“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

– Bill Gates

I recently interviewed a couple hundred piercers about the low points of their career. You know how they say “the customer is always right”? Well, these piercers might not agree with that claim. Their stories break down into the four sections of this article:

1. The customer is always right stinky
   

   Stories about piercing clients with serious lapses in personal hygiene.

   
   While I think most piercers have ran across the occasional hedge that needs to be trimmed, or butt-crack that needs a good washing, the worst hygiene problem I’ve encountered was a session during a hood piercing. Once she was on the table and went to go spread her legs, I got a blast of a smell that nearly floored me, but the visual was the worst part. This stringy white and yellow shit was all over her cooter, and as she spread her legs, it stretched like a spider web. It was nasty. Stinky crotch goo.
   

   
   

2. The customer is always right perverted
   
   If you get aroused by this section, stick to self piercing.

   
   I had a guy once while getting his frenum pierced start sticking his finger in his own anus and sort of masturbating it, just moving it in and out of his anus. I asked “Um… what are you doing?” And he replied, as if nothing was wrong, “oh when I feel pain this makes it better.” I told him he couldn’t do that in here and he agreed but continued to do it. I just very quickly finished with the piercing and told him not to touch anything on his way out.
   

3. The customer is always right suicidal
   

   A compendium of some of the insane things people do to themselves when the piercer isn’t there to help.

   
   I saw a kid that tried to stretch his own tongue with the latch from an outdoor gate (the hook in eye-bolt kind). He came in because once he got the hook through the hole he couldn’t get it to move. So for a day he was walking around with a patio latch hanging out of his mouth. That procedure required cutting the material out of the tongue.
   

4. The customer is always right angry
   
   Encounters with violent and deranged clients are far too common.

   
   A guy came in ready to kill us for piercing his underage daughter. We tried to find out who it was — he even said she would have used a fake ID, but we didn’t even the name of the fake ID on record so we told him we didn’t do it. This just made him even more upset. He was like well she told me she got it at blah blah blah shop, and we where like “uhh… sir, this isn’t even that shop!” He looked at us all dumbfounded and turned and walked away… he later came back to get a tattoo.
   

Reconsidering taking on a glamorous life as a piercer? As one of the piercers I talked to put it, “and people seem to think I have a fucking dream job.”

Next time you go and get a piercing, please, at least have a shower first.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Illustrations by Jason Craig (iam:jasonthe29th).