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…