I’m an apprentice but my mentor isn’t helping me.
Hi I’ve been doing an apprenticeship for about 2/3 months now and my mentor is giving me a test so I can tattoo on people even though they haven’t taught me anything. I’ve been going to the shop 4-5 days of the week for around 6 hours each time I go in. They tell me the shop is open every day at 12, but sometimes they’ll be 2-3 hours late or just not show up at all without telling me. When I practice all they do is put me in the corner and occasionally come over to stare at me and say “keep practicing” but they never really tell me to do anything. My first week having a machine, they had me do a huge stencil almost a foot long with lots of details and they told me the lines weren’t clean enough. My mentor is flakey/barely shows up, the shop owner sometimes shows me things but it doesn’t seem like there’s a place for me and now they’re taking on ANOTHER apprentice. He even asked me if I’ve memorized all the different kinds of needles and what they do when I don’t even know what they mean! On top of my mentor asking me weird questions like if he’s “too old for me” and if I’ve “ever dated anyone like him before” I just feel so lost and confused all the time. I try to show up and shadow and learn things but I don’t even know what techniques I should be looking for? What exactly should I be learning?