THE owner of a tattoo studio is becoming increasingly frustrated by 'time wasters' phoning the shop and not turning up to appointments.

Chris Walker, who owns Grafix Tattoo Studio on King Street, Blackburn, took to social media last week to complain of potential clients phoning the shop asking 'stupid questions', in turn wasting precious time that could be spent tattooing.

He said: "We don’t just get this kind of thing on the phone, we get it in person. We get some wonderful questions like how much will something be without giving us a size. Tattoos aren’t clothes, my version of 'medium' could be very different to yours.

"Some people seem to think they know better than us. They walk in and tell us they want something doing and it’ll only take us five minutes and it’ll only cost them £30.

"There are people who think we have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for them to turn up for their tattoo and then get really bent out of shape when we can’t squeeze them in, even though people have been booked in for months and we of course honour our appointments.

"We do waste a lot of time answering the phone because it takes people no effort to make a phone call and there's no commitment from them. They can book in over the phone and then they've not done anything to get it, it's three seconds out of their life.

"Yet we've got appointments secured that other people will want and will turn up for but they can't because we've committed to that person who doesn’t turn up because they can't be bothered or their dog's sister's uncle's guinea pig's got flu, they think that's an acceptable excuse not to turn up or not to let us know.

"That's just a standard day and I’ve had enough of it. We don't want to come across as difficult and we do want to tattoo people, but only those who genuinely want to get their tattoo done and will honour their appointments."

Mr Walker spoke of an instance where a woman had requested a tattoo that was significant to her and had to be done that day, but he couldn't fit her in as they had an appointment booked into that slot. The client didn't show up, and so he would have been able to do the lady who had already left and gone elsewhere.

"People don't understand how frustrating that can be because a lot of the time, as daft as it sounds, we do stuff that means a lot to people and we can’t do that if we’ve got people messing us around because they’ve made an impulse 10 second phone call and don't turn up."