lucky seven

today marks a bit of a mile stone…

…although i guess it’s been one for a few years now.

i’ve always felt i was destined for political aspirations. why? because i’m charismatic, i’m chatty, and i can’t seem to hold a job for more than four years…

…until this one.

i finally found my niche working in the tattoo industry. it’s a good fit for me – the schedule is flexible, the wardrobe is über casual, and i can say “fuck” in front of customers. what more could i ask for?

today marks seven years i’ve been with atomic, so let’s throw down seven fun facts:

it saved me from being homeless – the day i started with atomic i got the certified letter telling me the auction date for the home i’d lived in, at that point, for almost thirty-one years. and thanks to this job i’m still sitting in it typing this to you.

who am i? a question for the ages… – after seven years, and multiple revisions of my job description, i just shortened it to “i get shit done”. the bosses agreed. i still don’t have a title, and have no need or want for one. my facebook profile just lists me as “sean at atomic”, which is how i sign most random business emails.

i got nothin’ – if you gave me this pic with blanks where the labels are:

13895180_1066312703424282_9057077731297184073_n

i could do about have of it. after twenty fucking years dealing with all this shit. HALF. i just label it “all that weird inner ear crap” on our pricing list. they get the idea…

the bar’s a commute…and that’s okay for many reasons – working at harold’s place the bars were RIGHT there. that meant more drunkeness both from customers AND us. i’m too old for any of that shit, and the place i’m at isn’t amongst the drunkards 99% of the time, which is nice.

“we’re a tattoo SHOP, not a tattoo SUPPLY place” – i say that at least once a weekend on the inevitable phone call asking if we can sell them needles or ink or something…”them” being scratchers, the idiots that do sub-par sub-sterile tattooing out of your kitchen for beer. but getting supplies is getting more difficult as regulations clamp down, so they start calling shops. would you call a steak house and ask to buy meat to cook at home?

it ain’t like it used to be – i remember when the “tattoo boom” happened in the nineties and people would want to get a tattoo that said something about themselves. now most just want their tattoo to SAY something. you can’t just get a golf tattoo to symbolize gramps – you’ve gotta get his name, and his birthday, and his death day. no, you don’t. just get the fucking crossed golf clubs and let people ask. “it’s for you”, you’ll tell me several times while the artist is drawing it…so YOU know what it stands for. don’t label it – and stop getting them upside down on your fucking arm so it’s right side up for you. except crosses, ’cause that shit’s hilarious!

and finally…

news of the weird – people always ask me what the weirdest tattoo is that i’ve either seen or had somebody ask for. the one that sticks out the most for me still occasionally haunts me safari cache for some reason, but it’s a woman who (and this is common) did her own mock up on notebook paper (torn out of a spiral, no less) then took a picture of it and sent it via email for a price quote. it was a gray simple drawing of a mother and child, almost christ and madonna like, with black script lettering over it that said “Juan’s Big Titted Bitch”. the phrase alone is bad, but wanting it over a simple design to represent that you’ve breastfed juan’s kids with yo’ big bitch tits makes it all the worse. i tried to find the image in my email history but it was no go, and just in case she got it somewhere (i emailed back she’d have to come in so we could size it up to give a price and never heard from her afterwards) i tried to google it, but you can imagine the images “juan’s big titted bitch” brought up, and it wasn’t of tattoos.

going off google, juan likes his women biiiiiiiiiiiiiig.

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