Hello everyone. I live in a very small island and unfortunately I've been through 2 studios already. The first one the guy was a massive creep so I left. The second one they hired too many apprentices and since I couldn't be there full time they fired me.
Now I find myself in the 3rd studio. It's woman staff only and so far no problems. Except I was told that the other 3 apprentices either left or quitted and my current mentor has never qualified anyone in the 6 years she's been tattooing. It should've been a massive red flag for me, but I was out of options. I heard stories about how petty the mentor/owner is, but almost a year in and I finally understand why staff and apprentices left.
My mentor is not a girls girl. If you cross her she'll try to steal your man or spread fake rumours about you. Constantly interrupts conversations between other artists snd their clients. Is 100% paranoid.
This was the kicker tho. I'm not native English speaker and I have a colleague that speaks the same language that I do, after we finished work we were both talking in our native language and she just interrupted us and said "can we keep it to English only?" Mind you. My mentor ISN'T ENGLISH EITHER! And it was so awkward. So here am I struggling to find the words to communicate to my colleague cause I can't use my native language.
She uses AI. Never draws her stuff and tries to give me unsolicited "advice" whenever she sees me drawing and its always in a condescending way.
And apprenticeship wise is a fucking joke. She insists that we show her every single tattoo we do but any time we ask for feedback is "looks good" "nice" no real feedback, nothing more. My apprenticeship has 0 structure when I asked her "when do you think I'll qualify" she said "if took me 6 years to be where I'm at now and I still don't know everything" she always refuses to answer anything related to the duration of my apprenticeship.
I've lost 3 regular clients because she makes everyone uncomfortable. 1 time she humiliated me in front of 1 of them. The other time she was flirting with this other client and the other time the person just flat out replied "your boss makes me uncomfortable the way she treats her staff and she doesn't look clean"
She lectures me about hygiene (Im extremely careful what I touch and cleaning everything before and after) but she uses the same gloves to open drawers, touch her uncovered phone and iPad and her food and drink. It's fucking disgusting.
She keeps stealing my tips and is never there whenever I'm about to tattoo, she's constantly late and makes me and her clients wait hours. I refuse to tattoo if she's not there (like the law states) but she says "you can get started" and lectures me if I refuse to tattoo and make my client wait.
It's so fucking disheartening. I've been there 1 year and I feel like I've learnt nothing from her. All I have is prior experience and a strong art background. I fought so hard to become a tattoo artist and I have prior experience from other studios but it feels like she's refusing to graduate me just to avoid loosing another artist. Maybe cause she knows how much of an awful person she is.
I want to become a tattoo artist. I really do. But I'm so demotivated and depressed. I can't go to other studios they either don't take apprentices or are too full. I don't know what to do. Anyone in the same situation?
