I've been waffling for years as to whether I should get some body art. I keep chickening out. Getting inked isn't for everyone. And I still have night terrors from the time I held a friend's hand as she shook through a six-hour sit down for a massive thigh portrait. So much blood. Yuck. But I do have a few artistic ideas...
Redditor u/Paintingrefinish wanted to hear from the tat community about the times they had to weigh art over conscience by asking... Tattoo Artists of Reddit What was the most "Hard NO" moment of your career?I've seen too many friends have to do cover up art. The older you get the more you realize... how stupid young you was. And now that pot leaf has to be turned into shamrock or a rose, because what do you tell your kids? That's why it's good to know that there are tattoo artists out there with a conscience, and a brain to think for you when your's malfunctions.
Bad Idea
artist tattoo GIFGiphy18 year old girl wanted her considerably older bf's name just above her vagina for her first tattoo. Hard no, and had to explain why it wasn't a good decision.
That's a Limp Idea...
I was asked to put a full-fledged erect penis on someone's back, right above his butt crack. Veins and all. I would have considered it but there was some heavy breathing involved and... yeah, no, I do not want to spend hours and hours lovingly doing that, thanks very much.
Think Ahead!
I had a conversation with my tattoo artist about this. He said he wouldn't do any "instant tough guy" tattoos, mainly face, neck or hand tattoos, unless the person already had a good deal of coverage on other parts of their body.
Had an artist make an exception for my wife and I. Our wedding rings are tattooed on and (at the time) it was our only ink. He had the same rules generally, but was super nice and made an exception for that reason.
Not for Cash
My dad was a tattoo artist in the 80's/90's he was REALLY passionate about doing good artwork, especially mythological creatures (dragons & pegasus were both specialties of his) he refused to do partners names, when we needed cash he would do a bit of work in a bigger shop where he would have to basically ink whatever the customer wanted, he used to affectionately call it "wh*ring himself out."
Bless You
Judging No Way GIF by CameoGiphySevered Jesus Christ head on the butt cheek.
Seriously... what are people thinking? This ink is for LIFE. There is no body white out or eraser. Thank the Lord for the people willing to... just say no.
People Break Down The Best Loophole They've Ever Exploited
The Sting
Weekend Spider GIFGiphyI asked a scorpion in my hand, when I was 19. Had a hard no from tattoo artist. I thank him forever!
No Removals
It's not the whole shops policy, but my friend won't do names unless it's their children. They could have it tattooed over, but they'd still forever know what's underneath it. And the shop doesn't do removals.
This is a good policy. The guy who taught me to tattoo would refuse to do names unless it was of children's or parent's.
When he was planning to move to another country, he decided to not turn down any work as he needed as much money as he could make in a few months.
A young guy got his girlfriend's name tattooed on his arm, despite being warned not to and advised to think about it, he insisted so, that's what he got.
Three weeks later he wanted a cover up. It wasn't even healed yet. Six large black Olde English letters running down his forearm.
The only suggestion he was given was to find another girl called Nadine.
Bobby & Becky!
Story time!
I was in the shop shooting the crap and looking through the books, while my buddy was in the chair getting some new ink. Young couple walks in.
They're maybe 19-20 years old and pawing each other to the point that I thought they were going to fall down and have sex right there on the floor.
Girl says "We need matching Bobby and Becky Forever tattoos with hearts and flowers!"
Artist (also a friend) doesn't even look up "No, go away. You been together what? One month? Two? Come back in five years"
The girl argued for about a minute and then they left
Artist "I hate doing coverups of my own work".
Keep the $60
I wanted a tattoo on my finger back when those were popular. Went in for a consult, front desk quoted me $60. I get to my appointment, my artist looks me in the eye and told me no way in hell would he tattoo my hand, he would do an arm or I could go elsewhere. I agreed and said he was the expert and I'd do what he thought was best. He still honored the $60. I wish I remembered literally anything about him (that was a messed up year for me in general and my memories are fuzzy at best) so I could thank him, because he was right.
No Hate Here!
GiphyMy dad owned a tattoo shop despite not being an artist (his buddy was and my dad basically provided funding while his buddy ran the shop in the partnership) and their rule was that the only hate symbol they would do was a swastika, but it would have to be on your forehead so everyone could see what a sh*tty person you were.
Forget Her
My dad has mine and my brother's tattooed on his shoulder. When the artist asked if he wanted to add his wife's name my dad said "only if it's somewhere that can be cut off." He's been married three times and has a sense of humor about it.
I once considered getting my SO's initials as a tattoo. Since we share the same initials, I would simply end up with my own initials (though of course I'd know better). Didn't do it though.
Please Leave
I was a tattoo artist and I was asked to draw a dog with a human head, shark fins, cat legs, and a lizard tail, at first I went along with it but i asked to make sure that was what he wanted. He then said "give it a d***" i just asked him to leave. This was a few years ago and still remember it very clearly.
Bad Author
I was asked by a maniac to tattoo 4 years worth of his dead girlfriend's essays all over him until there isn't a spot with his skin color left.
No Refunds
When I got my first tattoo I complimented my artist's collection of Virgin Mary designs. He laughed and said people were shocked that he was Jewish when they saw them. I asked if that was ever a problem. He said, "Nope. I always take payment first anytime someone wants a swastika or something, then halfway through I tell them. If they still want it, it's just a job. But if they don't, they leave with half a hate symbol and I don't give refunds." I always loved that story.
WARNING!
Anybody who wanted swastikas or hate symbols. Anybody clearly messed up. Anybody who couldn't pay.
One tat artist here, on another askreddit thread, said they love doing that since it means they are installing a warning label on the person who clearly needs a warning label.
Not saying you should do that I am saying I laughed at the mental image of a guy excited to slap a "threat. Threat. This one is a threat" label on someone.
Oh Hell No!
This was about 30 years ago. I was getting a tattoo and all of the sudden from another chair erupted a "get the freak out of here" and a lot of arguing about a tattoo being halfway done. Dude was getting a name tattooed with a date. Artist assumed it was a birthdate or something. The dude told the artist halfway through that it was the name of someone he killed and the date he killed her.
Space Needed
sexy guy GIFGiphyI know a tattoo artist who has a very firm rule about not tattooing hands or neck unless there's no more room left on the person. Always thought that was fair lol.
That Girl
Not a tattoo artist, but my friends are. The one that sticks out in mind was this cashmeousside type of 18 year old white girl went into his shop and asked him to tattoo her knuckles, neck, and do a full sleeve. The reason he denied it upfront is because he knew she was basically attempting to ruin her social life and be denied jobs forever just because of it.
I think I've decided, I want some ink on my back, or right shoulder blade. I'm thinking... Madonna, Adele, Buffy walking hand in hand as they walk Scooby-Doo. Who can draw that for me? Who will paint me? Send DMs... ;)
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Companies are typically in business for profit, and very few have the goal of keeping the customer's interests in mind.
But some corporations go even further to get more out of their customer in exchange for their "quality services" and as a result, the line between general business and scam becomes blurred.
Redditor jwwin asked:
"What is a predatory business that shouldn't be legal, but is?"
Students paying an exorbitant amount in tuition in order to seek higher learning should be warned there are additional expenses to cover for.
A Textbook Example
"College textbooks, they will release an 'updated' edition every semester but the information doesn't change. And then after you spent a fortune on the books the places that buy textbooks will give you like 5% of what you paid for the book."
– teethalarm
A "Double Whammy"
"Former Prof here. I talked with a book rep about this once and learned a lot. It is a bit complicated but worth understanding. Book publishers rely on large quantity sales to make any money on a book because the cost of production is so high up front (author, editors, printing, etc.). So, for a book to be profitable, it has to sell a lot of copies to spread the cost of production across all the books. A paperback in the fiction section might sell 100,000 or more. A textbook might sell as few as 1,000. So, the publisher needs everyone to buy the book to break even."
"Now add colleges into the mix. Somewhere in the 1980s (give or take), colleges saw publishers selling books and making larger profits on them than the college bookstore was making per book. So they got the bright idea to start buying used texts and reselling them. Before that, a text would come out and 97% (making the number up but it was close to that) of the students would buy the book in year one, 85% in year two, 75% in year three, 60% in year four and 50% in year five. A $50 dollar book would cost $25 to make (again, making the numbers up), sell to the bookstore for $40 ($15 publisher profit), and be sold to the student for $50 ($10 bookstore profit). Across the five years, the producer would make a profit."
"Then, college bookstores began offering students $25 for a used book and selling it for $40 ($15 profit - $5 higher than that of a new book). Students would then prefer the $40 used book over the $50 new book. But that cut the publisher's sales from 97% to 50% in the first year. Because they could not sell as many books they had to do two things: (1) raise the initial price of the text to cover the production cost in 1-2 years rather than 4-5 years, and (2) cut the cycle down from 4-5 years to 1-2 years to ensure that they got sales of the book. That is a double whammy. Texts that used to cost $50 now cost $300 or more. And they have a new version out every 18 months or so. Students refuse to pay that price and that cuts the sales numbers even further forcing the price up again. And, with new editions out so frequently, it is harder to sell them back to the bookstore."
"That's why you see so many 'course packs' now - where a professor will pick a few pages from a book to give to the students. I went from having nearly every student purchasing a text in my early career to having zero students with a text late in my career. Your professor probably dislikes the state of affairs as much as you do. I cut down what books I would select because I could not justify students paying that much for what they were getting. I would also recommend students look for older editions on Amazon and the like which got me in trouble with my administration because I was not supporting the bookstore. But, it was difficult to teach from a text that no one had or had access to. The University's desire to generate revenue from texts truly was killing the chicken because it was not producing enough eggs."
"So look for an older edition on Chegg, Amazon, or the like and match it up with what your professor is teaching from the new edition. You are right, it probably has not changed. Be careful for the problems at the end of the chapter - that is often where the changes are."
– BewnieBound
These businesses parade as services but they are notorious for taking more than what you're willing to pay for.
For A Future Owner
"Rent to Own (furniture, appliances, TVs, video game systems, etc.) The mark up on the interest over time ends up costing 4 times the purchase - or more."
– PartyAlarmed3796
"Well the trick is to not pay (seems to be what a lot of people do)."
– Expensive_Ad2695
"Which is why those places are so expensive and why they're actually kinda necessary for some people."
"They're taking a pretty big risk on people with no credit, and if a person with shi*ty credit needs a refrigerator or other necessary appliance, there's usually nobody else willing to work with them. Also, most of them report to credit agencies so you can build your credit through them."
"I'm not a fan by any means and I hate that people are buying video game systems and couches through them, but I still think they're filling a need."
– Pitiful-Pension-6535
Money Sucker
"Payday loan companies – they're like financial vampires, sucking the life out of people with high-interest rates."
– neonliolia
"And yet most of them are owned by major banks... hmmmm."
"Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, JP Morgan/Chase collectively all own the largest payday lender companies."
– Bramtyre
"In Canada, there is an effort to turn Canada Post into a kind of bank that offers basic banking services to the most vulnerable. Not sure what happened to that, but it was an alternative to check cashing and payday loan rackets."
– hobbitlover
Greedy Event Vendor
"Ticket Master."
– LTVOLT
"Agreed. We went to a preseason hockey game the other week. Tickets were $5 each but there was around $8 of Ticketmaster fees for each one and you had to use their app to get in the door because the barcodes change like every 30 seconds or something. It's ridiculous."
– darfus1895
Where can citizens turn to receive genuine care without drying up their financial resources?
Big Pharma
"Health Insurance and over priced perscription drugs."
"Wife is type 1 diabetic. Her pump is over $1000 a month WITH 50% coverage. $177 for just the sensor pack. We have the best coverage we can afford."
– Dukeboys_
"US pays the middle man for health care coverage. The middle man and the health care provider come up with "health packages" you can buy into, just in case you get sick. It's just sick how they funnel money from the middle class into this."
– dcoolidge
"Healthcare insurance industry. They can straight up reject claims you should be covered for and make you jump through near endless hoops to get them to pay for the service that is part of your plan."
– ColdHardPocketChange
All Out To Get Ya
"Homeopathic 'medicine' sellers."
"Psychics"
"Domain search engine registration scams (fake emails or physical mail that shows up saying 'your domain search registration is about to expire' and look exactly like warnings that your domain name is about to expire)"
"Fake homeowner warranty/car warranty scams loaded with so many limitations and exclusions they’ll basically never pay out."
"Multilevel marketing systems like Amway."
– 4wqrewtety
Losing Sight Of Kids' Well-Being
"From my experience working in group homes for youth are awful. The owners only want money and the more kids in care the more money."
– OddReputation3765
Going Nowhere Fast
"Car insurance."
"You get penalized for using it. Even just once in some cases."
– Effective_Sundae_839
"1000% agree. I was rear ended by a hit and run driver while i was stopped at a stop sign. Literally came to a stop for 3 seconds max and got destroyed. Car insurance wanted to give me 4k and shut me up. It’s called the nuisance fee. I eventually lawyered up and got 25k out of it. But like wtf. B*tch that’s what we PAY FOR, following renewal of my policy it increased hundreds of dollars a month and that was even after i switched to a different company. 'A claim is a claim regardless who is at fault.'”
– HitBackZach
Businesses taking advantage of their customers should be a crime, yet here we are.
What companies can you think of that legally continue to look after their own profitable interests above providing a decent service?
Just the other evening, I was walking home, and I barely survived.
I tripped on a dead tree branch.
The next thing I knew, I was flying in the air and landing on my back.
My belongings were strewn about.
And my to-go burger was dead.
A simple walk.
A simple dead branch.
And almost lights out.
Redditor Typical_XJW wanted to hear about the times people eluded death, so they asked:
"How did you almost die?"
Don't even get me started on any and every car ride.
We're always moments from the end on highways.
Back in the Day...
Hunger Games Student GIFGiphy"Almost drowned when I was 5 or 6, been hospitalized twice for sepsis between 2016 and 2019, and had a stroke this year. I'm 29."
ChristmasKid88
On the Disk
"MRSA infection in the disk on my lower spine between L5 and S1. Showed up two days after a cortisone shot but the hospital said it was from something else. Was in hospital 25 days multiple emergency surgeries."
EatA**FromBack
"I worked for a doctor who did these in-house and other procedures, and it 100% made me not trust medical facilities, cleanliness, and sterilization procedures. Had about twenty patients all come down with the same gut infection, 'coincidentally,' the same patients who came in for endoscopy procedures the same day."
dimlylit_
Saved
"Saving a younger friend from drowning, he panicked and almost took me out."
loztriforce
"Had that happen with a younger cousin when we were kids. His brother and I went to save him, he climbed on both of us and pushed us under. Lifeguard didn’t even see us until he pulled younger cousin out of the water, then we popped up gasping for air."
coffeejunki
Shucked
"16-year-old farm kid me, stepdad told me to go pick up a load of corn seed for planting. I had gone with him many times before, and driven the truck (full ton dually diesel) and hauled light stuff with it. Nobody told me how different it is to haul 10,000 lbs of seed on a big flatbed trailer on gravel. I had a lot of common sense and was driving slowly and carefully."
"Still… 10,000+ lbs pushed me down a gravel hill skidding, praying to god I stopped before the stop sign at the T intersection to a busy highway. I came to a grinding halt JUST as the front of the truck crossed the plane where the gravel turned to asphalt. A semi was coming from one direction and regular cars from the other. I shudder thinking about what if on that one. Don’t let untrained kids tow potentially deadly, heavy trailers, with zero training."
datnetcoder
Finding Tracks
College Sports Sport GIF by Sealed With A GIFGiphy"Was backwoods camping in Yellowstone and if I hadn’t considered for 30 seconds if I REALLY needed to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would have walked out of my tent headfirst into a brown bear, which I heard before leaving and found tracks of next to my tent in the morning. Spookiest moment of my life in hindsight."
danvo5
Bears are a no go for me.
Camping is an even bigger HECK NO!!
Several Strikes
Reassuring Jimmy Fallon GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonGiphy"Twice. 1. Woke up to my apartment on fire."
"2. Hit head-on by a drunk driver on a small bus, just after everyone got off bus exploded."
lizard_king0000
Oh Barb
"Lmao okay, so I was getting my teeth cleaned, and I got nitrous oxide because I have so many exposed roots. Well, my hygienist at the time was this lovely lady from Minnesota. Kinda flaky, but super sweet, and talked about her family all the time. So I'm in the chair and she hooks up my mask, and away we go. I actually fell asleep! Except not so much."
"Turns out Barb had forgotten to turn the oxygen on and had been feeding me straight nitrous. She only noticed because I started gasping for air while unconscious. So that's how I almost died at the dentist. I never saw Barb again, but I tell you, that was the best nap of my life!"
CharismaticAlbino
Climb Up
"I was snorkeling. I had my other stuff stored on a rock by the water, about 3 meters high. When I got out, I decided to climb straight up. Almost at the top, the rock I was hoisting myself up on came off and I fell back first onto the coral. If a friendly wave hadn’t come in, I would have broken my back, at least."
Yugan-Dali
Blood Loss
"I was diagnosed with a rare fatal blood disorder from birth, doctors projected I’d live till about 6 and then die from massive blood loss. As this was the mid-90s, they tested the idea of using stem cells from my sibling's umbilical cord; administering the first successful stem cell transplant from a sibling donor and I’m still here to tell the tale!"
Material_Cry1697
These were some tremendously close calls.
Do you have any near-death experiences to share? Let us know in the comment below.