I’ve had to have Discussions with Evan and Kim (piercing apprentice) about Kim’s behavior and how it should be dealt with because Evan is NOT good at being the tough guy (he lets her do stuff she shouldn’t and then thinks being pissy and telling her to not come in for a few days will make her realize she’s done something wrong without him explaining), but of course because people are sensitive, so I couldn’t just throw them both in the office and talk. Had to be Kim, then Evan, then Kim again, and Evan again. Ugh. Evan is super emotional, so he teared up more than once during the discussions.
That same day Ash had a meltdown. He doesn’t handle real-life stuff well since his accident, and he’s trying to get on disability, but when they told him he’d get $700 a month he flipped out because “how am I supposed to take care of my kids and me on $700 a month?!” I told him it’s a really good number, especially for someone who has NEVER paid taxes and is in his 20s. Yeah, it sucks that disability doesn’t cover living expenses, but would you rather have $700 a month or nothing? So I talked to him for quite a while about how to handle it, what to do, pointing out that he’ll still have his tattoo income and that’ll pay for living expenses, etc. He was crying at me when he first came in, but left with a smile on his face.
Next Ryan came in. He didn’t cry at me, but he needed reassurance on things and was doing the “what am I doing with my life?” thing and “why aren’t I more busy even though I don’t want to promote myself?!” thing AGAIN. So I talked with him for 1.5 hours.
Then one of my regular customers came in with a personal thing that’s been going on, and I guess I seemed like the person to vent to because he teared up and started telling me all about his shit too.
That was a couple days ago. Yesterday I had to talk to Kim and Evan again, and Evan cried again. Had another long talk with Ryan. Had a 15-minute talk with Ash because he wanted to tell me all the things he’s doing to smooth things over with the disability thing.
And then my family decides we need to have a shop meeting because they want us to start up a delivery service for the tattoo shops on the other side of the city. I mean it’s a really good idea because the only two supply shops out that way suck and people hate them, but damn all of us are so busy all the time and it’s just one more thing. A big thing.
The online store is getting busier all the time, especially now that I’ve made it so we can accept ANY kind of payment system instead of just P/ayPal.
So we’re going to get some coolers together and get Kat (a friend my cousin and I grew up with who is also helping us out with the social media thing because we all suck at being social) is going to start doing runs out to those areas.
I’m hoping we can keep up with demand, especially if shop owners start ordering from us because they’ll likely order huge amounts at a time.
Oh! And I mentioned a couple weeks ago I got distributorships from like four or five new places? Well I’ve landed another three!! I don’t know why these companies that have always been hard to get a hold of and wouldn’t give me distributorships in the past are changing their minds (maybe just continually bugging them shows I really want it?), but whatever it is, this is really cool.
Now I just have to get my uncle and his wife to stop spending so much money so I can put more money toward building up stock at the shop, especially from the new manufacturers I’m an official distributor for!
So lots of good and some bad things, very tiring things. Oh, and my lungs are doing better, but not quite good enough to do yard work. Tried to help my mom move some stuff around out back yesterday and had to sit down every few minutes because my lungs were burning :\
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