Crazy Client Stories

We’ve all seen photos of awful tattoos, and heard horror stories of the pain endured and money spent on tattoos. But hey- isn’t it time to hear the artist’s side?

Chicago-native Tish Bar has been tattooing for six years. Bar currently resides in Colorado, but has worked for the renown Jade Dragon Tattoo in Chicago, and The Shop Tattoo Studio.

One of the strangest requests Bar has ever gotten was when she began working at the Jade Dragon Tattoo. She was the only female artist at the time. She was called up front by her coworker Mike. 

“He directs me to a middle aged man, early 40s maybe, who wanted a tattoo. I approach him all cool, asking him what he was interested in getting. At first he was real hesitant in responding, and he seemed shy. I tried to ease him by bullshitting. Then he said, ‘I want a beetle on my tip.’ Now I will be honest and say that it didn't click the first time so I asked, ‘Where?’”

Where? His penis.

“I look back at mike and in my head I am wondering if they are fucking with me. As a newbie in a shop you sometimes go through hazing. [I was] caught a bit off guard. I asked the customer to wait a moment. I walked back to Mike and inform him what the guy wanted.”

Mike’s response, Bar said, was “And?” Bar said she would not do the tattoo. In her own words, “There is never enough money for me to look at someone's junk.”

And while working at The Shop Tattoo Studio, still in the early stages of her tattoo career, Bar said she encountered the client from hell.

“This white woman in her upper 30's wanted to get the Irish heart with the crown for her newborn child. I was like sure, small little heart would take about 30 minutes. She wanted it on her right ankle, and I noticed when she showed me the spot she already had a badly done shamrock.”

Bar saw this as an opportunity to not only practice tattooing, but to do a cover-up tattoo. But she would soon find out why the first tattoo was so bad…

“I kid you not, as soon I turned the machine on she started nervously shaking her leg. As a new artist it's the worst to have a client who can't sit still and it’s even worse when they start screaming in pain. Usually I am a patient person but she took the cake. It was so bad that the lady called her husband so he could hold her leg down. What should have been a 30 minute tattoo took over 2 hours! I couldn't finish the tattoo.”

Bar had to ask her coworker and shop owner, Hoezae, to step in and finish what he could.  “Learning to deal with special clients like this is not an issue anymore,” Bar said.