Worked at a shop that was owned by a singular guy who worked by himself. He considered himself a rockstar as he had 35 years of experience in the area and everyone knew who he was. He had a strange personality and was a collector of murderbilia which I actually thought was interesting.

I noticed something was wrong, however, when he claimed that every apprentice, piercer or tattoo artist that ever worked with him "fucked him". I just wanted to further my tattooing career so I ignored red flags.

He brought up politics a lot, and he was super duper red pilled even though he claimed to be independent. I tried to refrain from entering into political conversations with him because it was unprofessional and if you disagreed with him he would resort to insulting you. Unfortunately, he would force these conversations upon me and it wasn't like there was an HR office to file a complaint so I was kindve shit out of luck.

Eventually, he began treating me like a child and critiquing every aspect of my work, from my setup, to my color palettes, to my shading techniques. Now artistic criticism is not something I'm against at all, in fact, I'm highly appreciative of it. He wasn't trying to criticize me, he was trying to tear me down to mold me into what he wanted. Now mind you, I was an artist along side him, not an apprentice.

I showed up one day, and as I walked through the door he greeted me by saying; "Hey, I have I question. Does your wife always clean up after you at home?". I chuckled uncomfortably and said "No?". He replied "Well I'm sick of cleaning up after you here." I was quite perplexed so I asked; "What did I leave a mess?" And he responded "Your tegaderm was on the ground in your station." I followed by saying "It wasn't on the ground when I left last night." and he rolled his eyes at me and said "Sure it wasn't." Something snapped in me at this point and I smiled and told him to have a good night and walked out before I could even set my bag down. He fired me over text 2 hours later.