I sympathize with you. Interview situations should be viewed differently then our every day interaction with people. To a large extent I believe that it is, in fact, held to different standards. However different the standards outside the workplace, appearance does matter. In an ideal world everyone would be treated with dignity and respect until they showed through word or deed that they didn’t deserve it. The reality though is that visual cues are usually the first thing that people have to rely on when interacting with others. A non-standard appearance, from a realistic standpoint, is almost guaranteed to ensure that you will be treated differently.
For example I grow facial hair fairly easily. I can grow a pretty good goatee or mustache (though not a beard) in a week or so. There was a noticeable difference in how people treated me when I had a 3 day growth coming in than when I was completely clean shaven. This was true even when I was wearing identical clothing.
Even though, as a society, we probably place too much emphasis on appearance it is a fact that your appearance will be the first thing available to a stranger upon which to make decisions about you. Your appearance is your marketing. Your PR. It’s the default message you send to however many people who see you but whom you don’t actually exchange words with. As such, when I grow my facial hair, and when you get a tattoo, we are (at least implicitly) accepting the pros (cuz we like it!) and the cons (we may scare people) of our choice.
People tend to overlook the practical applications of tattoos and body modifications. For example, they serve as a divining rod for assholes, as this post demonstrates.
Sure, Grim Beaker. It’s my opinion that most of the behavior that goes under the rubric of enforcing “professional” standards of conduct and dress is actually forcing employees to conform to upper-middle-class prejudices.
Let’s take blackness, for example. Black people cannot change the color of their skins to suit white employers, so we extend legal protections to them to minimize the effects of racism and bigotry in our society. But as most black people will tell you, for many jobs they are also expected to “dress white,” “act white” and “talk white” while in the presence of employers and customers. The black culture they have grown up in is systematically repressed in the work environment, where everyone is expected to meet upper middle class standards of conduct and decorum.
Maybe there is a good reason for this, maybe not, but there’s no sense in denying it isn’t so. And there’s no sense in denying that if another group held power in American society, other standards wouldn’t prevail. They would. It’s not an objective, rational thing, it’s one subculture enforcing its will on all the rest.
And the business about not hiring body mods, or tattoo fans, or whatever, is just part of the whole sad mess. I’m not sure what could or should be done about it, but if we were all rational and grown up we’d judge people more on their abilities and less on superficial appearances. At bottom, it’s all ignorant prejudice disguised as “maintaining standards.”
You know, not everyone who is modified does it for the pleasure or pain of others!
I do not have my nose pierced to solicit responses from others. It was something I did for myself because I like nose piercings. I have a tattoo on the back of my neck that no one ever sees (because my hair is long). Did I do that to show people how original and rebellious I am? No, of course not. It was a symbol with personal meaning and I had it tattooed there simply for my benefit.
People have different motivations for the things they do and they don’t always have you in mind when they do it!
I think to the extent that tattooing is mainstream and brainless, it’s largely flash that’s there. The impression I get from observation is that the consciousness of body art is fairly low, but there are plenty of people who will get a tat of ‘Mom’ or their current flame’s name or a skull with a snake in it or Mickey Mouse or something because it’s “cool”.
And many tattoo studios will have sheets and sheets of these bog-standard images so that the people who decide that hey, they want to get inked, they can go in and pick out something that an apprentice can knock off in a half-hour.
Someone who goes in with an idea for a piece and spends the time with an artist to work it out and implement it is much more likely to be operating in that “risk-taking, forward-thinking, self-starter” mode than someone who’s gotten inked with Standard Cartoon Bee #4, in my figuring.
I’m happy to report that I interviewed a candidate Friday who was so much better qualified, more sociable and more likeable that even had Number 1 not had a nosering and tattoos I’d have preferred Number 2 (number 3, actually, but…). Thanks for all opinions, though, especially the ones that coincided with my own
I think it’s cool that a question which, to quote YoYo 3500 at the beginning of this thread, is “Not only…not a GD, it’s not even a debate” went over 100 posts. (Is it unprofessional to say “Neener neener”?)
I’m sorry but no. If you paint yourself blue from head to foot and go walking down the street like nothing were wrong people are going to point and laugh. You don’t have any of the conditions of existance (skin color, disability, etc) that have been put forth in this thread as comparisions. You have intensionally hung decorations on your body. You decorated YOURSELF. From the tatoos I have personally seen you have probably chosen a really ugly design that you would never even think of diplaying on the wall in your house or office. Or you have stuck a piece of steel through your skin where I have to look at it. Now you want people who have to look at your purchased defomities to treat you like they would anyone else? Why? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of your purchase? You got the thing to be different after all.
If someone came in to an interview wearing clown pants a tank top and a “cat in the hat” hat would you be required to take them seriously as a job cadidate? After all this is how they choose to present themselves, just like the piercee and the tatooee. By the arguments in this thread how someone decorates themselves should have no impact on the interview. That is nuts. I can think of no reason why I should make an exception for one form of personal decoration and not another simply because one of them is a current fad. Likewise if I see somebody walking down the street with tatoos showing and bits of metal sticking out of their face I am going to assume that they are more concerned with making a statement of their own “individuality” than they are with being taken seriously. I will treat them accordingly. They, after all, chose how they present themselves to the world. They have chosen, by making thier body “art” the first and only thing noticable about themselves. To be judged on first sight. Of course they hope to meet only those who think their decorations are “cool” and be judged by only them. So they get in a snit when the rest of us treat them as fad following droids.
It doesn’t matter whether you think tattoos are a good or bad idea, Degrance. If you scroll up you’ll see at no place did I make the suggestion that one’s appearance, including wearing piercings or having visible tattoos, should not have an impact on an interview or on the job. If Sampiro thinks that the person’s appearance reflects poorly on how seriously they took the interview or will wind up hurting the business, Sampiro is well, well within rights not to hire that person. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that a person’s appearance in the workplace should conform to certain standards. I certainly do; you would never suspect that there was anything untoward about my appearance when I’m at work.
Rude uninvited comments are another manner. Regardless of what assumptions (warranted or otherwise) you make about a person with tattoos, you didn’t gain the right to act with a shocking lack of tact towards others when that person sat down in the tattoo artist’s chair.
I never said anything about making comments. I said that I would treat them like fad following droids. That is that they are devoid of interest being nothing but a human Xerox of every other pierced, tatooed yahoo on the planet. If I must interact with them I will do so only as breifly as possible and keep away from them otherwise. Just like skinheads and those who wear “gang chic”, etc. they have let me know by how they choose to decorate themselves that they are not people with anything useful to offer.
Just to be clear I would never make assumptions about someone based on something they have no control over. But all of us over the age of 9 or so get to dress ourselves. How you dress speaks volumes about you as a person. You are responsible for how you present yourself. I am not responsible for ignoring it.
I disagree with quite a bit of your statements in that post Evil Captor. First, it sounds like you believe there is some sort of monolithic “black culture” when you use statements like “talk white” and “act white”. There is a subculture which many poor urban blacks are familiar with but IMHO (and I think many black posters here would agree) that in no way constitutes the life experience of all black people. Is a black person who grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood “acting white”? Of course not. He’s acting like himself.
Second, I take issue with your use of the word “prejudices” in your first paragraph. You imply that prejudice (presumably against minorities and people with tattoos or piercings) is a primary factor in the determination of workplace standards of appearance. What are the appearance standards of office workers in other developed countries? Is professional attire in a Japanese business primarily influenced by “prejudice”? What about in Italy? Brazil? Frankly, I find no reason to believe that prejudice is a primary factor in influencing business attire standards and I will require something more substantial than your opinion before changing my mind. If you know of a psychology or sociology experiment which checks for this sort of thing I would be interested in reading it.
Third, as I’m sure you know, it can be difficult to determine the level of an employee’s performance during (usually) a short interview. In an ideal world HR personnel would have near unlimited time to evaluate the many applicants for a position. In this world, where positions must be filled within a specific time frame, and work must be accomplished within deadlines it simply isn’t practical. Especially considering the current economic climate. I believe the statement:
“if we were all rational and grown up we’d judge people more on their abilities and less on superficial appearances.”
Is misplaced idealism which ignores the reality of the situation. Dress however you wish Evil Captor. It makes no difference to me. It will make a great difference to you. You expect society to collectively accept whatever manner of appearance and change it’s individuals pursue. Are we bringing Mohammed to the mountain or the mountain to Mohammed?
Last. After you have further explained your stance I still don’t see how what Stonebow posted in any way agreed with your statements here about prejudice.
Quite a few people do it just because they like it. The fact that having piercings or tattoos clues us in to who the jerks are is just a bonus. If somebody thinks I did it just to get a reaction out of them, I think they should get over themselves and stop worrying about what I do with my time. I might think your too-short dockers and comb-over haircut looks stupid too, but I’m not going to give you a hard time about it.
Well, it depends on who’s doing the hiring. If it’s Sam Goody or a funky comic book store looking for a sales clerk, they’d probably prefer the fire-engine red hair or the spiky bleached blond. If it’s a Wall Street law firm looking for a receptionist, they’d probably find the L.O.L. with the blue-white hair. The onus is on the applicant to present him/herself as someone who would fit into the job and the company’s style, not the reverse.
No, you never said anything about making comments. You just, well, made them.
So if you were to meet me and I was wearing a short sleeved shirt you would treat me as though I was devoid of interest, a human Xerox of every other tattooed person on the planet, regardless of the civility that I showed you.
A question: how would you treat me if you met me and I was wearing a long sleeved shirt?
And neither would you be taken seriously if you showed up wearing cutoffs and a tank-top, right? You wear a suit, or at least a jacket and tie.
The people who are saying that the nose ring and tatoos are neither professional nor unprofessional just don’t get the reality. In this context, “professional” means conforming to the accepted standards of looks and dress. Whether you like it or not, there are in the business world standards that dictate how you may dress and look and even act in order to be perceived by others as “professional”. A jacket and tie (for men) are professional; shorts are not. A well-groomed mustache is professional; a nose ring is not. A printed business card is professional; your name and email address carefully written on a small piece of paper is not.
Do such things matter? Do they have anything to do with how well you can do the job? No. But social inertia has kept them in place and if you want to play the game, you play by the existing rules. You want to change the rules? Feel free to try. How stupid is it to wear a tie? It’s an uncomfortable adornment that serves no useful purpose. How long have men been wearing them?
Every generation seems to go through this. In the 50’s there were the beatniks with their goatees and silly little glasses; after that we had the hippies with the long hair and bell-bottom pants and flowery shirts. Look around the business world now. It’s made up largely of those beatniks and hippies, now older. See many goatees, or men with long hair and flowery shirts? As those rebels and non-conformists grew up and moved into the business world, they adopted the standards of professionalism and carried them on.
Sure, there have been some changes. Various job categories have adopted more casual standards of dress. And you do, occasionally, see an older man with hippy-length hair. Or, as someone pointed out, a “maverick” like Gerry Spence. Ok, he can get away with that now because he’s established himself as a great lawyer. But do you really think he dressed that way in his first clerking job? Bet you anything that when he started out, he wore a conservative suit, just like everyone else. And even now, he hasn’t changed anything, he’s just an exception; the rules of dress for every other lawyer still say suit and tie.
Any young person today who believes that as they get older and move into the business world, they’ll be able to take their tatoos and piercings with them because they’ll be part of a congolmerate of people their own age who all accept such as the norm are in for a rude surprise. They really don’t understand the power of social inertia and the simple fact that you have to get into the club before you can change the rules. In order to get in, you have to conform to the existing rules. Once there, you have to stick around long enough for the older crowd to retire before you have any say over the rules. And by that time it’s too late, you’re a conformist and no longer care to change the rules. Or, like Gerry Spence, you can get away with it for yourself and that’s all.
About three years ago, when my wife’s son was about 18, his mode of self-expression was wildly-colored hair; blue, green, shocking pink, etc. and sometimes a mohawk. At that time, he made me a bet that by the time he was thirty, there would be more people in the workforce looking like him and his friends (with tatoos and piercings) than like me (plain and boring). Less than three years after that, as he moved into the job market, he quietly stopped coloring his hair. Gee, I guess he must’ve just gotten tired of it, right? It certainly couldn’t be that he realized that having purple hair was sometimes hurting his chances of getting a job.
Anyone else want to make the same bet? Ten years from now, take a good look around the workforce and see how many people are still wearing their piercings and flaunting their tatoos.
Probably just like anyone else I met on the street. If you chose to hide your purchased deformities then I of course would be unaware of them. As I said before you are responsible for how you present yourself. I am not responsible for overlooking how you present yourself.
I see. But the mere fact that I have tattoos (even unseen ones), according to your earlier posts, means that I also must have a certain personality that you find undesirable. I would as a matter of course be “devoid of interest” to you and have “nothing to offer you.” You would wish to get away from me as soon as possible. Assuming that you can’t see my tattoos, how do determine that I in fact have these undesirable personality traits?
