However, in many jobs (particularly in the white collar sector) your ability to do your work would be extremely hampered by your appearance. A guy in a three-piece suit and Brylcreem’d hair would look out-of-place as a bouncer at a GWAR show, and a person with an eyebrow ring, ear grommets and a barbed wire tattoo around her neck would look out-of-place at a Fortune 100 board meeting.
You’re talking about people with tattoos here, right?
I’ve nver done this before, so here goes:
BAND NAME!
So you are saying that appearance does affect ability?
In that case, yes. It’s kind of hard to do good work when you can’t get a job.
If you have ear grommets and a neck tattoo which cannot be covered with conventional businesswear and you are trying to perform a job for, say, a legal firm, your appearance effects your ability to do your job. You are far less likely to be taken seriously by your business associates. Now, that may be THEIR problem in your (generic “your”) eyes, but that doesn’t change its effect on YOUR performance.
Now, there are several companies in what has formerly been a typical white-collar sector of the workforce - tech and design companies come to mind - in which unusual appearance has become, if not typical, not unusual. In those cases, a few lucky individuals can have a lip plate and neck rings if they want, and not lose a whit of credibility. More power to em.
So once I’ve retracted my points and apologized, I’m obligated to stick around and either let people kick me or pretend I still stand by my initial post?
sigh No, you are not. That was a side discussion that had opened up.
In my opinion, by asking for the thread to be closed, you have signalled your loss of interest in it, and may abandon it forthwith. That is, of course, just my personal feeling.
Oh. I thought you and TVeblen were saying it’s ‘bad form’ for me to lose interest and go away after fulling copping to my mistake. I should have cut out the bit about Doors, that wasn’t relevent to my reply.
Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Oh, fer crying out loud. Aside from the law/corporate world, how many jobs do require the suit-and-tie, standard hair cut thing? I’m a molecular biologist at a world-renown institution, and I have purple hair, visible piercings and scarification, and very gothy style. No one seems to care*. It’s getting to be more the norm than the exception that people with different personal sytles can get “real”, and well paying, jobs of all sorts.
mischievous
*Actually, one woman I worked with for more than a year had never noticed that my hair is purple. And it’s very purple. Scientists are an odd lot.
This may be true (although, I note that half the people in the marketing department where I work have full-sleeve tattoos and aren’t shy about showing them), but the thread that started all of this was about a clerk at a camera store. Anyone suggesting that some tats and an unusual haircut disqualify one from a minimum wage job as a counter jockey is completely out to lunch.
Like I said, there are people who don’t have to worry about their appearance, and good for them. I’m not trying to say that no one is allowed to be as individualistic as their little pierced, tattooed, grommeted, scarified, implanted, hooked, stitched little hearts desire. I’m just demonstrating that there ARE situations in which one’s appearance effects one’s ability to do one’s job.
As far as the camera clerk goes, if there were a situation in which an employee was not allowed to display his/her tattooes or non-ear piercings by the management I could certainly understand it. There are still a whoooooooooooole lot of customers management wants to keep who will think twice about bringing their business to someone who’s punk rawwwwwwwwwk 24/7.
Where I live, you still get weird looks if you have an odd hair color, much less all of the rest of it. These are people who won’t buy their electronics or housewears from people with unusual appearances.
Your ability to do a job more difficult than “counter jockey” gives you the freedom to dress more individualistically. Part of the suck-ass of working retail is having to wear the stupid fucking uniform… and sometimes the uniform is as much what you DON’T wear as what you do. (See: “Hooters”)
Here’s the thing: I’m not “punk rawk” 24/7. I’m just me 24/7. If I were to work as a counter joceky, I would be polite and professional, because that’s just who I am, and hopefully my customers would notice that, and think, “Wow, even though I could stick a knitting needle through her ear, she’s a really good worker.” By taking the time to interact with me, people will realie that I’m not “punk rawk” or immature or whatever the stereotype associated with piercings is.
I’m not a counter jockey, though. I work at an elementary school summer program when I’m not off at college. I’ve never had anyone complain about my ears. The kids love them. They all want to put their finger through my ear, even though the hole isn’t quite big enough for most of them to do it. Even though I’m just a teacher’s assistant, I’m not the only modified person the kids know. Several of the teachers have tattoos, and plenty of parents are both tattooed and pierced. One kindergartener’s mother has a labret stud and a beautiful griffin tattoo (her son’s name is Gryphon). Heck, one of my second graders last summer had a mohawk (he was pretty punk rawk).
And as for modified people in the corporate world, the woman who writes the blog Needled, Marisa DiMattia, is a lawyer with sleeves and a fully covered back, as well as stretched earlobes.
Nevermind the tats and piercings. She named her kid Gryphon? Damn.
Marc
Oh, Gyrphon is pretty normal considering some of the names the other kids at that school had. General, Major, Tiger, Wolf, Nautica, Cyan, Talon, Tixo…we’re not even going to go into the “mix and match syllable” names.
None of which argues with or invalidates anything I said. Good for you. More power to you. Glad you can have body mods and still find decent employment.
The only thing you seem to disagree with is that someone who has significant body mods isn’t “punk rawk 24/7.” Yes, you are just you - punk rawk, 24/7. That’s just the way you are. If I see you on the street (or behind the counter) with dermal implants in the bridge of your nose and symmetrical facial scarification, I’m not going to assume that you spend your weekends doing macrame and listening to Dave Brubeck. I’m also not going to assume that the tightass in the orange sherbet Yves shirt with the high-and-tight haircut and power tie spends HIS weekends wearing vinyl platform boots at the local dive dancing to death metal.
While your (and his) weekend activities aren’t anything anyone else should worry about - and believe me, I was only giving examples - your appearance can definitely effect your ability to do your job. In almost any city, you’re going to see people of all types doing all types of jobs - part of why a city is a swell place to live. In the suburbs, though, there are a lot of people (as I said) who can’t even deal with small appearance changes; I got looks from everybody when my bangs were purple a couple of years ago. Just the bangs. Just purple.
More power to all of y’all who can have major body mods and get jobs making well over minimum doing things you enjoy with people you like. If only everyone was more concerned about ability than appearance, we’d be that much closer to Utopia.
Sheesh, I worked at a drug store in the 90s where I couldn’t have facial hair, let alone tattoos or piercings. A lot of it has to do with expectation of clientel, most managers would rather find another retail worker than lose on little old lady’s business. They aren’t in the market to make friends or change social acceptability.
But they are in the market of finding or making compliant gutless employees. When I had bright pink hair, the people who delighted in it the most were children and little old ladies. I can’t count the number of old women who said “I wish I had the option of doing that when I was younger.” The truth is that 99.99 % of customers aren’t at all bothered by some variances in appearance. Those that do are probably problem customers you don’t want to deal with anyway.
But someone who is willing to hide their piercing with a band aid and dye their hair according to some arbitrary set of “natural colors” (I’ll give you a hint- not even half of those are actually possible in nature) is also someone who is willing to overlook labor violations, unlikely to seek out unionization and generally more likely to quit than to seek out their rights. Piss tests, intense dress codes and extreme regulation in a retail environment is nothing other than a test to find employees who can’t afford to have dignity or self-worth. It’s a bad bad scene.
So dress codes are fascist?