Greetings Tattoo Forum users,

I have a lovely younger sister who is an apprentice working at Signal Hill CA. I have some questions regarding the apprenticeship, and any help or answer will be greatly appreciated.
She has been working as an apprentice for little over 2 years now. However, to me there were something that didn’t look normal, so I wanted to find out if this is common for all tattoo apprentice.

First of all, she works almost 60 hours a week (10 hours a day everyday, except Tuesday) with ZERO pay. She does everything from opening and closing the shop, helping the artists, watching front desk, and even cleaning the toilet.
Before I write this thread I’ve done some research myself about the apprenticeship, and I am aware that you have to work hard and expected to do a lot of shop keeping businesses as well.
But all that work for not a single penny in return? The commute is about 25 minutes one way and gas is pretty expensive in So Cal. She tried working part time but on top of 60 hours a week of work, it was near impossible for her body.
Because rest of the family is living out of state, we’re supporting her living cost, apartment rent in LA (which is very expensive), gas, and any miscellaneous costs. Sounds like if your family isn’t anywhere near mid-class or above,
there is no way you can become a tattoo artist, if working 60 hours a week and not getting paid is normal. Is this same for every other apprentices who might be reading this post? What worries me the most is the work contract was all done orally, and there is no written official document or employment agreement in file.

Second, she is a very talented artist. She finds spare time while working at the shop to make tattoo designs and draw here and there, so she managed to collect great number of paintings in her portfolio.
However, all these were done on paper. She had ZERO tattoo experience for two years and now she just got her machine and tried tattooing on herself and some of her friends who volunteered.
I know tattooing is difficult and needs extra caution while doing so, but this is something where you can only get better by practicing. As a chemical engineer myself, two years of pure theory and zero practical work of any kind seems way way too long, rather it’s engineering, tattooing, or just about anything. I’ve heard many cases where artists let their apprentice tattoo easy designs on their customers no longer than a year, but none of that for over 2 years for my sister.

Lastly, I don’t have a good sense about her supervisor. He has second job at the auto shop so he only shows up so many days per week. How is she suppose to learn if her ‘teacher’ doesn’t even show up almost half the time?
Plus, whenever she posts something on Facebook, every now and then he posts something like “now go clean my toilet.” Even if it’s an inside joke, I’ve seen that kind of response several times, and from her family’s point of view, it doesn’t seem like he’s doing a good job actually teaching her. Also to me it shows how ‘professional’ he is writing those kind of comments in social media to his apprentice.

I would really appreciate it if any of you can tell me if all these are normal and I’m just overly worried as siblings, or something does look not normal. I wish I could go to the shop myself and sort things out, but I’m tied up with my work and I am 2000+ miles away from her. She’s not a very talkative person and very mature for her age, so she wouldn’t want to talk anything negative about her work, thinking that we’ll be too worried. But we’ve found her many times where she said she doesn’t want to to work and looked overly exhausted. Apprenticeship is tough I know, but is it suppose to be this much work with no compensation? Sorry for such a long post. I am just worried about my sister and want to find a way to help her. If you guys want to see some of her artwork, you can find them at her instagram (@jamieisbeast). Whoever managed to read this far, go check out her awesome work! 😀

Thank you again and God Bless.