of dummies out of the woodwork. Something had to be done. Or rather, a very selective Nothing. So our owner Will told us not to answer any questions that could be answered by simply reading the material provided in the promotion or searching for us on Google. Anyone who direct messaged us to get this kind of information would be challenged to find the information for themselves. Anyone who gets angry or refuses to do so won’t come and thus we can weed out the weak before having to suffer their awful, dumb personalities. You see, $10 piercing day is going to be extremely busy and we don’t need to waste everyone’s time by having to deal with people who can’t understand simple instructions or perform simple tasks, it simply reeks of entitlement mentality and stupidity.

Enter Misty.

Now, we would have refrained from putting something so trivial on Knucklehead of the Month, but she decided to start calling us names immediately and left us ye olde 1-star review like it matters so we knew we had to share this comedy gold with the rest of the world. You’re welcome, world!

To point out a few things: 1. We didn’t call Misty a dummy, we just mentioned if she wasn’t smart enough to figure out where we are, we’d rather not have to deal with her on what was going to be such a busy day. She immediately takes offense at something said in jest, that if one of your friends said it to you, you’d slap yourself on the forehead in a ‘Yep, that was dumb’ Eureka moment. Instead, miss-doesn’t-get-it resorts to personal attacks and threatens to take her business elsewhere, which is exactly what we’d recommended should she fail our little IQ test. Sorry Misty, we can’t all be winners. Ever heard that old saying about the empty kettle boiling first? That’s what we’ve got with ol’ Misty here.

2. She suggests that she is a potential customer (re: not a customer), which is only the case because we’re offering $10 piercings, which is a preposterously great deal. She doesn’t want to put the least amount of effort into getting this cheap piercing however, and in our considerable experience, people like that coming to an event like this is bad news. Once they get here, those people always take up more time and resources than we can reasonably allot them and they immediately take to the interweb for the vaunted 1-star salvo, like we’re supposed to give a shit or something. If only people like that understood what they’re really doing is confirming that their business wasn’t worth having anyway. Honestly, If I had to worry about someone trying to tear my business down for the slightest perceived infraction, I don’t know if I could sleep at night. I sleep like a fucking baby though, so we’re good.

and 3. She takes the time to threaten us by spreading the word about how we talked to her…Well, so will WE Misty, cause we fucking meant it. Your behavior has confirmed every notion we had that you might be no fun to have around. Thanks for participating in our little experiment.

Now let me tell you how things could have gone: While yes, we were being a bit cheeky with you, we didn’t call you stupid, we only suggested anyone who couldn’t find us via internet info might be too dumb to suffer. You could have agreed with us, had a head-slap moment and found the info you needed, came in on $10 piercing day and gotten pierced and maybe met some pretty cool people in the process (not just us, lots of folks show up to these events and it’s always fun to mingle a little). You could have done this easily, as contrary to your accusation- 4. The information you needed is posted on the very facebook page you were messaging for the info, you big Knucklehead! It always has been.

Lighthouse Tattoo is not for everyone. We’ve never claimed to be.

To those we ARE here for: We will continue to do all we can to weed out the Knuckleheads so you don’t have to deal with them while you’re here, but it’s a daunting task.

Misty, ya Knucklehead, it didn’t have to go this way. If you could go so far as to see this for yourself, your life would be better for it. We wish you all the luck in the world in your future endeavors, but we’d recommend using your noodle for something besides wasting other people’s time and getting mad when they call you out for it.

For anyone who thinks this is rude, unprofessional, or anything other than predictably hilarious and well played, then Lighthouse Tattoo probably isn’t for you, either. Seriously.


Aryan Gleason: Not Everyone Who Wants a Service is a Customer

Aryan Gleason submitted a tattoo request form via this website. We responded, even though she stated her budget for a tattoo was less than our shop minimum. We had to email her though, because she typed in her phone number wrong, but we got that cleared up and she told us she would be coming in AFTER the time she stated she wanted to get the tattoo in order to speak with someone about it. All of what you just read is pretty typical stuff, people’s timelines and budgets sometimes get amended and people frequently have typos on their request forms or in their emails. No sweat, we deal with this all the time.

However. On this fateful day we were three people short due to illness, so it was just the owner and an apprentice, both of whom had appointments scheduled for noon. They had fielded several walk-in tattoo requests, getting several tattoos booked for later that day, and had answered more than a dozen phone calls in the half hour since the shop had opened, all while preparing to start their scheduled appointments. This involves filling out paperwork, copying IDs, taking deposits when scheduling appointments for later that very day, printing artwork and making stencils, and setting up sterile workspaces. This, all in less than an hour, while understaffed due to illness. When Aryan came in, she was informed that the Fleur de lis she wanted to incorporate into her infinity symbol tattoo would need to be a bit larger for longevity’s sake and that might make the overall tattoo a bit larger. While going back and forth with the artist she was speaking to, the conversation ballooned to more than five minutes as Aryan was trying to figure out if she wanted to get the tattoo at an appropriate size or not.. Normally five minutes or so is not a lot of time to discuss a tattoo but we were already running behind and since no one was capable of doing that tattoo at that moment, Aryan would need to schedule an appointment to get the tattoo. At this point, the owner got the attention of the artist helping Aryan and gave her the universal sign for ‘move it along’ or ‘hurry up’ (you know, the pointer finger making a forward circular motion.) Shortly after, Aryan left without setting an appointment, she either needed more time to think about it; decided not to get the tattoo after all; wanted to try some other place; or couldn’t afford our $80 minimum charge for a tattoo, either of which would be perfectly fine. The two artists moved forward with their appointments, appreciative of their scheduled clients’ patience considering the staffing issues we were having.

Then? Then it goes a bit off the rails.

A few hours later we get an email notification from Google that we have just received another review. It was from Aryan, who left us a 1-star review, stating that she was treated ‘extremely’ rudely by the owner (she wasn’t, he never even spoke to her) and that she didn’t recommend coming to Lighthouse Tattoo. Here’s the review she left:

She states that the owner was rushing the conversation without mentioning the fact that the conversation was taking unnecessarily long considering the circumstances. She also mentions that she and her friend were ‘practically’ the only people in the shop. News Flash: the other two people in the shop were the two artists in the shop’s PAYING, SCHEDULED appointments! It doesn’t have to look very busy to be doing business at capacity if you have no idea what you’re talking about Aryan! So now, in HER mind, there was ‘no need for the rush’. Fine, expect everyone who is already at the shop for their appointment to wait on you to make up your mind about whether or not to get your tattoo because they’ve been waiting patiently for more than a half hour, but you just got here. You’re obviously the only person in the world, or at least the only on that matters…Fuck.

While this may appear rude to some of you, please understand that we take our client’s time seriously and we work on a schedule in order to serve the most people possible. As evidence, our owner, in addition to his scheduled appointment for the day, did two additional walk-ins, the other artist did even more than that, ultimately requiring them both to stay late, resulting in a 10-and-a-half-hour workday. Sometimes when we are busy, we have to work at a higher level of efficiency to be able to serve our clientele. We affectionately refer to this as ‘catching another gear’ or ‘downshifting’, to illustrate the need for greater efficiency. We also don’t believe it’s rude to ask someone if they would like to schedule an appointment when it seems like we may be at an impasse and time is at a premium. We sometimes refer to this as ‘shit or get off the pot’ or ‘pull the trigger.’ Ah colloquialisms

So here’s why you’re on Knucklehead of the Month Aryan: You are behaving like an entitled child. To make assumptions about someone else’s motives without even trying to understand what’s really happening and to over-inflate some sort of imagined transgression as ‘extremely rude’ when it was in fact, simply a necessary instruction from a supervisor to a subordinate, then to passive-aggressively do as much damage to their business as you possibly can by leaving a 1-star, misleading review (which is actually, NO DAMAGE, just pure comedy) is the actions of someone who has not matured emotionally. Considering your youth, it comes as no surprise, but let this be a lesson to you, your behavior is inappropriate.

Now, normally we would use a lot of swear words, but this transgression was a mild one and we want to recognize this as a teachable moment. If you find yourself getting offended, maybe try to get some clarity on the situation before jumping to conclusions or lashing out. If you don’t have the stones to say something in person, saying it online only makes you look like a coward or an attention-seeking child, or both. Treating people in service industries as if they are supposed to ignore all of their other clients for your benefit is entitlement mentality run amok and won’t be received well at Lighthouse Tattoo. If you agree with young Aryan, please don’t darken our doorstep. If you understand how her behavior is wrong and appreciate it when people do their best to serve their clients in difficult times by prioritizing effectively and efficiently without cutting corners, then Lighthouse Tattoo might be the place for you!

Another One

It’s been a little while since we’ve regaled you with a tale of ‘What the fuck?’ from the annals of the Knucklehead of the Month, but SOME people just don’t know how to act. We were really going to stop posting these, as it seems like we have plenty, but this one needs to be addressed, so here goes:

It’s Monday, about half past noon. We were short by one person who was out sick, but there was still a couple of tattooers and and apprentice/piercer on staff. Three women walk in wanting to get several small tattoos. Two of the woman are the daughters of the third, in visiting their mother from California. Mom had gotten a couple of tattoos here and she was so happy with the service she brought her two favorite people with her to enjoy it as well. While apparently no one told them getting tattooed as a walk in on a Monday might be tough, since many tattoo shops are closed on Monday, Lighthouse Tattoo was open and ready to serve!

First the ladies all wanted hand tattoos, which we explained wouldn’t be a good idea due to the constraints society can place on some people with un-hideable tattoos. They promptly explained that they were the exception since they’re from California and people there don’t care. They younger ladies explained that they had recently bought their parent’s restaurant and it was pretty make-or-break for them for the next ten years due to the debt from the purchase, so if they were looking for work, it would be dire circumstances indeed.

For the next two hours they had our young apprentice drawing tiny tattoos they wanted, to include perfectly matching a font from an existing tattoo that the mother had. (for future reference, if you want a tattoo shop to match a font, please at least TRY to find out what the name of the font is) This, as you can imagine, took some time (did we mention two hours?)

It was at this point things started to fall apart. The ladies began talking of plans they had for later in the day and our apprentice offered to schedule them an appointment, so they could get all of their tattoos at the same time, without having to wait through the entire drawing process. To whit: going to a tattoo shop as a walk-in and expecting to get work in a hurry is not a good look, never get tattooed in a hurry, it’s just plain stupid. The women declined being scheduled and moved forward with the idea for their hand tattoos, which they had by now moved up onto their wrists, discretion being the better part of valor and whatnot. Fifteen minutes later the first of the the three matching tattoos was started and twenty minutes after that, the second one was finished.

Now, a word to the wise: Lighthouse Tattoo does not take appointments for piercings. If you want to schedule an appointment, you could, but it’s not our typical practice, you usually just walk in and we take care of you right then. A small wait might be involved if the piercer is doing a tattoo or someone got here right before you, but usually it’s not more than 15 minutes. On this day, our piercer also happened to be the tattoo apprentice doing these ladies’ tiny tattoos.

After finishing the second tattoo, but before starting the third, a client walked in and asked for help changing out a septum ring. Such a thing can be tricky, to do yourself, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the process. It takes very little time to do so, less than 3 minutes, I’d say. The apprentice elected to go ahead an take care of the jewelry change rather than make them wait close to a half hour for a service that would take less than five minutes.

This was too much!!!

The mother, now incensed that someone would be seen before her daughter, approaches our owner, Will and informs him that her daughter’s tattoo should have been done first, that they had been here for three hours and that was ridiculous, and they would be leaving without getting the last tattoo.

Will, if you don’t know, sometimes has the patience of a saint. However, sometimes, he don’t. True to form, he didn’t lose his cool. He informed the apprentice NOT TO CHARGE the trio. They seemed to appreciate the gesture and said that they would be back on Wednesday to get the other tattoos they wanted. Will politely informed them that would not be possible, as Lighthouse Tattoo would no longer be doing business with them, we didn’t want their money, we didn’t want anything from them, just that they not come back. Jaws hit the floor. He didn’t call them bitches or cunts or anything either.

The irony of restaurant owners not understanding the nature of prioritizing services with a limited staff was not lost on us. The idea that someone not familiar with how a certain type of business is typically run would tall someone with twenty years of experience in a industry and almost a decade of running his own business how to conduct business in said industry defies not only logic, it absolutely wreaks of hubris and that darned entitlement mentality that we’ve all come to know and hate, which seems to have been made worse during the pandemic. Seems ;like people are just WAITING to blow up about something nowadays.

A note from Will: “Don’t tell me how to run my fucking business. If you have a complaint, let us know and we will address it. If you don’t like it, don’t come back, problem solved.”

Sometimes the man is the very PICTURE of ‘concise’.

To add insult to injury, Will had just gotten the women some complimentary waters, which we usually charge a dollar for. They all took little sips of water and left them sitting in the floor when they left…

Now, if you don’t understand why these women were told they couldn’t come back, please don’t come to Lighthouse Tattoo. If you can’t follow the context clues about why their behavior was rude and ultimately unacceptable, or you think that barring them from the shop too extreme, we would kindly encourage you to read Will’s quote.

Lighthouse Tattoo is not for everyone. If you are disrespectful; dishonest; or have a bad attitude, this means you. Your money doesn’t mean anything if you think it means you can treat us like you own us. People in service industries are here to serve, we usually enjoy it. If you haven’t been served to your satisfaction, make sure you act with an appropriate level of displeasure, not pure outrage. Had the woman simply voiced her displeasure we would have explained why thing happened the way they did and she could have gotten her remaining tattoos on Wednesday and kept a good working relationship with us for the future. Instead, she chose to lose her mind and try to fuck with the life of a twenty-year-old kid who’s just doing his best to take care of as many people he can in a timely fashion. He did nothing wrong.

That being said, sometimes folks have a legitimate complaint. Please know that Lighthouse Tattoo takes any and all reasonable complaints very seriously and we will do everything in our considerable power to make sure that you, the customer, are satisfied with your service once we’re done.

A Knucklehead Success Story(?)

Short story: Samantha came in during our Free Tattoo Day and got tattooed by Nathan. What she thought was a simple piece, wasn’t. It was an arrow consisting solely of stick-straight lines and concentric circles. Nathan should have told her it was out of his depth, but a lack of experience and the bustle of such a huge event got the better of him. Three hours later he was finished and Samantha wasn’t happy.

A month later, without so much as a phone call to let us know what was going on, she did the typical thing and flamed us on Facebook. In her anger, she made several false claims and attacked the party atmosphere of Free Tattoo Day and the raucous behavior of some of the partygoers. We’re used to this sort of name calling in this business. With the advent of social media, no one even seems to try to get their facts straight anymore, now it’s all about the narrative, baby, the more salacious, the better.

We responded with our usual: You talk shit, we talk shit. We pointed out that she signed papers stating she knew she was being tattooed by an apprentice (something she’d claimed we hadn’t told her) and the fact that we can’t control the behavior of others, and that it WAS a party. She responded with more ugliness and unwarranted attacks, failing to see any irony in her passive aggressive behavior. We checked out her facebook and realized some of the problem, Samantha is only nineteen years old. We asked if she’d be interested in hearing how OUR day went that day to help her understand how hectic things were for us and why she didn’t receive our normal sterling customer service and once again quite typically, she noted she didn’t care.

Still, her youth and the fact that the tattoo was on her forearm were contributing factors to why Will reached out to Samantha to try to fix the situation. What transpired will go down in history as myth, but it happened. Will offered to pay to get Samantha’s tattoo fixed at the shop of her choosing. Then he did one better, he offered to cover-up the tattoo himself. he also offered to put Samantha and a guest up in a local hotel for the night either the day before or the evening of her tattoo, as it was going to take a while and she lives two hours away. Driving down, getting tattooed all day, and driving back would have sucked. He also gave her $50 to pay for her gas to get to Lighthouse Tattoo and back home again. She accepted.

Long story short, Will did a blast-over black and grey Medusa cover-up that would have cost Samantha a thousand dollars if she’d have paid for it. The hotel room cost $180 bucks after tax. So a free tattoo cost Will $230 in cash and his day off to cover-up the girl’s tattoo for free.

Why’d he do it? So many people have asked that question and speculated on it’s answer ‘That’s some GREAT customer service!’; ‘…trying to get her to take down her bad review…’; the list goes on and on. When we asked him, Will thought for just a second and answered succinctly “It was the right thing to do.” Sometimes the man is so simple it’s scary. He followed with:

“I don’t care about reviews or what people think of me. That girl probably won’t be back, her review wasn’t going to hurt our business, and she’s admittedly broke anyway, so why would I care. But that’s not the point, it’s not about the girl, it’s about the tattoo. I care about tattoos and I will stand by any work that comes out of this shop by any artist. Period. If you have an issue, please take it up with us in a respectful fashion and we will make it right. If you go on the internet and talk trash about us to try to hurt this entire business, you can go fuck yourself.”

Samantha got lucky because Will took her youth and the extremity of the situation into account, please do not make the mistake of thinking that we are beginning the practice of bending over backwards for people who leave bad reviews, we are not. But if you have an issue that needs addressing, we will take care of you, that’s a fact.

The reason we talk trash to people who attack us online is a simple one: Once you try to run us down publicly, we’re done with you. To whit: If you have a problem with the service or product you received from a business, you should take it up with that business. If you attack that business online without so much as a phone call to them to try to get satisfaction, you should be shot. Seriously, you’re right up there with the very worst kind of person. The type who not only fails, but REFUSES to see the people serving you as human beings. It’s funny, really, in a Bukowski sort of way. FML.

Samantha said thanks and took her negative post down. She didn’t bother to leave a good review though, that might have taken some effort on her part. It just goes to show that giving anything to the type of person who leaves a negative review about a business without trying to get satisfaction first isn’t worth it. Thanks for nothing I guess…

A Surefire Way to Catch and Asswhipping at Lighthouse Tattoo

The facts: we had a special event schedule for Saturday the 16th of June, so the shop was going to be closed that day. One of the new guys wrongly scheduled Deuce for that day so we had to call two people to get them rescheduled. One appointment we were able to move up a couple of days due to a cancellation, the other we moved back a day. One day. Saturday to Sunday.

Saturday Deuce wrecked his motorcycle. He’s going to be okay, but he’s banged up and wasn’t going to make it to work the next day. Usually when something like this happens the artist will contact their client personally to handle the rescheduling. Because of what was going on that didn’t happen. Will was with Deuce when the wreck happened and had to make a lot of last minute changes to things to handle this event, since we try not to disappoint. After tattooing Deuce’s first appointment that Sunday, Will discovered his second appointment hadn’t been notified, so he called the client. The client’s name is Ruth, but we think Ruth is a guy, the current state of transgender politics notwithstanding, it becomes important later (we’re not sure if Ruth is trans or not, we just believe the person to be a dude). We know that’s a lot of information, but we’re trying to keep this short.

Will called Ruth, introduced himself as being from Lighthouse Tattoo, apologized for the late call, and let Ruth know that Deuce had been in an accident and that we would need reschedule their appointment.

Ruth didn’t ask if Deuce was okay. He didn’t thank Will for calling to let him know so he didn’t waste his time coming to the shop that day. Ruth sighed and thought it would be a good idea to bitch about having to be rescheduled again. Did we mention he didn’t even ask if Deuce was okay?

In case you haven’t heard, Will isn’t terribly famous for being reasonable, and at this point he was understandably a bit short tempered. He just muttered, ‘Well, I don’t like that.’ and hung up the phone. In Will’s mind, our business was done here and it was better than letting loose with the string of ‘motherfuckers’ that was on the tip of his tongue at the time. Knowing that discretion is the better part of valor, he just decided to move on.

Ruth called back. Will answered with a succinct ‘If you come up here I will fuck you up’ and hung up again, just in case Ruth thought we’d gotten disconnected. Ruth called back again and we declined the call. He left a message rambling about our unprofessionalism that completely glosses over his apparent disregard for Deuce’s physical well-being. Now we’re writing this. Just to be clear: We won’t be doing business with Ruth again, there will be no refunds, and there is the distinct probability of serous physical violence if Ruth decides to be stupid enough to show his face. Free amateur dental work, anyone?

The point we’re trying to make here is that we won’t be doing business with people who treat us like we’re less that human beings. Watch your attitude at Lighthouse Tattoo, or don’t come here, it’s not negotiable.

Free Tattoo Day Dummies

We knew offering free tattoos would bring jabronies out of the woodwork. This is an early example to the kind of mind that takes the cake.

A day after posting about the event this young woman decides to comment on our event page how stupid it was that Free Tattoo Day wasn’t first-come, first-served. Let’s unpack that, shall we? If it was FCFS people would just camp out the night before and once about 40 people had lined up, the event would be over before it even started. Making it random allows more people to participate and keeps us from having to deal with a pop up campground in our parking lot. Here’s what I’d like to point out though. Aside from her connections to people we already have a problem with, why would this woman think it is appropriate to go on OUR page to let us know she wouldn’t be attending our event because it was stupid? Why wouldn’t she just, I dunno, not come? What kind of arrogance does it take to go on a small business facebook page just to tell them you don’t want their service? That’s some Amber Heard-level shit right there.

When we told her to get bent she threatened to us by suggesting we look at her Instagram page before we ‘have NO event’ as if she had the power to shut us down. This woman is obviously quite self-absorbed and may be delusional. Still, we were curious. We looked. She had just over 15k followers, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but when we checked we discovered the vast majority of those were bots, fake accounts. It appears that she may have purchased followers to make herself look more important or popular than she really is, probably to people who are dumb enough to fall for that sort of thing, or to care about it for that matter. We are niether of those things. She rambled and ranted about how we were attacking people including herself. We attacked no one. We merely uninvited anyone who displayed a shit attitude before the event had even began.

Look, the reason why no one ever does this sort of thing is because of people just like her. We could have done normal business on a Saturday, made our money, and gone home. Instead, we chose to offer something to our community (and some folks willing to travel quite a distance) by throwing a party where people could win free tattoos. If you go so far as to show you have a bad attitude before the event even happens, we don’t think it’s for you. On that fateful day we had more than 600 people show up. Most of those folks were great and had a good time or at least weren’t so uncouth as to complain about not getting something for nothing.

This chick? She thought it was a good idea to buy some followers on Instagram in order to bully people online. Probably not a good idea when your dealing with us. Since we don’t give a fuck about that sort of thing and all. We has several other Knuckleheads, but really it’s too much to write about and it’s the sort of thing you’d expect from people who don’t want to pay for someone’s work, so we’re willing to take that on the chin, but this broad took the cake. The sheer lack of self awareness and the size of the chip on her shoulder was astounding.

But look at the bright side: At least now we know we don’t want to do business with her. Could’ve been worse, she could have been a paying customer…

What in the Actual Fuck?

Okay, I guess the best way to handle this one is to refute the item-by-item fuckery enclosed in this woman’s ranting email, then maybe explain what actually happened. Please refer to the second screenshot. Here goes:

First, the timestamp, it’s 6AM on a Sunday morning, never a good time to send an email. It absolutely reeks of a long Saturday night. Second, it hadn’t been a month without a reply, we actually replied to her in about 20 minutes and it had only been 10 days, so she’s clearly wrong on two points here. My question would be why would you go to the trouble of writing a negative review, THEN go to the trouble of sending us an email about it, but not just reply to the email we sent you asking you to come by the shop so we could help you out? Or make a phone call? Or come by to talk with us? There’s literally a half dozen things you could have done to get satisfaction before hopping on the crazy train down to Bad Reviewtown. We never even got a chance to help this woman with her perceived problem before she went full-blown-whack o’loon on us. But I digress…

3. She then includes her review which starts ‘So I loved Timba’ Timba is a man named Tim Booth who worked at Lone Wolf Bodyart which used to be located in the same building Lighthouse Tattoo is now in. He passed away a few years ago and will be sorely missed. While they weren’t close, our owner Will and Timba shared a mutual respect as they had worked together in the past when Will worked at Lone Wolf Bodyart some 7 or 8 YEARS before opening Lighthouse Tattoo.

4, She states that she heard Bear had taken over Lighthouse Tattoo from Timba so she was ‘ecstatic’, except for the fact that none of that is true. First Timba didn’t own Lone Wolf, it’s owned by a man named Ben Dixon, always has been. Second, Timba has never worked at Lighthouse Tattoo and has never even been associated with Lighthouse Tattoo, for any reason whatsoever, to be clear. Bear is a man named Rik Sweeney who also works at LONE WOLF BODYART in Hermitage now, he does not own, nor has he ever worked at Lighthouse Tattoo. He worked at the Lebanon location for Lone Wolf with Timba. That location was shut down for two years before Lighthouse Tattoo moved in there. Bitches be crazy.

5. She said she got tattooed by Brady and that he did a great job, just not so great that she didn’t need a touch up and she completely fails to mention that the reason Brady wasn’t at Lighthouse Tattoo is because he is currently in prison. We honored her free touch up and Matt did the job but she didn’t like some way that he altered a butterfly, in his words, ‘to make it better’. I don’t have photos of the original piece, but I can say that Matt was a much better artist than Brady and based on the photo she sent, we couldn’t find anything wrong with what was done. Still, we asked her to come in and let us see the piece in question.

6. She claims that she lost a deposit for her husband because after her tattoo, he didn’t want to be tattooed by Matt. However, this would never have been the case, as we had several other artists he could have booked with if he didn’t want Matt to do the job, they just NEVER CONTACTED US ABOUT IT AT ALL. It seems they just no-call, no-showed. Difficult to figure out now, as this woman clearly isn’t interested in things like the facts or being honest and Matt doesn’t work here anymore either, having moved to Oregon. She also mentions she paid a deposit to Brady, which is interesting, because WE never saw a dime of that money.

7. In probably the strangest of strange twists, she says that she emailed us photos of her tattoo a month later (TRUE), but that she didn’t get a response (FALSE) You can clearly see that on Thursday, May 12th, at 4:08 PM she sent us the photos and we responded to her 13 minutes later, at 4:21 with ‘Hey Candis, can you come in and have us look at it?’ It was then US who didn’t receive a response.

A word to the wise here. If you won’t cooperate with your chosen tattoo shop’s requests, it’s going to be real tough getting satisfaction. We have 10 people working here, we do our best to keep up with our clients, their concerns, any special considerations they might require, any special needs they might have. But this woman’s special needs are of a variety we simply aren’t equipped to take care of. IF YOU DON’T HEAR FROM US, JUST SHOOT US ANOTHER EMAIL OR MAYBE CALL THE GODDAMN TATTOO SHOP YOU LAZY FUCK, WE’RE NOT TRYING TO AVOID YOU, WE ARE JUST BUSY. Fuckety fuck fuckaroo.

8. She goes on to say we shouldn’t be allowed to use Timba’s name. We don’t. Timba has never, ever been associated with Lighthouse Tattoo in any way. Will inherited some of his old clients and is honored to be able to do so. She goes on to say if Timba had a disappointed customer he would have definitely fixed it. We would have fixed it too, Candis, if you would have just responded to the damn email or called us, or came by the shop. You act like you are the only client we have, and you don’t bother getting any of your facts straight before jumping to A LOT of conclusions. We can’t help you if you won’t let us. Timba taught us that. Some people you just have to let go, some people are too far gone and would just rather hurt you than let you help them because they enjoy being outraged.

I don’t know if Matt did something to this woman’s tattoo to mess it up. I don’t know if we could have fixed it if he did. I do know she has a lot of ideas about things that aren’t actually the case and I do know that we were certainly willing to try to help her out, even if she was being a little weird or odd about her preferences, she’s entitled to them, it’s her tattoo after all. What she’s not entitled to do is go on the internet, make up stories and try to hurt our business when the only two people who have ever tattooed her don’t even work here anymore. Jesus Christ, you can’t make this shit up. Imma go stick my head in the microwave. Go fuck yourself lady.

Rest well brother Timba, at least you don’t have to deal with nitwits like this anymore, I know how much you hated it. ~Will Wood

In this early email you can see that she is obviously upset. We had asked her to send a photo of her tattoo and this is what she sent. Since we couldn’t tell what the problem was from the photo, we asked her is she could come in and let us take a look at it so we could best help her. She never replied.

There’s so much wrong with this email it would be hard to list in this space. Allow me to point out that we received it at 6AM on a Sunday morning. She taeks the time to write this but not respond to our email? What a waste of energy.

What's the Difference Between Dumb and Dishonest?

At Lighthouse Tattoo we are known for our straightforward approach to things. Up front and unapologetic. We take a nonrefundable deposit before setting appointments and we have set session rates for our different artists to make budgeting easier for our clients. If you don’t like that, then you should go somewhere else. Hell, we’ve even gone so far as to tell people (on this very website) that if you call and ask if we have time for walk-ins (which we almost never do) we WON’T tell you ‘no’. That’s right, no matter what, we are going to try to get you into the shop to discuss your tattoo instead of telling you not to come in. It’s just business. Once again, if you think that’s not cool, Lighthouse Tattoo isn’t the place for you, go somewhere else and enjoy the rest of your life.

Which brings us to THIS coat hanger abortion of a situation. A real clusterfuck.

We will enclose the various screenshots of the online aspect of the conversation, but here is the backstory, pull up a chair, this is gonna take awhile…

We had a new guy work here for about 6 weeks. His name was Brady. He seemed enthusiastic about learning and we needed someone to catch some of those walk-ins people are always calling about, and he’d been tattooing for a while so we gave him a shot. Brady’s time here ended abruptly when he was incarcerated for violating some sort of agreement he had with the authorities. That’s really all we know about that.

Now, new guys take a while to assimilate into the culture we have at Lighthouse Tattoo. They have to get used to the session rates and the discounted prices we offer (compared to say, Nashville artists’ rates). They learn that by charging a little less and taking more time they can build a better portfolio of work, build a more loyal clientele, and thus, build a better life. The lower rates help to stimulate a better tip ratio, which the artists keep at 100%, this, coupled with the higher level of customer satisfaction, is the key to what has proven to be a very successful business model. For established tattooers and newbies alike, this way of doing business has been a boon, which is why we can tell people to fuck off when we need to.

To the story: This woman scheduled an appointment with Brady, she requested him in what appeared to be something that was arranged between the two ahead of time (Brady had been tattooing for about four years and brought some of his own clientele with him, we believed her to be one of those). He should have told her that her tattoo would cost $300 per 5 hour session, that if he couldn’t get it done in 5 hours, she would need to pay for any additional time and that if it took more than three additional hours to finish, then she would have to pay an additional $300 session rate. This, in case you haven’t already noticed, isn’t rocket science people. You pay as you go. This keeps people from having to pay huge up-front sums of money to get tattoos and ensures that our artists have steady cash flow (no one wants to make a ton of money up front, only to have to ‘work for free’ in the coming weeks to make up for it) Simple. Right?

Not so fast.

Brady didn’t finish the tattoo in the first 5 hour session. Then he got locked up. The woman called to get her tattoo finished and we told her she would need to leave a deposit to schedule the session and ….she lost her shit. She told us that she’d already paid in full for the piece. Waitaminute, something doesn’t add up.

Any of several things might have happened here: 1. Lots of people only hear what they want to. Doesn’t matter how many times you tell ‘em. We tell someone they will be paying $300 or $400 for a session depending on which artist they work with and THEY HEAR the tattoo will only be $300 or $400, when that is simply not the case. It’s not something we hide in the fine print mind you, people try to make it sound like that but they’re being dishonest as hell when they do. The shit’s on here and on their deposit slip (which everyone had to sign before getting tattooed, to make SURE they know) and they still try to shoehorn us into giving them something for nothing, as if their complaining will get them anything other than kicked out and banned for life. May work in some other places, but to don’t work at Lighthouse Tattoo. We have a reputation to maintain, after all. Maybe this woman only heard the tattoo would be $300 when Brady actually told her it would be $300 PER SESSION, and she just wouldn’t listen, once again, happens all the time. But we’ll come back to this idea. 2. Maybe she worked out some sort of ‘deal’ with Brady. Now, this deal wasn’t approved by our owner Will, and thus, wouldn’t be legitimate. It would at least fall into the category of shady and would get Brady counselled and possibly fired, for stealing. Sometimes tattoo artists will work out a bigger ‘tip’ ahead of time in exchange for charging the client less. This ends up with the artist making proportionately more of the money and the shop proportionately less than what was agreed upon earlier and the client saves a little money too. It’s essentially a way of ‘skimming off the til’, and it’s used by unsavory types to steal from their bosses. Not saying this is what happened, it’s just a possibility, and with Brady being relatively new, it may have been a practice of his, borne out of some sort of defense mechanism or survival strategy when he was working at a shop where he didn’t make as much money as he did at Lighthouse Tattoo. It’s not like we haven’t seen it before. We don’t hate him for it, but it’s not the way we do things. 3. The woman’s out of her mind. There’s a case to be made for this based on the interaction we’ve had with her. Now, we don’t mean she’s full-blown Wacko’loon and shouldn’t be allowed to drive or something, just that she seems to get her wires crossed. Either way, she’s DEFINITELY emotional in a way that makes it hard to deal with (which makes some sense, this is a memorial tattoo for her deceased father after all) and she seems determined to double-down on some very poor choices she’s made. We will come back to this point as well. and point #4. She’s lying. Could be she’s just plain lying to get something for free and she thinks that we will give her what she wants if she throws a big enough fit. Not gonna happen folks, reputations and all.

Remember when we said we would come back to a couple of those points?

Point #2 Why on Earth would you try to get a deal on a tattoo? and even IF that were a good idea, why would you do it when the tattoo in question is a giant MEMORIAL PIECE FOR YOUR DEAD FATHER?!?! and point #3 Even if Brady fed her some line of shit, why wouldn’t she just listen to us and take the best deal she’s going to get once she finds out he’s gone? I mean, it’s not hard to find out how we do things, it’s literally written all over this website, on paperwork at the shop and anyone who has worked here for more than a couple days can tell you the session rate and will if you ask them!

To summarize: She got tattooed by Brady and thought that she had paid in full. Brady got locked up. We told her she would need to pay another artist at the shop to finish the tattoo. She threatened to sue us. We told her she couldn’t come back to Lighthouse Tattoo again (we don’t take threats lightly). She goes on Facebook and tells people how we’d done her wrong. We explained the whole situation to her via the comments section and once we knew she had our side of the story we offered ONCE MORE to finish her tattoo at our lowest session rate. We literally don’t have anyone at Lighthouse Tattoo that charges that little anymore, even Will’s apprentice Matt has stepped up his rate to $400 for 5 hours. So we essentially offered her a $100 discount off of our established session rate in order to get her price down to Brady’s level. AAAAANNNNNDDDDDDD we think she turned us down because about an hour and a half later she told us we ‘never even offered her anything’. Which is why we think she’s crazy.

A bit of insight: That tattoo is not small. It’s from her knee to her hip and will probably take at least a couple of hours to finish. Most tattoo artists charge $100 per hour, with many charging in excess of that. Simply put, we don’t see her being able to get that tattoo finished for less than $300 unless a tattooer reads this and feels sorry for her or something. It would be in her best interest to just pay us to finish it and that way she would at least have a finished tattoo. If you want to bitch about how you were treated after the fact that would have been wise, but this is just plain dumb.

We also want to point out some inconsistencies in her story. The first time we spoke she said she’d paid Brady $300 with a $30 tip, then the second time we talked she said she’d given him a $200 tip, both times arguing that she had paid in full for a tattoo that she had not paid in full for. Then, she said we were going to charge her an additional $600-$800, a number she pulled entirely out of her ass, no one ever said that to her, I was there! If the tattoo didn’t take at least 3 hours to finish, then she wouldn’t even have to pay the full session rate (we base our sessions at $100 per hour for the first three hours, with the last two hours being free). She threatened to sue us, which only a really stupid or really crazy person would do (why in the hell would you want to threaten someone you want to get tattooed by, what a moron!) and finally, after extending an olive branch by offering to tattoo her at the original session rate price, she stated online that we didn’t just offer to do what we had just offered to do. and now I have a headache.

In short, some people find it impossible to change their mental state. Once this woman got angry, she doubled down on angry at every opportunity. Instead of listening to reason or understanding that we were TRYING TO HELP HER, she decided that we were trying to rip her off. She’s made threats and has continued to try to hurt us in any way she can. Good luck lady, you’re probably gonna need it.

You don’t need to read all the stuff in this gallery, but if you’re that committed here’s the documentation of our exchange with this Knucklehead.



Oh Shit! A Knucklehead Update!!!

Oh man, we never really get to do this, but here it is, the bullshit never stops: This woman (you can read about her horrible behavior and sense of entitlement at the end) charged back her card after seeing her spot on KOTM. Couple of funny things about it, on the documents she sent the credit card company, she admitted that she knew the deposit was nonrefundable, but blamed us for not trying to remedy the situation. The woman who wouldn’t let us breathe for ten minutes to figure out how to help her; the woman who randomly attacked one of our artists for not' ‘greeting her when she arrived’ (he was working at the time), the woman who failed to take responsibility for her part in any of one of the most ridiculous instances of someone who just failed to take a second and listen to what was being said to them—that person decided they deserved their money back! Dude, swear to God, we can’t make this shit up!

You know the best part? She sent her Knucklehead of the Month post to the credit card company to try to prove her case! Well, THEY all know what kind of person she is now too! We’re sure she called a lawyer to talk about suing and got told she didn’t have a case, she seems like the type, too.

Here’s the deal: We don’t want your money lady, it’s literally the last thing on our minds. We tried to help you with your horrible cover up and when you didn’t want to do what was recommended (that was your SECOND mistake, the first being the original tattoo), you tried to get one of the best tattooers in the state to do a dot, a fuckin dot. You acted so disappointed that our owner would want to move you to another artist so you wouldn’t have to wait four months to get a damn dot. You proceeded to overreact to a simple scheduling issue and behaved like a poorly trained child, demanding that Will be the one to do your dot since the artist you were scheduled with was running behind. Hell, on the day in question, when we told you we would call you back to get things straightened out for you, you couldn’t give us the time we needed to figure out a workable solution. You nagged and berated us until it simply wasn’t worth it to continue to do business with this crazy woman. You see, money isn’t the issue here Brigette, but the way our people are treated is very, VERY important to us. You may think that hundred bucks is enough to buy and sell a person, that you can treat them however you like once they’re paid for.

We’re here to tell you you’re wrong.

People in service industries aren’t for sale, or even for rent. You acknowledge the value of their work when you pay for their service. They don’t have to put up with you talking down to them; your wacko sense of entitlement with your ‘I must be greeted at the door or this is unprofessional’ bullshit; your need to be treated like you’re spending waaay more money than you were (Will’s typical session is $600, which he would have to forego in order to do your $100 dot coverup); and generally the idea that just because things didn’t go exactly as you thought they should that we had somehow wronged you. You see Brigette, you DO owe us that $100, for all the work we did putting up with your shit, but you know why we didn’t fight that chargeback? We could have fought it too, we have your deposit slip stating you know it’s nonrefundable, and since you declined service on the day of your appointment the onus is on you to provide a reason why you shouldn’t have to pay. Being in KOTM isn’t a good enough reason either, since you ended up here by virtue of your own bad behavior and obviously you haven’t learned from this experience. So why didn’t we fight to keep that money? It’s two reasons really 1. Since you sent this to the card company, we now know you’ve read this, and that gives us a certain satisfaction money can’t buy(we laughed our fucking asses off), and 2. We figured you could take that $100 and stick it up your ass.

Here’s the old post telling the original clusterfuck of a story: HoneyBadger Doesn’t Give A Shit.

We’re gonna try to skip to the good part, but there was already a lot of warning signs with this one…

Brigette called on the day of her appointment and asked to push the appointment back by an hour. The artist, Brady, didn’t have any other appointments that day due to their being a special event scheduled, so we moved the appointment back. Then fate decided to throw us a curve ball and sent several walk-ins to the shop, right at noon. Brady stepped up to tackle one of the pieces at 12:30, believing he had plenty of time to get it done before his newly-rescheduled 2 o’clock appointment.

Here’s that again: The appointment WAS at 1, it got pushed back to 2, so Brady took on a walk-in at 12:30 that he believed would take about 45 minutes. Should’a been no problem. However, things changed and this walk-in took far longer than expected, Brady finished it at 3:15. Brigette waited about 40 minutes before announcing that she would ‘call to reschedule’, and stormed out.

Now, we understand that she was upset, we also understand SOME of why she was upset (she had to wait longer than she felt reasonable past her appointment time). What makes it a Knucklehead of the Month post are the details.

You see, before she stormed out, she declared that she ‘had kids she had to get back home to’, as if she needed a sitter. The problem with this excuse for leaving is that her husband was sitting right next to her. So unless she’s in one of those ‘I ain’t watching those damn kids, bitch’ kinda marriages, he probably could have left and sat with the kids by himself, leaving her to get tattooed. She wouldn’t say what her real problem was: That she was angry that she had to wait so long and wanted to throw a fit about it so she could get special treatment.

She called us less than five minutes after she left. We genuinely thought her schedule was so busy it was going to take her a couple of days to contact us with another time she could get tattooed. At least that would explain her last-minute rescheduling with Brady and her need to leave early, even though she would still have been at the shop if she started getting tattooed at the correct time.

Yep. Let that sink in. She would still have been at the shop anyway. She just wanted to give us shit for taking too long.

When she called the receptionist informed her that we would be calling her back, as she was busy piercing while most of this issue was developing in the shop, so she wasn’t sure how to handle it. Also during this time, Will was trying to figure out the appropriate course of action for someone who had behaved disrespectfully to his artist by storming out instead of trying to find a more productive way to move forward that wouldn’t have resulted in her needing to reschedule. Will was going to offer a 40% discount for the inconvenience of the long wait time, which is how we usually handle things when people have to wait for an extended period past their scheduled appointment time.

She called us back. Again. At this point we had pretty much figured out how we wanted to try to move forward. We wanted her to understand that judging how long it will take to do a tattoo is a matter of lots of variables, some of which the tattooer doesn’t have any control over. We wanted her to understand that no one in the shop thought that this tattoo would take more than the hour a half that Brady had to get the piece finished before Brigette’s appointment. Brigette had also stated that she didn’t want to reschedule with Brady, and we wanted to understand what the problem was there too. We were about to call her, literally phone in hand, when she called us the second time. She’d just called to complain that we hadn’t already called her back. That’s right, seems Brigette had decided we didn’t know how to do our jobs.

It went downhill from there. Apparently Brigette doesn’t give a Shit. Like the mighty honeybadger, this particular type of Karen doesn’t give a Shit about Shit. Not the fact that she started all this by last minute rescheduling; not the fact that Brady and everyone else thought he had plenty of time to take that walk-in (the young lady he tattooed wanted something pretty specific and the draw-time took longer than expected); not the fact that Brady was losing money because she left, or the fact that he was losing money because she pushed her appointment back. Nope, this Bit- Ahem, HoneyBadger didn’t care about how her decisions or actions affected anyone else, she only cares about being inconvenienced.

Her reason for not wanting to reschedule with Brady? Because he didn’t stop what he was working on to greet her. That’s right, she was mad that he DIDN’T STOP WORKING ON THE TATTOO THAT WAS MAKING HIM LATE TO SAY HELLO, WHICH WOULD HAVE TAKEN EVEN LONGER. WTF!?! She then declared that she wanted Will to do her tattoo. Aha! There’s the rub.

You see, originally she had booked with Will to get a cover up on the back of her neck. After a brief consultation, she scheduled an appointment with him in May, this was a months-long wait, typical of Will’s busy schedule. A couple of weeks later, she comes in and has changed her mind, not wanting a detailed cover-up, but merely to get the tattoo blacked out and couple of small, linework-only pieces. Will rescheduled her for that weekend with Brady, transferring her deposit. Now she was trying to use her extended wait time to demand that her 45-minute blackout cover up and tiny tattoos be performed by one of the most decorated, award-winning tattoo artists in the state. Nope. Not today Satan! You don’t get to re-write the terms of an agreement because you decided to blow your top. That’s not how negotiations work. Damn sure not here. Remember the rule: Be Nice. You’ll get more with honey here, little badger, than with vinegar, so don’t trip.

Brigette the Badger-er had gone from being reasonably upset about having to wait too long to shot-out-of-a-cannon crazy due to an entitlement mentality. Had she been reasonable at all, owning her part with her last-minute rescheduling; understanding that Brady was doing the best he could with a bad situation; either let her kids hang out with their sitter or sent Dad to take care of them; or asked for something to make up for the inconvenience even! Had she done any of that, she would have waited too long and gotten tattooed at a 40% discount for her trouble. Our bad.

Instead, she waited too long; decided to show her lack of upbringing by announcing to the shop owner that she would call to reschedule when that’s not a policy of ours or anything we’ve ever agreed to; call the shop immediately, not because she had her schedule straightened out, but to show her ass; then called back again once told we would call her, adding to our thoughts that she may have just been an entitled troublemaker (Karen); decided to fabricate a problem with Brady to try to get her way; all ultimately not getting tattooed; losing her deposit; and getting herself banned from Lighthouse Tattoo in the process.

Brigette Hayes, you’re a real winner, Knucklehead!

You owe us and especially Brady an apology for the way you treated us. The world doesn’t belong to you and sometimes you will be inconvenienced by it. Learn this or continue to suffer the consequences of your shit attitude. We really wanted to take care of you. We would have gone out of our way to do so, just not at the expense of another client currently being tattooed. If you would have taken the time to let us figure out how to address the situation you would be happy by now. Instead, you doubled down on bad behavior with a bad attitude, which simply makes it impossible for us to move forward, which is what we were trying to do. We could have apologized for the inconvenience, but instead now we’re just calling you an asshole.

Looks Like We Offended Somebody Stupid

So, this particular Knucklehead has decided they don’t approve of our ‘no hate speech’ policy here at Lighthouse Tattoo. This coward, who it seems would prefer to remain anonymous, still uses the term ‘fag’ as derogatory speech, if that tells you anything about their intelligence. We called the number just for fun and it’s ‘not available’, like this person’s sense of self awareness.

Look, our no Confederate flags policy has been in place since we opened in 2014, it’s not going anywhere. If you think you’re funny because you took the time to fill out a public form on the INTERNET to let us know you disagree with us, you’d be right, it IS funny, just probably not for the reasons YOU think. If you think getting hate speech, which contrary to your personal belief, is very real (we’re actually surprised there’s even a point of contention on that matter) tattooed on your body is a good idea, it would just go to show how far down the Loser Rabbit Hole you’ve gone.

I mean, Holy Shit, simply BEING a douchebag isn’t enough for this asshole, they need to have it permanently etched into their flesh?! So badly, mind you, that they get angry when we won’t do it. This is worse that being a Karen, this is seriously some Olympic-level shitheel stuff!

A note from Will: ‘If you have a problem with our policy and are man enough to show your face, come down here and say that shit to my face. No cops, let’s settle this. Whenever you grow the balls.’

So there you go ladies and gentlemen: A standing invitation to anyone who would like to fight about it from the man himself. Otherwise, I dunno, maybe go fuck yourself?

We don’t know what this person is talking about with regard to hate speech not existing, but we (and the whole rest of the fucking world) defines it as such: abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. We would include Confederate flags in this list of hateful things, and the reception of the Rebel Flag as it is so lovingly called, isn’t going to improve over time. It’s become basically the same thing as the Nazi Swastika and if that you’re cup of tea, well, we’re just not gonna be friends.

Will? Will on the other hand has a REAL problem with the shit. If you want to push it with THAT guy, be our guest, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Happens all the Time, Just not usually this Bad

So every now and again people get a little overzealous filling out the paperwork. We hand them a clipboard with a bunch of release forms on it and they just go to town. They only need to do one. It’s obvious if you just take the time to look at the paperwork BUT WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?!?! This chick, that’s who. Mind you, it DOES happen from time to time, just not to this extent. This chick has to be the Stevie Wonder of filling out paperwork, just smile, shake your head, and move on to the next page.

She filled out every single remaining sheet on the clipboard.

No one’s ever done THAT before.

Still, she’s not really a full-blown Knucklehead because of that, but it waaas pretty damn funny.

Read what you’re signing folks!

An Ode to Hypocrites Everywhere

At Lighthouse Tattoo we take an $80 or $100 non-refundable deposit that is deducted from the overall price of the tattoo in order to schedule an appointment. It’s a simple concept, really: If your tattoo is going to cost $400, say, you pay the $80 deposit to set the appointment and you pay the rest of the cost when you come in and get the tattoo. The deposit isn’t so someone will get the tattoo, tattoos are permanent and we realize that all but a few really, really stupid people know this, so we expect that if you take the time to set an appointment you will still want the tattoo once the time to get it comes around; it’s so they will provide us with appropriate amount of notice if they’re going to be late or need to reschedule.

I know this part is boring, but it’s important, so bear with me.

Since we first opened we’ve told everyone about the deposit policy. People would agree to it when setting up their appointment, then leave us a 1-star review on Google or Yelp or some other fanciful piece of technology where people congregate virtually to bitch about whatever when they violated said policy but expected there would be a special exception just for them. Some would call this wishful thinking, some would call it narcissism, either way it’s a pain in the ass for us; a group of people just trying to make a living by selling our time. It got so bad we had to put it in writing, so now everyone signs a deposit slip with the policy on it stating that they know they policy and agree to abide by it. They don’t though. It’s awesome.

We’re not the only ones who do this you know. Tons of tattoo shops the world over require a deposit to schedule an appointment. Hell, tons of businesses who have to schedule work take deposits to varying degrees or another and many of those are either partially or fully nonrefundable. From doctor’s offices to cruise lines, if the service is in demand and must be scheduled to the exclusion of others you can rest assured that business has tried to figure out a way to keep their time from being wasted, which is all we’re trying to do with our deposit policy.

We ask for 48-hour notice to reschedule. We realize for a lot of instances that’s just not possible. Kids get sick, people get called into work, cars break down. When we keep the deposit in these instances, it’s not to stick it to anyone, it’s so we don’t have to be angry with the client who couldn’t help their situation. It’s essentially a form of prescribed apology for the inconvenience; the wasted time; and the lost money. We’re not unreasonable, we don’t expect people to pay in full for the missed appointment, just that they willingly forfeit the money they left as a deposit as agreed upon in case they are unable to give us sufficient notice. It’s not an ideal situation, but then again, when is having to late-cancel any appointment ideal? It’s the best solution we could come up with for both sides: The client doesn’t have to pay for the lost time in full and the artist isn’t left completely empty-handed. A little bit of compromise from both sides leads to a more agreeable outcome and we can continue to do business without animosity.

I know, still boring, but it will get better. Promise.

Now, why couldn’t we just make a few exceptions, let a few people slide? Why couldn’t we just shim things a little to keep our best customers happy? Well, we do. We do tons. But strangely, most of the time, our ‘best clients’ NEVER ACTUALLY HAVE TO RESCHEDULE OR CANCEL THEIR APPOINTMENTS AND WHEN THEY DO THEY DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH FORFEITING A DEPOSIT. No Bull. The reason we don’t make MORE exceptions is because most of the people that are asking for an exception to be made can’t provide a good reason for getting one, they just don’t want to lose the money. Understandable, but it completely misses the point and it’s not what we agreed upon.

So here’s where it gets good:

I don’t use the word Motherfucker lightly, I don’t. As a matter of fact, I capitalize it. Motherfucker. I personally consider it ‘fighting words’. If you call me that, my mind immediately turns to fisticuffs. If I call someone else that, then I fully expect to come to blows with that person as a consequence of my word choice. So please, please understand that I don’t mean this lightly when I say that THESE MOTHERFUCKERS drive me crazy when they agree to the policy, get good service, become loyal customers, know the policy, see the people it affects, violate the policy, expect special treatment because of the relationship instead of just doing the right thing, then take their business elsewhere all because we didn’t want to lose hundreds of dollars PLUS THE 80 THEY ALREADY LEFT!!! These hypocrites treat us like garbage, costing us hundreds of dollars every time they do this and want us to do them a favor when they do? and if we don’t they traipse off into the sunset like we never mattered to them in the first place (which we didn’t) all to act like we’re the ones to blame.

(are they gonna name names?)

Oh yeah baby, we’re naming names. Like Beth, who first got tattooed by Will years ago when she and her delightful hubby James came into an old shop he used to work at to get James’ backpiece started. He wanted lions on his back because his last name brought the animals to mind and it was an homage to his family. Once Will finished the backpiece James gave him a $500 tip at a time when he sorely needed the money. It’s not too much to say that Will loved him for that. Will also started tattooing Beth, and even tattooed their son. The relationship was a good one, with Will doing his best to provide this family with his usual jaw-droppingly good work. Beth scheduled an appointment for October 23rd of 2021 and called to have it rescheduled to January 5th. She did so in plenty of time so it was rescheduled with no problems and her deposit was transferred to the new date. The problem arose when Beth sent us an email the day before her Jan. 5th appointment declaring it was her SEVENTH DAY WITH COVID, that she still had a rough cough and needed to reschedule again. This was considered last minute and honestly, she knew she was sick the day before that, she knew she had COVID-19 two days before her appointment and this selfish MOTHERFUCKER didn’t take the time to let us know so Will could find someone else to take the time slot. When we told her that she would need to leave another deposit in order to schedule another appointment she ghosted us. Radio silence. Not so much as a ‘Why?’. We tried to reach out to her via email and telephone after giving her plenty of time to recover in order to make sure she was okay and keep the ball rolling but she ignored us. Will wasn’t angry about the money he had lost (what’s funny is he tattooed Beth at a significant discount because of his love for James and what he’d done for Will so many years earlier), but he was sure pissed about being ignored over a $100 deposit. Beth can’t come back to Lighthouse Tattoo.

Ahem.

Now.

Well, now we know not everyone is going to be okay with this. In a world seemingly chock FULL of Karens and people rife with entitlement mentality, but we just can’t take it anymore. So from now on, Lighthouse Tattoo will be providing a list of names of the people who violate our deposit policy and betray us so egregiously that they find themselves banned from the shop. We do this as a public service, to let other know who can’t be trusted and to let those individuals know they’re being jackasses.

Now, to those who may be reading this who are actually on this list: You owe us an apology. You owe us that without receiving anything in return, but as a way of making up for your bad behavior. If you say you’re sorry we will consider taking your name off the list, maybe even letting you come back.

But let’s face it, you didn’t get on the list because you care about accountability or respecting others did you? We really don’t expect to be surprised here.

This is our livelihood. This is how we provide for our families. We aren’t playing around. Golden rule, treat us the way you want to be treated. Treat us like shit, get treated like shit. Treat us like family and you’ll get the same. Lighthouse Tattoo isn’t for everyone, we take a great deal of pride in that. Hope to see you real soon!

The REAL Reason we Don't Do Confederate Flag Tattoos

To the gentleman who decided to call us “N——-Lovers” because we declined to do his Confederate Flag tattoo: You’re the reason we don’t do them. ‘Cause it’s not about heritage is it, Knucklehead? It’s about ignorance. It’s about hate.

To that same gentleman who talked shit while leaving the shop, just to show his ass- You are a coward.

The same gentleman that ran when Will chased him because he isn’t just frightened by black people, but angry whites as well. Basically anyone with a spine who will stand up to you.

You should have stayed and at least taken your beating like a man, but you couldn’t even manage that could you? Too stupid to keep your mouth shut; too dumb to admit when you’re wrong; too afraid to stand up for what you believe in. Oh how your existence must be torture. We’d almost feel sorry for you if you weren’t such a piece of shit.

To your parents: I understand that you did your best and that your son’s behavior shouldn’t reflect on you and embarrass you, but I’m certain you’re ashamed to have raised such a shitheel redneck piece of trash.

Will, for one, could very well be considered what you called him. A fair percentage of his family is mixed-race and he loves all of them. The black wives and husbands that have married into his extended family over the years, and their children, his beautiful brown little cousins. It’s one of the reasons we don’t do Confederate Flags.

It’s also one of the reasons you will get your ass kicked if you come into Lighthouse Tattoo talking that trash. Knucklehead.

A Word On OCD

The subject of tattooing people who suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, diagnosed or otherwise, is pretty sketchy. It’s never pleasant dealing with someone who insists on mechanical precision from human hands. It’s even worse when you are dealing with someone who doesn’t communicate well and goes from zero to sixty in no time flat. Settle down jabroni, we’re doing our best here!

Such was the case with Andy who came into the shop as a walk-in and wanted a dot and a dash to coordinate with a series of three dots he already had. We were busy so we set him an appointment for the next day and when young Andy came in he immediately started causing problems.

The artist set about stenciling the dot and dash and Andy was angry that the stencil didn’t include the original three dots. The artist explained to him that if that were the case, it would make it more difficult to properly center and space the new parts of the tattoo and that if we needed to move the stencil it would make the old tattoo look blurry and thus make it less likely that we could properly center and space the tattoo.

See the theme here? If we do it your way, Andy, it’s gonna fuck everything up.

But no, Andy didn’t see it our way. Instead, Andy decided he didn’t want to be tattooed anymore. He’d paid an $80 deposit the day before for a tattoo he decided not to get because he thought that he knew how to do our job better then we did. No negotiation, no explanation, nothing. Immediately inconsolable because he didn’t understand how the process needed to happen in order to give him what he asked for. He wouldn’t even try it! You can’t make this shit up.

Andy, thanks for breaking up our Knucklehead of the Month dry run, we haven’t had a real Knucklehead come through in some time.

Not for Nothing

Not for Nothing, but we haven’t been posted to Knucklehead of the Month lately, not because we haven’t had inspiration, but because we’ve been busy.

This should catch you up a bit:

  1. What about the young woman who came into the shop, then, after telling some customers about the tattoo’s she’d done on herself and some of her friends (in front of Will, mind you) she was asked to leave. She protested, saying that she didn’t know it was inappropriate to do so. We informed her that ignorance is no defense, that she could come back some other day and get her piercing, but that her behavior was unacceptable and she would have to leave, per our zero tolerance policy for dickheadedness. We let her use the phone to call her ride and as she was driving past the shop screamed ‘FUUUCK YOOOOOU’ so loudly it sounded like something you would hear on Animal Kingdom. She apparently failed to learn the lesson we were trying to teach her: when requesting a service, try not to be rude to the people who are supposed to serve you. Also, don’t brag about your illegal, illegitimate, shitty tattooing in a real tattoo shop.

  2. Or the young woman who came into the shop and decided to throw shade at us because her mother wasn’t given a refund when tattoo shops were ordered to shut down during the spring of 2020. First of all, why would we give someone a refund for that? It’s something entirely out of our control, the person should still want the permanent tattoo six weeks after their initial appointment, if not, we certainly wouldn’t give them that money back (we were shut down for six weeks, and we don’t pay people to waste our time), and we, unlike many others, didn’t benefit from the PPP. The woman was fully capable of rescheduling (and she may have, the girl left before we could find out). The lesson here: If you say something stupid, we will call you out for it, and that bitch was being stupid.

  3. What about the young woman who got a tattoo, promptly dropped a box on it while moving the next day, called to ask what to do about that, and upon being told to let it heal and call to set up a touch up appointment, she waited three months and attacked us for not following up with her. This young woman literally IMAGINED POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HER MIND and flamed us on Facebook for it. When we pointed out that she agreed (in writing!) not to do exactly that, she got her daddy involved. He defended her actions and filed a complaint with the BBB, which is how we think Karens are born. Not that it did any good, mind you. We don’t bend to the will of the Better Business Bureau, or Karens either, for that matter.

Whew! what can we say, as we get more popular we expect to have to deal with a few more Knuckleheads. We’ll try to keep up with KotM a little better updated moving forward. This part of the site is supposed to be a mix of funny and informative. We seek to illustrate how people act and treat us at times and how this affects us, all while teaching folks what NOT to do. Tattoo shops the world over have similar experiences and many of them don’t address it publicly for fear of backlash. We are unafraid. If you come in to Lighthouse Tattoo, behave yourself, and we’ll have a great time!

The Whole Reason We Take Deposits...

Look, a lot of people get angry when they forfeit their deposit for any of a number of reasons, last-minute cancellations being the most common. Usually, though, this is the result of an emergency: being called in to work last minute; a flat tire or breakdown on the way to the appointment; a death or illness in the family; something unplanned and unpredictable, you know?

Not like in this most recent case.

So in this particular case we want to give the individual the benefit of a doubt and have omitted the name. However, as you can clearly see, we did everything possible to contact this individual who knew full well that they didn’t have the money to pay for their tattoo session and instead of letting us know, waited until 2 hours before the scheduled appointment to tell us they weren’t coming in.

Here’s the stupid part: At this point if the person just no-call, no-showed we wouldn’t have any idea what happened and they could have feigned an emergency or concocted some other sort of lie to make them look good, but this is just plain dumb.

“Sorry, I don’t have the money.”

“You didn’t know you didn’t have the money yesterday or even the day before?”

“No, I’m entirely incompetent as a human being.”

“You DO know that you could have kept your deposit and rescheduled for later at no additional cost if you’d only given us reasonable notice, right?”

“Yes, that was written clearly on the deposit agreement I signed when I scheduled the appointment originally, but as I stated before, I’m pretty much incapable of keeping my word.”

“Oh, well in that case, if you want to do business with us in the future you will need to pay for the time you wasted and the time you will most likely waste in the future.”

“Now waitaminute…”

“Nope, Bye!”

We understand that things go wrong and we try to work with people, but this particular individual had plenty of time to let us know and purposely refused to do so. We have to take action to protect ourselves from this kind of knucklehead. The I-Know-I-Don’t-Have-The-Money-To-Get-Tattooed-But-Imma-Wait-To-Tell-Them kind. Holy Shit.

Hypocrisy in Action

The facts: Janet and her daughter scheduled appointments to get small tattoos together. They did this over the phone, they never came into the shop. Later they called and needed to reschedule, but their artist’s gmail account had been logged out and we weren’t immediately able to reach him in order to get them rescheduled (we handle all of our booking through Google calendars, but sometimes it will log you out for security reasons and that’s what had happened.) We told them we would call them back and get them rescheduled when we got ahold of their artist, as we couldn’t see his schedule and thus, had no idea when he had time available.

Then something rare happened: WE dropped the ball. They never got called back. Shame on us.

The ladies called the shop back to inquire about their appointment and another person, also quite new, answered the phone and didn’t understand what was going on, initially believing that they had missed their appointment and thus would need to leave another deposit. Things went a bit off the rails here and the woman started yelling at the receptionist. We say ‘yelling’ because people could clearly hear what she was saying over the telephone handset fully twenty feet away. That’s pretty darn loud. the woman got off the phone before the situation could be properly resolved.

That same day, some twenty minutes later, her daughter called back and spoke with the artist slated to do the tattoos. He explained the situation and got everything worked out, he apologized for the confusion and for the ‘heated’ nature of the previous conversation. He got the ladies rescheduled, no sweat, and we were moving forward.

Pause this for a second.

That Saturday we had decided as a group to go to the Tennessee Ren Faire, but Matt had a couple of appointments that evening and two of them were these women, we didn’t want to reschedule again for something so trivial, but since their appointment wasn’t until 7 pm, we thought it would be okay to see if they would push back to 8pm to give Matt time to get back from our little company outing that day. We called the number we had for them and the daughter answered.

This is where things go a little off the rails.

The young lady tells us that she and her mother won’t be coming in to get their tattoos. She says that since Matt used the works ‘ a little heated’ when describing her mother’s exchange with our receptionist that they didn’t feel comfortable moving forward with the appointment. Keep in mind, they’d already rescheduled and didn’t inform us there was any problem at all. The daughter said that while her mother would ‘sometimes talk loud’ that should would never yell at anyone. I guess that depends on your definition. It would also depend on your personal bias with regard to the individuals participating in the exchange. Either way, people could clearly hear what she was saying over the phone from a distance where normal-volume calls can’t be overheard. Regardless of all of this, it was just based on a misunderstanding, because three different people spoke to these women on two different days. The new people have been counseled and we were moving forward at these ladies’ request and she was just now telling us this, a day late and a dollar short.

Ahem, here’s where it gets good: Not only did these women not bother to call to get some clarity with regard to the disposition about the ‘heated’ phone call (which was abusive to our receptionist); not only did they reschedule their appointment with no intention of showing up and no notice that they weren’t going to; they also attacked our business online with a terribly skewed, uniformed, you guessed it, 1 Star review!

The funny part: they were getting ‘Faith’ tattoos.

Here’s what’s wrong with that: They should have called to speak with a manager or the owner if they had some reservations about getting tattooed after hearing Matt say ‘heated’ when describing the conversation, but he’d apologized, Forgiveness being one of the tenets of Christianity, we thought they’d moved past it. Secondly, Lying is definitely a no-no and Janet lied about several things when she left her review, implying that we’d overcharged her deposit arbitrarily (we raised our shop minimum to $80 and thus our deposit as well, months ago. We merely failed to change this on an old part of our website, which we have since rectified); she claimed that we attacked her after making a mistake, our only mistake was not returning their call in a timely fashion, which got sorted out after a mild misunderstanding; she also lied by omission by scheduling our time with no intention of honoring her appointment; she also lied because she charged back her credit card deposit when she knew the deposits were non-refundable, which is technically stealing, another Commandment. She went on Google reviews and tried to hurt our business even though at this point she hadn’t suffered any loss, personally or financially. She did this without consideration to any of the other people who work here or their families, indiscriminately. She also went so far as to file a complaint when, in our usual fashion we took her to task regarding her Google review and when we used swear language she had to taken down. Lol. Apparently this lady thinks nothing she’s done has ever been wrong.

She lied about the way she treated others when she was yelling at our receptionist.

She lied about being overcharged, she wasn’t.

She lie to and stole from us by wasting our time.

She lied by disputing her credit card charge when she knew it was nonrefundable, she’d been told over the phone and read it on the website (we know this based on her review).

She attacked people she’s never even dealt with by disparaging their place of work without any regard to the impact of her words.

Y’all, ain’t none of that Christian.

So Will could fight the deposit dispute and probably win, citing the woman’s review itself and her knowledge of the deposit policy online, which contains the nonrefundable status but he won’t, saying it wasn’t worth the time and he’d rather this person move on anyway. He paid Matt for the his time that was wasted so it’s funny that the damage done was to someone who was never involved in the situation ands the only person who could have handled it, he has an knack for this sort of thing. He also added this:

‘I learned as a Christian that it was better to turn the other cheek. I certainly wouldn’t try to hurt someone’s business, especially after they apologized to me. But if I was going to complain, I’d complain to management before taking it public and I definitely wouldn’t lie. This woman is skewing the facts to make herself look better and make us look worse, just to justify her lousy behavior. Sounds like another textbook Christian who can’t follow what their faith says.’ Then he laughed and called her a hypocrite. We tend to agree

Passive Aggression, the Language of Cowards

So Robert sent us an email inquiring about a tattoo on a certain day and a certain time. We tried to work with him and set everything up to move forward, as is our way. We asked Robert to call the shop to set up an appointment because we take a deposit and we won’t ask for that sort of information via email, so we need someone to call in with the card info. Our phone number is contained in every email, but we listed it again, as a prompt to call the shop and get this ball rolling. By the next day, having not received a call, we sent another email asking Robert for his number so we could call him and schedule the appointment. We do this because sometimes people need us to take the extra step, as they think sending the email is enough to schedule the appointment and it’s not, we won’t set an appointment without a deposit.

We didn’t hear from Robert for 9 days, at which time he said he found the email while cleaning out his junk folder. Now, usually emails that have been replied to don’t just randomly go to spam, but stranger things have happened so we continued to move forward with Robert, though we asked that he kind of ‘shit or get off the pot’, we don’t like having our time wasted, and if Robert really did want to get a tattoo, we’re not hard to reach, he could have just booked it. yeah, the email was a bit terse, but to wasn’t rude, it merely asked Robert to take decisive action: Move forward or move along.

It’s at this point that Robert gets all defensive. His emails lose almost all punctuation and take an almost poetic look as his feelings get in the way of his intelligence. He’s offended and he wants to let us know it.

So we have a question to ask.

How are we to handle a client who appears unwilling or unable to follow simple instructions? Who seems to be resistant to the idea of leaving a deposit, though he claims to have conducted business with us in the past? and when we point out that his actions have been incongruous with his claims, he gets angry?

Robert (and everyone else, for that matter), if you would like to schedule an appointment, you just need to call or come by the shop in order to leave your deposit and nail down the time. Email correspondence is for sending us references and confirming your appointment in the event you miss your confirmation phone call, but we cannot take credit card information via email, so appointments cannot be finalized that way.

Interestingly enough, we also got a 1 star review from someone calling themselves ‘R ED’, Robert, E. Denson anyone? This passive aggressive behavior is the stuff of cowards. Maybe it means Robert, Erectile Dysfunction, seems legit.

Simple enough, if you want to schedule an appointment, do so. If you want to waste our time, you won’t get far. We expect our clientele to be decisive and committed to their artwork, just as we are. We won’t waste your time and we would expect that you wouldn’t waste ours.

As for Robert? Suck our fuckin’ dick Robert. You don’t have to go out of your way to be an asshole on our account!

This is after maybe the third email, we clearly ask him to call to schedule and leave a deposit. Lots of folks want to book appointments without leaving a deposit. This involves a lack of accountability we aren’t comfortable with. It also shows the email we sent the next day, which asks for his phone number so we can call him. If people are unwilling to cooperate with this request, they usually aren’t serious about scheduling.

This is the last image continued, it shows the rest of the email Dustin sent, as well as the email from Robert remarking how he found this in his spam folder, which is suspicious, but not unheard of.

This is the email where we ask Robert to move forward or move along. It’s admittedly straightforward, but at this point, the time he wanted to book for isn’t available and he seems content with running us in circles, so doing business with him is no longer profitable. It invites him to do the same thing we’d been asking him to and it points out how he hasn’t been amenable to closing the deal. Best to cut our losses here.

Here Robert brings up several points that have nothing to do with him failing to call or come by the shop to schedule an appointment, pure misdirection on his part. He follows by indicating that we are somehow offended by money, another superfluous gesture, then adds the passive aggressive ‘thanks!’ as if he’s excited that we pointed out how strange this interaction has been. In truth, he’s just offended that we called him out on his bullshit. Words of a coward here.


A Word on Self Awareness

Disclaimer: This is a special Knucklehead post, as we probably won’t ever know the outcome, it’s more of a cautionary tale than an admonition of Knuckleheadedness. As such, we won’t be naming the people involved.

We recently had a client schedule an appointment to get some symbolism from his ‘favorite childhood video game’ on his forearm. Everything seemed to be normal until Will noticed the collection of symbols he wanted (as sent in an email after the appointment was set) were Satanic in nature.

Everyone take a deep breath here.

Now, at Lighthouse Tattoo we pride ourselves on tattoo shops being one of the last bastions of free speech in this country. You can come in here and be yourself, without fear of someone mistreating you (as long as you don’t mistreat one of us). That being said sometimes people come in and get super evil-looking stuff tattooed on them and we have no problem whatsoever doing that. We also understand that secular Satanism is a movement that’s been gaining steam for some time, as an alternative to religion, and in some cases, a send up of its abuses.

However, we always ask two questions of ourselves before tattooing anyone: 1. Does this person know what they’re getting (i.e. do they understand what the subject matter is and that tattoos are permanent by nature). and 2. Will it cause them undue harm?

That first one is pretty easy, most people know what they’re getting and that tattoos are for life unless you go through a painful and expensive removal process. The second question though, requires a little more analysis.

At Lighthouse Tattoo we work with the understanding that the process of going from being a non-tattooed person to a tattooed one is an inherently harmful thing. Mainly because people with tattoos don’t care if you don’t have any, but sometimes people without tattoos don’t like it if you do. We also understand that most people get that this could be a mild inconvenience and with the progression of tattoo acceptance socially and in the workplace, most folks have already taken that into consideration by the time they hit the door. The problem occurs when people who lack experience or an appropriate level of self awareness decide to push the edge of what is socially acceptable, causing themselves unforeseen negative consequences for doing so clumsily. You can push the edge of society’s norms, but if you don’t really know what you’re getting into, you can set yourself up for a lot of frustration moving forward, and once again, tattoos are permanent.

Snap back to the situation at hand. A young man wants some images from his ‘favorite childhood video game’ that are all considered Satanic in nature. When this was brought to his attention he didn’t even balk. He merely stated that he wanted the images because they were a part of this video game. That, folks, is a lack of awareness about the facts. We declined to do the tattoo and refunded his deposit. He sent his girlfriend to pick the money up an Will gave her a little free advice:

‘If your boyfriend played a video game with a bunch of Nazis in it, we wouldn’t tattoo a swastika on him just because of that. Those images, though they are contained in his favorite game, are still considered Satanic by the vast majority of folks who will see it on his forearm, and that is going to cause him about the same amount of trouble as getting nazi swastika would. We would do the tattoo if he wanted to get it some place he could cover it up with clothes a bit easier, but doing that on his forearm is just asking for trouble.’

and it is.

Either homeboy here hates the church and religion and everyone who believes in that stuff and may be the next mass shooter; or he’s tired of the oppressive violence conducted by the world’s major religions and wants to let everyone know it; or he loves the Dark Lord for some reason (could just be a Slayer fan, I dunno); or he genuinely only wants the tattoo because he liked the game.

Either way, after being counselled about why that is a bad idea, if he doesn’t want to move the tattoo to a less visible area of the body, we don’t want him in here.

These are the images the young man wanted and where he wanted to put them. From top to bottom: The three-crone moon; an inverted cross; the whore of babylon; the Satanic Cross; and the Baphomet Pentacle. Don’t try to argue with us, we know what they are and what they represent to most people and that ain’t good.

For the sake of not stirring up any other problems, we will say that we looked up the game and it did use all of these images. We won’t name it here but the game was developed as a send-up of the abuses of religious teaching and its oppressive culture, it’s also deeply violent, not unlike the religions it seeks to decry.

<<To the young man who wanted to get that tattoo: We hope you’ll reconsider your decision to put something that could be so potentially harmful to you in such a visible spot on your body. If you’re reading this and change your mind, we’d love to hear from you. If not, try to understand at least why we said ‘no’, and that it’s not a reflection on you personally, but out of a desire to not cause someone undue harm.>>