Will, our founder, has a saying: “Not everyone who walks through our door is a customer, not every customer is a client.” What he means by that is simple-not everyone who inquires about a tattoo is serious about doing business and even fewer of those people are high value clients. In fact, some of them will be quite low-value indeed.

How do we say this? We don’t like our time being wasted. We have better things to waste our time on than people who refuse to communicate with us in regular business fashion or fail to follow simple instructions (leave a deposit; pay a link we’ve sent to you; send us your phone number; any of a number of reasonable requests in the process of conducting the business of setting a tattoo appointment). There are a few different types of people who do this in our experience, but for the purposes of this post, we’re going to focus on the people who try to do all of their communication via Facebook messages or Instagram DMs. We’ve found these people fail to understand our need to effectively communicate with our clients in order to properly serve them. People who refuse to give us a phone number are usually woefully mistreated-by design. We refer to these people as ‘low-value clientele’and with good reason. They usually suck to do business with.

Which brings us to Pam. In as few words as we can muster, here’s what happened: Pam commented on a promotional post we’d made about some flash art Will was willing to do at a significant discount. We responded to her and she said she wanted a horror tattoo sleeve or a cover up. We asked if she’d like to do a consult and she said she couldn’t come in on a specific day we’d offered to her. Then we asked her if she’d like to come in another day and we didn’t hear back. We reached out daily for three days and after getting no response, we let her know we wouldn’t be reaching back out. No one likes being left on read or getting ghosted or whatever people call it these days.

Pause. The reason we told her we wouldn’t be reaching back out is because we have a last-contact message that we call the ‘failure to launch’ message. It’s designed to let people know we aren’t going to keep reaching out and it’s because they haven’t maintained communication. In short, at that point, we’ve done everything we can and we’re going to move on. It’s also a little terse, which gets folks’ attention and we move forward or cut ties from there.

Pam got mad. She let us have it, but not so bad that we didn’t think it salvageable so we reached back out. Will even went so far as to send her a message because he disagreed with how it was worded. Pam said she appreciated that. We asked for her phone number, again.

Nothing.

Wait. It gets better. We fucking PROMISE.

A day or so later we get a 1-star Google review from Kevin. We hadn’t had a Kevin in the shop for weeks so we knew something was wrong, but he was one of those ‘local guides’ on Google and sometimes those people leave random reviews just to build their rating or whatever. Maybe he was a nut. We replied to the review with as much and the next day ol’ Kevin played his hand. He said he’d post ‘the receipts’ as kids these day say as some sort of threat and said he’d take the review down if we apologized to Pamela.

But here’s the thing: We already had. Twice. Before he left that review, in fact.

Here’s where it gets good: The reason why we’d dealt with Pamela the way we did is because she pulled the EXACT bullshit with us before: Hit us up, chat a bit, only to be ghosted, fully 18 MONTHS EARLIER. This is text book time-waster if ever we’ve seen it. Worse yet, having some moron try to fight your battles for you via Google reviews is kind of the lowest of the low. Who knows why she did this, maybe because she still thought she could get tattooed? Who knows.

Will even confronted her about her previous ghosting incident when he reached out to her, as a means of pointing out why we might be suspicious of her behavior. What followed is what we call in the business ‘cognitive dissonance’ kids. Pamela told us she DIDN’T do exactly what she DID. Hit us up then ghost us, we can only assume because she didn’t like the prices (judge for yourself, it’s all in the photo gallery, there’s your receipts Kevin.)

Don’t contact tattoo shops if you aren’t serious. 18 months out from booking your tattoo appointment is NOT SERIOUS, as most tattoo artists have wait times anyway. Don’t abruptly end communication with someone you are corresponding with and try to monopolize their attention when it’s convenient with you, that’s generally an abusive way to communicate with anyone, even a business. Don’t only hit people up when they offer a special and act as if you’re going to get the ‘special’ rate for something entirely unrelated (like your cover-up chestpiece, dummy) that’s just a case of the old bait-and-switch, and no one likes being handled that way.

The kind of person that handles people the way you have, Pamela, then gets angry when we stand up for ourselves and tried to play keyboard warrior like a child, is the exact reason we responded the way we did when you didn’t respond ‘instantly’ (how dumb) for 3 days, and why we have the KNUCKLEHEAD OF THE MONTH award in the first place.

Interested parties can view the ‘receipts’ (I honestly hope a grown man didn’t say that) below. Take it as good advice on how NOT to get tattooed.

The first stuff is Kevin’s edited review after we mentioned a blank 1 star review from a stranger is pretty silly. Then we called him a clown, which he is, but not the funny kind. After that is our 18-month correspondence with Pamela, where she’d never respond to simple requests for info or suggestions on how to move forward until we told her we were moving on. We think they’re in order. The only people reading all of that shit are likely Pamela and Kevin themselves. Hey dummies, don’t be jerks anymore.