Two parts here. First, this woman left us a 3 star review and accused us of using jewelry in her piercing that was ‘not recommended’ which we read as telling people we used the ‘wrong’ jewelry. It reads like we ran out of the right stuff and substituted something inferior or that we just don’t know what we’re doing maybe, neither of which is true. We used the correct jewelry for her piercing, which we have learned from experience to be the best. She also seems to think that a 3 star review isn’t negative, that it’s ‘average’ and we’re gonna take issue with that as well. These are not the reasons she’s on KOTM. The reason she gets the recognition is that after we corrected her and complained ever so slightly about her review she chose to double-down on her negativity and threatened to change her review to 1 star, like we would even give a fuck.

Well, we do.

So yes, 3 stars is the slap-dead average between the 1 and 5 stars available from the good ol people at google reviews, but it’s significantly less than the 4.7 star AVERAGE rating we have there. So in our view, miss Ashley, it’s a negative review. Let’s not forget the big-eyed emoji you included or the idea that we somehow withheld what type of jewelry we used, that it was ‘not recommended’ and that you must’ve made a mistake (presumably by coming to us to get your piercing). Still, she said the piercer was nice and included a photo of her piercing in her edited reply, showing what a good job had actually been done. And yeah, we’ve had other people say stuff like ‘well I don’t leave 5 stars for anyone’ or ‘you have to go above and beyond to get 5 stars from me’ because those people are entitled dickheads who don’t understand how business works. Knucklehead of the Month was started to combat this kind of bullshit because service workers need someone to stand up for them, especially in the face of such obvious fuckery.

We ask everyone that leaves us a review to leave us 5 stars or say something before leaving their review so we can make sure they have an experience that is worth five stars if they feel like it wasn’t. It’d be even better if they said something while they were still at the shop. But keyboards, they do strange things to people these days. We have a 5 stars-or-nothing policy here, either leave us a 5 star review or no review at all, or don’t come back. You don’t like that? then this certainly applies to you. Don’t darken our doorstep if you think your crummy attitude or weird star-limitations are more important than our ability to provide for our families and that’s what these bad reviews are trying to do- influence others away from the given business that’s being reviewed. and Ashley had a good experience until she decided to talk trash.

She got a good piercing at a good price and the piercer was nice to her, her words.

It’s a shame she’ll never be allowed back.

Is it though? Honestly Ashley seems like the kind of person that waits until the last minute to merge onto the interstate, that lovely kind of human who just shoves her front quarter panel in front of your car and dares you to watch your insurance premiums go up. Remember those people that would get FURIOUS if you weren’t wearing a mask during COVID, even if you were outside? Yeah, seems like one of those. The kind of arrogant individual that would leave us a negative review, then have the gall to say it’s NOT negative but threaten to make it so if we kept on. Well, here you go Cray Lady, might as well make it one star. On no, whatever shall we do? How will we go on? Same shit, different Cray Cray Lay-Day.

Look, Ashley and anyone else reading this that finds it particularly off-putting. We really do work hard to make sure people have a good experience here. We want it to be fun and memorable for all the best reasons and we want you to be happy with your service and to come back and see us as soon as you can. That’s just what we call good business. But if you want to cast dispersions or throw shade or whatever you want to call it, fuck right off. This is how we make a living and trying to hurt any or all of us with some poorly worded or downright purposely shitty review without so much as a phone call to get clarification or peace of mind or whatever you wanna call that is simply THE WORST WAY TO DO THE THING. Stop it. Please.

Don’t do it to us, don’t do it to any service business or worker just because you want to feel powerful for 30 seconds in your own head. It’s self-righteousness writ large and it’s bad for you.

Personally, I couldn’t give fuck less about your crummy little pissant review, I just think talking shit on the INTERNET is fun, so maybe I’m just like you Ashley. Think about that. FML.

Service workers: You don’t now, nor do you EVER have to let someone mistreat you. I get it, maybe you really need that job, or all the jobs in your field are similar (I certainly know every tattoo shop I’ve ever worked at has had their fair amount of assholes and crazies). Let me take this time to encourage you to stand up for yourself in times like these, when people take it upon themselves to take issue with you for some imagined reason like miss Ashley here. Tell those people to fuck off. Yeah you may get fired, but it’s a public service that may help keep society from imploding in on itself because social media has turned so many people into, well, the word ‘shitheads’ comes to mind, but I’m sure you can come up with something more articulate than that.

We are Lighthouse Tattoo. We work hard everyday to give our clientele the best experience we possibly can while keeping prices affordable. We will stand up for ourselves against those who would seek to do us harm. You leave us a bad review and double down when we mention it doesn’t seem fair? Well, that’s what Knucklehead of the Month is for. Call it a Reviewer review.

P.S. We called her a Local Guide not because we read her other reviews, but because is says ‘local guide’ under her name in the review.