Douche of the Week

So, through the inspiration of this week's particular douche, i've decided to write a new weekly blog about super-douches that stand out amongst the normal everyday douchery.

This particular douche was supposed to come work as an artist at our tattoo shop. He was coming from Arkansas. So this dude, let's call him John Mcclure, rolls into the shop around 8pm one night. He had spent two days driving here to VA from AR after talking to the owner here about coming to work. Our owner had already given him the details on what his cut would be, what the shop would provide for him, all that jazz. So anyway, he rolls in at 8pm one night, Leigh and I introduce ourselves, give him the tour, show him the portfolios, shoot the shit. We talk about how there's a lot of tattoo shops in town, few good ones, mostly shit ones. We talk about how this shop generally stays busy and has gotten busier every month we've been open. Tell him about what he should be expecting to make. Then i start talking to him about his percentage and tell him that he's going to be tipping me out at the end of the night, exactly what everyone else tip's me, 10% of their take home.

As a little background on what my job here at the shop entails, I come to work generally 2 hours before everyone else. I make the place sparkling clean, to the point where at least a couple times a week we get a, "wow, this is the cleanest tattoo shop i've been in", i take a bit of pride in that. I also handle all the paperwork, deal with most of the customers questions, tell them what can be done, what can't be done. I Line the artists up with work, Answer the phones, I check inventory, i order what we need, i scrub the tubes and autoclave them for the artists, I get the artists anything they need while they're tattooing whether it be paper towels, lunch, whatever. My job is basically to make sure all the artists have to do is tattoo, i do everything else for them so they can focus on their art. Not to toot my own horn, i've also been told i'm very good with the customers and keep them coming in. Don't get me wrong, the job is pretty easy if you're not half retarded. All it takes is some friendly conversation, knowing how to clean well, and being able to answer the kind of questions that after working at a tattoo shop for a few years, you should be able to answer.

It's an easy job, but nothing i can afford to do for free, and 10% of your daily net ain't bad. If you make $400 then you owe me $40 for running around for you all day making you and the customers happy.

So anyway, this particular douche starts bitching about having to tip me out at the end of the night, saying it's not fair that he only gets 40% (which is wrong, he's actually getting 45% because he's tipping me out of the net and not the gross, but i'm no accountant). a 50/50 split for someone starting at a shop isn't bad, it's not like you can't get a raise, you will get a raise, as long as you stay, do your work, and don't be a douche. Well it raised about 5 minutes of discussion and It was closing time by now, so we locked up the shop and left. I gave John directions to get to a hotel for the night with the expectations that he'd be back in the morning to start working.

The next day comes and dude never shows up. Apparently he was real pussy-hurt over the percentage discussion and, i don't know, figures he can do better somewhere else, whatever, we win and we don't have to work with the douche. We don't hear anything about it for a week or so. Then out of nowhere Leigh answers the phone and who is it, John Mcclure's mommy, she starts ripping into Leigh about how nice of a boy her son is and how she can't believe how we treated him and he's been tattooing for years and we can't treat him like that......yeah, his mommy called us to complain. Did i mention this guy is 41 YEARS OLD, and he has his fucking mom call up to bitch at us for not treating him the way she thinks he deserves.

So yeah, he wins the very first DOUCHE OF THE WEEK trophy, i honestly don't know if someone next week will top it, but we'll see. working at a tattoo shop, there's never a lack of douches to go around