22.
“I had a 16-year-old girl come in. She wanted a tattoo of a rose on the side of her neck. Now, I’m never going to entertain a neck tattoo for a teenager, but she didn’t even bother to bring a parent with her to sign, so it went from a certain no to an absolute never in a million years. She got pretty upset and made a scene, and I told her to leave. After a lot of arguing, she made some idle threats and left. The following week, a furious, middle-aged woman comes barging into the shop, screaming that she’s going to have us shut down and sent to jail. Apparently, her daughter had gotten a neck tattoo without her knowledge. I then recognized the girl before peaking in our front windows. It all clicked. She’d found some sketchy artist in a kitchen to tattoo the rose on her neck that I said no to. I told the mother to call her daughter in, and her daughter pointed to me and told her I did it.”
“The tattoo was terribly done, so the mom had several reasons to be so livid. She started getting upset and yelling again, so I let her yell until she had calmed down enough to listen. Then, I explained to her how, the week before, I had told her daughter outright that I wouldn’t give her a neck tattoo. Her daughter screamed that I was a liar, and Mom started up with another round of yelling, this time about how I was calling her daughter a liar.
It was around this time that I decided to point to our CCTV camera in the front area. I told her if she would like to, she could review the footage of me denying her daughter, the temper tantrum, and then her daughter leaving the shop. Her daughter started looking nervous around this time, but she didn’t say anything. Meanwhile, I find the footage from the day, and Mom watches the entire interaction I described go down.
Then, with the coldest look of anger, betrayal, and disappointment, she turns to her daughter. She takes her outside of the shop quietly and then screams at her for everything that has just happened and how humiliating it all has been. After a bit, the daughter comes in and gives me a very sarcastic apology, and then leaves. Aside from one or two exceptions, I haven’t tattooed any minors for the last 13 years now.”
