Tattoo Apprenticeship went south. Need advice.

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This is a long, but very important post.

Some information is withheld in detail to protect myself , but I will try to keep it as detailed as possible.

***TLDR: Started a paid tattoo apprenticeship four months ago. It's been my dream my whole life to do art for a living. I have sacrificed a lot for this opportunity, so this is a big deal. I find out the owner and mentor is a fraud, volatile alcoholic and a narcissist. She physically assaulted me and another employee last week, and has been teaching me nothing of the trade during this time-she has just been procuring free labor from me. Tension is thick, the other employee is leaving at the end of the week. How do I end this properly ? How do I continue somewhere else? Should I stick this out given her history already? Help me please. ***

LONG VERSION WITH DETAILS:

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I have been trying to get an apprenticeship for roughly 10 years now in the tattoo field, with two that had fell through at various stages on their behalf.

I approached someone to apprentice under, and said I would pay them for the apprenticeship along with working for free (40+ hours a week). They agreed, and they said it would be a six month time frame for the entire process.

I started in January, not knowing much about my mentor. She was supposed to have a contract drawn up with an agreement, but it never manifested. I asked her time and time again, and got a different excuse every time.

Some odd things started coming to my attention like :

1. She was only a few days sober from alcohol. ( which is fine, but have you ever been around an unstable alcoholic who's drying out? Not fun.)

2. Has legal issues from assaulting a friend ( and former employee of hers) days before I started.

3. Hadn't drawn anything for a tattoo. I have literally never seen her draw in four months...

4. Wasn't booked up in the slightest.

5. Her teaching methods included an outdated DVD about the autoclave from who knows where, and me googling things or getting on youtube to watch videos. ( she wasn't ever there to teach me).

6. Constantly criticizing everyone but herself. ( everyone is bad/ not a good tattoo artist even the people she employs there)

7. Extremely inflated ego..and every picture in the shop was of her. ( shes a conventionally attractive person with tattoos) She wanted an all female shop, and constantly wanted me to "dress up" etc , which i don't do if I'm scrubbing toilets for free and mopping all day...

8. Ignoring messages and complaints from paying customers, for sometimes months at a time.

9. Hazardous work environment. ( had an in house procedure done to remove implants in her face and left syringes/needles/suture hooks out and told me to clean up her station without letting me know any of those things were present in the rubbish she asked me to clean.) Also is required by law to get me a hepatitis shot, and has yet to do so.

10. Spending upwards of 2k in one week on head tattoos for herself but will not buy printer ink for the rest of the shop so they can do stencils for tattoos, and not getting supplies that we desperately need.

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So these are just a few things i can think of at the moment. But you get the gist of whats happening. This is not including some of the "guest artists" that have been an absolute nightmare...starting fights, yelling, and fucking up clients bodies because they're on drugs or drinking during work.

I began to realize she was a hack. Then a narcissist. Then a pretty severe alcoholic. Her boyfriend passed away over a year ago... His family hated her, she caught a lot of flack and blocked all of his family members on social media. Things that now are making sense in hindsight.

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So this brings me to my final point. She went on a trip, again, out of town last week with her bf ( she is almost never at the shop). Me and the other employee basically run the shop at this point because shes so preoccupied with her new love. She is maybe there when shes not on "vacation" 5 hours a week tops. She comes back from vacation, blows off all the appointments for the day to take us out for an "employee appreciation lunch". I complied, i'm broke so a free meal is great for all the money we made her over the last week and a half. She was in a good enough mood, then she orders a beer with her burger. Then that turned into more beer at a bar down the road, shots etc with me , her and the other employee.

She's supposed to be in recovery, and her boyfriend catches wind that shes drinking and shows up to the bar. A confrontation ensues, he drives us all back to the tattoo shop.

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She tells him to fuck off, hits him and he leaves. Then she turns her anger towards us and starts relentlessly hitting and scratching and cussing at the other employee. At one point to restrain her he had to get on top of her and bat her hands away ( she has those claw dagger nails) and he never hit her once. He goes to pack his stuff up and she attacks him from behind, throws his machines, and his supplies and inks to the floor and is literally clawing his face and screaming at him.

At this point I'm so upset and I don't know what to do, because this is my boss and mentor. I'm drunk, but I'm just bewildered at what's going on in front of me. I see my coworker struggling to maintain his composure as he's eating punches and kicks left and right. She even spits in his face at one point.

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I intervene, break them apart and tell them to knock it off or I'm calling the police. Then she starts to hit me.

She started pummeling my arm, just for telling her to stop assaulting my coworker. At this point I could not get her to stop so I took her by the shoulders as hard as i could and just started screaming in her face to stop it. I walked out and called her boyfriend, meanwhile shes destroying the lobby, ripping things off the wall etc and wrestling with her employee on the lobby floor.

Her boyfriend comes and gets her, I sleep it off in the break room and then head home.

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She apologizes the next day, via text message. Then she shows back up to work two days later with a pretty salty attitude. We were both anxious about her return, and the other employee is on a month long trip so shes not aware of whats going on ( she knew we were both attacked though and was not very shocked). My boss, this same day, sends me a message on facebook about "me not making my apprentice payments for some time now" , and then starts criticizing and calling me out on a group chat over a piercing that she didn't bother to do that ended up complaining ( it should also be noted that her piercing "teaching" was literally just making me do piercings and figuring it out on the spot which is very unprofessional and cruel).

I become pretty mad at this point with how shes acted all week like this ( the assaulting) wasn't a big deal ( even brushing it off and laughing while she came in with her bf) and how shes been acting basically during this entire apprenticeship. I said " then i just wont pierce anymore ( i didn't want to learn anyways i just want to tattoo) and I also said i'd fix it and refund her money. I got no response.

She has not responded to be about becoming a shop manager ( which i am by default because shes not there) , and getting paid for it. I handle all the money( including paying the employees), customers, forms, cleaning, appointments and designs for 90% of the clientele. This was discussed at the beginning of the apprenticeship that I would eventually be shop manager and get paid hourly on top of everything else, or i could take a higher percentage of commission when I started tattooing.

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SO ( sorry I know this is long) , I started doing small tattoos , since I need practice. I had appointments and flash lined up ( im talking 8 a day for a few weeks because I was so anxious to get going) and she made me cancel ALL of them. " I need to be here to watch you, they need to be your friends etc." WELL shes never there? How am I supposed to practice? I was able to convince her to let me do three over the last month ( she was present during 1 and didn't help me at all, she took selfies in the corner). They turned out fine for my first three tattoos, but of course she had to criticize them. So I'm pretty much just working for free up there, all the time and because of that I'm not able to make money to pay my bills that are now becoming delinquent. I also have paid her close to a grand, but stopped payments about a month or so ago when I realized she wasn't teaching me anything, she never got a contract, and that I was just basically spinning my wheels up there for no reason.

I just want to finish this apprenticeship, but I can't even look at her as a trustworthy person, let alone a mentor thats responsible for teaching me my trade for my career. Not after how I've seen she treats her employees,myself, her clients.. how wretched she is as a human being, what an awful mother she is, and honestly, what a fraud she is. Beauty is truly deceiving, because shes very ugly on the inside.

So, How do I end this gracefully? I plan on just picking up my coworker tomorrow ( like usual) and opening the shop, getting my stuff, signing out of everything up there and leaving a note. Should I do anything else? Am I wrong? Am I being over dramatic? Is this normal? Please..any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Submitted April 23, 2019 at 05:58AM by PISSANGEL666 http://bit.ly/2KW419x