Tattoo artists share their stories of terrible tats and customer experiences.

Image: iStock.

Foreign phrases that don’t make sense. Infinity symbol made of infinity symbols. Swastikas. You name it, some poor tattoo artist has probably had it requested.

In a recent Reddit thread, nine tattoo artists shared their worst honestly-you-can’t-make-this-up experiences. Prepare yourself.

1. Socially unacceptable.

“My brother-in-law is a tattoo artist. Local ‘underground rapper’ wanted his myspace page link tattooed on his forehead. Months later the world moved on to Facebook and he came back in to abuse my brother in law almost daily for it.”

2. Double checked.

“Right now I’m sitting here waiting for a lady to come in so I can fix a wrong date I put on her. She looked at the stencil before we started, had her triple check everything like I always do, had her boyfriend check it, the works. Got a text this morning saying the year was wrong,” shared one Redditor. (Watch: The latest trend in tattoos? Blackout tattoos. Post continues after video.)

3. Commitment rings.

NSFW, people.

“A couple comes in, sober as a judge. They been dating two, maybe four weeks and they want each others names tattooed… on their anuses. Ring around their anuses with the other person’s name. Girl’s… thing won’t stop twitching while I’m doing it, I don’t know what to do.”

4. Comedy show.

“When I was a senior in high school I worked at a large shop and basically just cashiered, cleaned, ran to the back to get things for the artists, and kept customers out of the work area. One day I was talking to this chick that was getting a shamrock of some sort on her arm, and I was in conversation with her because she was nervous so I engaged her to get her mind off the needle a bit and told her, ‘Your puppy dog is looking great so far’ as a joke,” said a Redditor.

“Well… she jerked hard and freaked and the artist drew across the shamrock because of it and the tat was basically ruined. I stopped telling jokes for the rest of my senior year working there.” (Post continues after gallery.)

5. Surprise.

Be warned – this cannot be unseen.

“The girl sharted when getting tattoos on her butt cheeks,” said one Reddit user.

6. Toilet trauma.

“I was working on the top floor of a studio, tattooing a bloke early one Saturday morning. He goes pale and says he needs to pee so I quickly point him in the direction of the bathroom,” wrote a Redditor.

“10 minutes later I get worried he has passed out on the toilet (it happens) so I go to walk down the stairs. I then notice a super gross stench, look down at the stairs and see tiny little piles of diarrhoea on each step. The guy has shit himself on the way to the toilet and run away, never saw him or his money again!”

7. Fly away.

“I had a woman who got a butterfly by her navel who screamed directly into my ear canal.” Ouch.

8. Heavy load.

"The guy who passed out while I was still drawing on him. My 50 kilogram ass had to catch this 6-foot air force dude. Luckily that fireman's catch works," said one Redditor.

9. Forever... and ever.

"One returning customer came in for an infinity symbol made of infinity symbols. Yeah. I don't know either."

Got a tattoo horror story of your own? Tell us about it below.