St. Louis Ink — Local services in Florissant

Upstanding work, but professionalism goes a long way.

My friends and I came yesterday to take advantage of the Friday the 13th $20 deals. As compared to other shops such as Iron Age, crowds were much shorter and the selection of tattoos were more extensive and creative. Being conscious of what day it was, my friends and I were fully prepared to wait for a bit, understanding that there were only about 4 artists working on people at a time and several customers were coming in very quickly. Still, though, it makes no sense that myself and another friend had to wait for a literal 4 hours for a single tattoo, watching countless others who came into the shop well after we did receive their tattoos, and ultimately give up on the idea out of frustration and annoyance and go home, not one tattoo at all.

I'm giving this business a single star because every problem we had last night could have been solved if any of the workers (aside from one, of whom I'll mention later) had a professional bone in their bodies. I have all day, so I'll elaborate in detail what went wrong and what could've been better:

Around 7:04 p.m., the party I rode with arrived at the shop and met up with three other friends who'd been there for about 30 minutes already and were filling out consent forms. With it being my first time at a tattoo shop and unaware of protocol, I went to the front desk and asked about proper protocol for actually getting my tattoo. The worker who greeted me, while funny, gave a kind of sarcastic comment about the paperwork I was pointing to and said it was for that morning. Instead, he gave me as well one of the friends I rode with a consent form each, which we quickly filled out, showed our IDs, and started looking at the tattoo selections. Immediately after filling out our paperwork, a rush of people come in and (presumably) do the same.

Within the next hour, the friends who arrived before us have received their tattoos. Afterwards, though, we start to see people who came in after us be seated. My other friend and I are a bit confused, and wonder if there really was a sign in sheet or if the consent form was the only form necessary, so we go back to the front desk to inquire and tell them that we came in right after our friends. A different worker gives us a new "sign-in sheet," which is really the equivalent of a sheet of printer paper with names sloppily written all over it with no numbers or timestamps or anything, and my friend writes her name (which happens to be Tomorrow, her name is actually Tomorrow) while I proceed to write a plus sign and my own name after her. We sit back down to wait.

Another hour passes, and we see more people (who came after us) have their names called to get inked. I spot the first worker I spoke with in front of the shop taking his 3/11th smoke break along with other people waiting to be inked, so I step outside to ask him about the wait and remind him of our presence. I could tell by the silence of the lung cancer group that I'd ruined their vibe and was unwanted, but the worker kind of brushed it off and said that he'd "check up on that."

Another hour passes and daylight has gone, and I go up to the front desk to speak with the same worker and specifically ask about our names on the list. He and another worker, a female, check the list to see that our names have been crossed out and says that "Tomorrow and Mariah have been done already," of course to which I'm like, "Um, no, we've been here for 3 hours already and have watched other people go ahead of us." Then he laughs a bit and loudly realizes that he "didn't recognize Tomorrow as an actual name," and thought that "Mariah would be getting inked tomorrow." I wasn't amused, so he haphazardly "apologized" and said it was an honest mistake, asks what tattoo we want (3 HOURS LATER PEOPLE) and said that we would be seen soon. I sit back down.

I'm hella mad and I'm not done - this will be...

This is Part 2 of the last review by Mariah Lindsey. Yes, I have 2 Google accounts:

Aside from the fact that us showing our IDs and filling out a LITERAL consent from with our information should have actually meant something, if you're representing any type of establishment and want to act like you have some home-training, once you make a mistake like that and have been told and can LITERALLY SEE that a customer has been in your shop for hours, you should be trying to accommodate them as much as possible. We should have absolutely been the next people in line. I don’t care about deals or hectic days at this point, it’s simply unprofessional and not fair. And of course, this excuse was full of hot air because we waited an entire hour after that for nothing. I told the friends we met with that I was ready to go, as we were all getting tired and hungry, and my friend wanted to wait a bit more and ask more questions to see what was going on, but at this point I was fully aware that the workers were lazy and didn’t give a single care about the people they’d seen in their shop for the last literal 4 hours. The only worker I found some respect for was the single color artist in the shop, who my friends told me was named Logan. He was the only artist I’d seen completely on task and going back and forth from doing extensive ink and trying to quickly tend to the next customers by referring to the faulty sign-in sheet. And when we’d finally gotten up to leave empty-handed (while the entire store decided to stare and watch us as we left as if we had two heads), he was the only person to follow us out, apologize for the service, and offer us a freebie for later-on. I was sure to thank him for his efforts. Moral of the story is, though, if there were ANY SHRED OF ORGANIZATION – there would have been a comprehensive system; a person at the front desk at all times (I understand they were doing both ink and working at the front desk, but this is why you switch out and make sure there is always someone available), someone always available to handle money (simply handing money to people at random times for them to pocket is straight up ghetto and can set you up for stealing, which is not even business smart), a REAL sign-in sheet with TIMESTAMPS (and EVERYONE signs the sheet, not some people, your memory of who was here first is not as good as you think), and no artists taking smoke breaks with their customers after doing 1-2 tattoos at a time. I want this business to flourish because it’s sterile, clean, inviting, and the art is good. But if your business practices are piss poor and there’s chaos everywhere, it’s hard to thrive. Y’all be...

It's unfortunate because I went with a group, and some of us had a good experience while others did not. There was a very unprofessional atmosphere. After I got my tattoo, my artist didn't even cover it up. I had to go outside since he was smoking and ask him to do it. And then I didn't get to pay him until 20 minutes later because he kept leaving or had to do other things. Some of my friends, after waiting for 4 hours, didn't even get tattoos. This was very frustrating because their names were acidentally placed too low on the list. Even though we complained about this multiple times, and people who arrived later than my friends got their tattoos, and the tattoos my friends wanted would have only taken 5 minutes to do, they still could not organize themselves to fix their mistake. No one could give us a straight answer on the list order or waiting time, and everyone I asked just replied that they didn't know. In their defense, it was really busy. But also, they obviously didn't have enough workers there, especially considering that some artists would take like 20 minute smoke breaks in between doing 5 minute tattoos with a line of 20 people waiting.

The only reason this review is 2 stars is because one artist, Logan, was extremely professional and attentive. For my friends that did get tattooed, he was attending to them. He made them laugh and feel safe, and even though he was spending the most time tattooing and not taking that many breaks, he was still the most attentive by far. As we were leaving, he caught us outside and offered to make it up to my friends who waited some other time. He's a really stand up guy. I'm not saying every other artist their is unprofessional. It's probably a great shop on regular days, and I'm only reviewing the artists that were dealing with us. But we were in there for 5 hours watching other people who arrived later go ahead of some of us. That's unacceptable and they need to improve management/coordination if their trying to satisfy their customers. And also, don't forget to cover open flesh wounds and be available to accept payment instead of having me look around...