Leech Seller – Hi! I saw you were looking for someone to design a tattoo for you. I can whip up a design for you to see if you like it.

Me – Yeah, I’m looking for someone to design a tattoo based on the specific design of my other tattoos. Can you do animals in American Calligraphy style?

Leech – Sure thing, just send me the picture. If you like it, you can book a gig and I’ll touch it up for you.

Me - *surprised* Um, ok. If that’s how you want to do it. Here’s a picture of my current tattoos *sends picture* I’d like to have a rabbit tattoo designed in that same style.

Leech - Alright, let me try my hand at this.

… 10 Minutes later …

Leech - Alright, here you go. *sends picture* Just tell me what you think. I welcome any feedback or suggestions.

When I looked at the tattoo design, I immediately recognized it, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen it. I’ve been looking to do a rabbit tattoo for several months now, so I’ve spent a lot of time in Google Images looking for pictures of other rabbit tattoos to get some kind of inspiration. Upon doing a few searches, sure enough, I found the exact same image. It really ticked me off because a. I had specifically said I was looking for an original design, and b. this shithead was trying to pass off this image as something he had anything to do with. I wanted a tattoo designed, not someone to find a fucking tattoo design for me on Google.

Me - So… Did you find this on the Internet?

Leech - Oh, yes. I was just getting a feel for the kind of design you were looking for.

Me - I already told you that I wanted it to be designed to look like my current tattoos. If you look at them, you can see they are all done in the exact same style. What you sent me is Japanese calligraphy that does not look anything like my tattoos.

Leech - Oh yeah, well, I have a few other designs in mind.

Me - Look, I’m only willing to pay for an original design that someone has actually drawn with their own hands. I don’t want anything based of something else. If I did, I would just do it myself. If you aren’t comfortable with design, then you can just say so. I’m not looking for an edit but an original sketch.

Leech - I can do that. I’ve done a lot of that kind of stuff in the past. Here, let me try my hand at it. If you don’t like it, then you can just leave it at that.

Me - You’ve already hurt your credibility by going onto Google Images to find something to send me. I’m not ordering a gig with you.

Leech - Why not?

Me - I don’t know, try Googling it. You’re good at that.

The quickest way to piss me off is to plagiarize material. The next quickest way is to try to trick me into giving you money for no reason. Do both at the same time? No, let’s not even go there. I’m certain he was hoping that I wouldn’t know that he had gotten that image online because he didn’t offer that information up. That really annoys me. People need to be careful because once you’ve hurt your credibility, it’s very hard to regain it.