A tattoo artist having a bad day...?

Damn! It has happened to all of us, who hasn't had a bad day at work? What about 2? Well, tattoo artists and tattooist are not exempt from these inconveniences. We are not machines, we are humans and we screw up now and then, some more than others as in any profession, but the problem I see is; you can

not screw up in tattooing!! At least not in a level that will bring all kinds of damage to our customers.

Just think about it for a second, if you screw up when drawing, painting, sculpting, etc, fine, you just start over, but when you screw up when

tattooing.......boy it has consequences, very serious, permanent ones, and what most people don't realize is that these

consequences can even be life threatening when a poorly trained person holds a tattoo machine on his/her hands and starts putting ink into someone else's skin, and that danger is what I want to talk about here.

I get emails very often, like most people working in tattoo studios do, from people who want to learn how to tattoo. I have thought about it but I haven't done it yet for many reasons, time, working space size, lack of real commitment from people, I forgot to answer, they don't show up, just to mention a few; though probably the biggest reason is because I don't consider myself yet at the level of being anybody's guidance in this industry, and I do respect it. I don't know if you ever actually get to that point anyway, at least if you are serious about this and push yourself constantly to satisfy not only yourself and your loyal (for better or worst) customers but also your most skilled peers.

But it has made me think what would I do if I would actually have an apprentice some day,

where would I start from? So I made a kind of program once and the first thing I would definitely cover is cross contamination and everything related to hygiene. Why? Because it doesn't matter a fuck if you are the most skillful big-shit visual artist who could build a tattoo machine with his feet while having his eyes wide shut if you don't know the potential dang

er and seriousness of handling body fluids without responsibility.

I have seen many great artists in conventions answer their phones while having the sam

e gloves on they are tattooing with, tattooist using nothing else but toilet paper to create what they think is a barrier between the surface and the working station.

And I could wrote a novel about the astonishing stupidities I have seen tattooists and tattoo

artists doing in terms of hygiene. And the thing is, I do care because it affects the industry I love and the people who are doing things right. To add to this, at least here in Finland, I have had health "inspectors" coming to my studio and "checking" all my stuff. Well, I could again write a novel of the incredible things I have seen, but just to keep it short I'll mention a couple of situations I have actually gone through with them:

SITUATION 1

Me: Yeah so here is my autoclave and ultrasonic cleaner.

Inspector: Oh, you have one of this!

Me: Well.....yeah....and I have my autoclave checked every month by this lab to which I send my spore tests..

Inspector: Test what?....

SITUATION 2

Inspector: So why do you have 2 different gloves?

Me: Oh, that's because the black ones are latex, I used them for cleaning only, when I am not handling petrolatum-based products, the others are nitrile, I used them when tattooing since I am using petrolatum-based products on the skin basically during the whole process.

Inspector: Oh! So why can't you use the latex ones when tattooing?

Me: Well, as I said, because I am using petrolatum-based products at that time....

Inspector: Is it dangerous?

Me: Well...........you know about the condoms and not using petrolatum-based lubricants?

Inspector: Mmmmmm...yeah....ok....

Me:.........................................ok

Not to mention that they called me one day earlier to let me know they were coming at 2 o'clock on the next day.......which they shouldn't!!!! They are supposed to bust you on the spot, what's the p

oint

of coming over if they are warning you 24 hours earlier, by that time, anybody would have already cleaned the place on every corner, even if done once a year, putt each thing

on it's place, changed the trash bins with new bags, hidden all the porn magazines, etc!!

And well yes, I know customers have their guilty part, nowadays people should be educated about this very basic things, and moreover, most of them are really common sense, but at the end is us, the ones representing this industry who should really take things seriously, tattooing is not a fucking game!! And people who don't understand this shouldn't be tattooing, there are no shortcuts in hygiene and sterilization procedures, every single screw and millimeter of space used should be taken into consideration because germs, viruses, bacteria and all those mother fuckers, who will still be here waaaaaaaaaaaaay after we are already gone as a civilization, need much less than that to screw somebody's life up, and tissue of toilet paper won't certainly do any good.

Customers, whether they should or not,usually trust the man/woman behind the tattoo machine blindly, and we should correspond to that immense act by being responsible offering them the greatest possible degree of security...

Rode