I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with that, I think the issue here is the customers who get so freaked out by someone with green hair that they pressure employers (directly, by complaining, or indirectly, by refusing to shop there) to not hire anyone who dresses at all out of the norm. I can’t really blame an employer who has to pick who to hire to appease his conservative customer base, but I can blame his customer base for being so darn conservative over such a stupid, trivial matter like a couple of eyebrow piercings.
You know who else liked to wear uniforms? The Nazis!
I’m going to assume that your figure there was either pulled out of your ass to make a (false) point, or specialized to some exclusive locale beyond the point of relevency. After all, I was raised in Boise Idaho, and I’d place the number closer to half, generously speaking. And Boise is urban Idaho.
More incensing, though, is that second sentence. Do you seriously believe that persons with an aversion to tats and piercing are as a class worse customers? If you’re running a tat shop or something else on that order, maybe. Otherwise I call bullshit. They might look like worse customers to you, because they took one look at you and were less than enthusiastic to do business. That doesn’t mean that they’re bad customers when presented with what they expect to deal with. The presentation of the service is a factor.
The honest fact is that people do have expectations of appearance; even you. If you saw a cashier wearing a pointed white KKK mask and robes, I bet you’d turn right around and storm out (or towards the manager, or some other convenient direction). The goal in retail is to get the customers to buy; if the appearance of the retail clerk causes the customer not to buy, then that’s a problem. It might be a problem the store manager chooses to overlook, such as when only a vanishingly small percentage of the customers are driven away; this is probably what’s happening in your 'town 99.99%", as well as blueslipper’s locale. Still though, blueslipper has a right to wonder what’s crossing the manager’s mind when he sees a cashier with a (to him), replusive appearance. After all, the manager hired a cashier that lost him business; at least one person’s business. I’d wonder what kind of manager chooses to decorate his store in a repulsive manner too.
You can rail and rail about how intolerant blueslipper and his ilk are; have fun. What doesn’t change is that there still are areas where there are a lot of people who have a negative reaction to tats and peircings, and in those areas, the job of a manager isn’t to enlighten the public on the beauty of body alteration. It’s to attract those intolerant types (along with everybody else) and get them to buy stuff from his establishment. You can go on being pissed off managers want “clean-cut” employees, but if the managers in your area do, then the’re probably a reason.
No, somebody who is willing to comply with their employer’s reasonable requirements of dress and presenation is somebody who maybe deserves to keep their job. I’m required to wear a button-down and slacks four days a week; I’d much prefer to wear jeans and a T. Do I? No. Do I join a union and try and force the issue? No. Is it because I’m willing to overlook labor violations? No, it’s because I’m not a stupid ass. The dress codes and appearance rules are part of the job; if you don’t like them, don’t apply for the position.
Piss tests, “intense” dress codes and “extreme” regulation in a retail environment are nothing other than sensible requirements of the job as crafted to achieve the results that the managers require, which is the whole reason they’re hiring employees in the first place. (Including piss tests in that destroyed all credibility you had, by the way. Have you a right to be stoned at work?) Maybe in your area the majority of people like their cashiers to be able to be lifted by junkyard electromagnets; good for you. If they don’t, well, then, tough shit. It’s not all about what you want, after all.
Well, yes. If a person is so sensitive that they can’t handle people looking a little different they are probably going to be a pain in the ass. Customer service types learn to recognize problem customers pretty quickly- people who are going to spend cost more money in customer service (complaints, returns, requests, etc.) than they spend in the store and people who are going to divert resources away from more reasonable customers. Not all customers are created equal. One easy way to tell this is if they have unusual sensitivities to things most adult should be able to handle.
Many people find fat people repulsive. And in most cases fat can be controlled. Should fat people be barred from jobs with public contact?
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You can rail and rail about how intolerant blueslipper and his ilk are; have fun. What doesn’t change is that there still are areas where there are a lot of people who have a negative reaction to tats and peircings, and in those areas, the job of a manager isn’t to enlighten the public on the beauty of body alteration. It’s to attract those intolerant types (along with everybody else) and get them to buy stuff from his establishment. You can go on being pissed off managers want “clean-cut” employees, but if the managers in your area do, then the’re probably a reason.
[quote]
AND THOSE AREAS ARE BAD! Yes, there is prejudice and discrimination. Yes, there are people that will judge your whole life with one glance. Yes, there are people who are extremely intolerant and uncomfortable around anyone different. But this is something we should seek to remedy, not defend! Yes, it’s not the shop-owner’s job to change society. But it is everyone’s job to work to make society better. We can start by not being apologists for the intolerant and judgmental.
Dress codes are one thing. I, too, put on my film of fake leg every morning, paint my nails “natural” colors like red instead of “unnatural” colors like blue and walk the almost impossible line between “too frumpy to be professional” and “too sexy to be professional” that women are expected to walk. But in previous years I’ve worked jobs that mandated things like how many pockets our pants were allowed, what color socks we could wear, and forced some extremely impractical uniforms on people (hint: khaki isn’t such a great idea to make women wear every day- nor is it a good idea for anyone doing a dirty job that doesn’t get paid enough to do laundry daily or buy a week’s worth of uniforms.) Can you guess what job treated me well and what job treated me like shit? Can you guess which job I STILL get check in the mail for class action lawsuits regarding labor violations from? With a little investigation, I bet we can find that the strictness of a dress codes correlates quite well with the number of labor violations a company has.
Yes, these things do achieve the results the management requires, which is a compliant and easy-to-abuse workforce. Handing over your piss is a extremely intimate and humiliating act. So is being told precisely what to wear in the morning. Most of us haven’t experienced that level of exposure and control since we were small children. Many of us would refuse to do so unless we were starving. I broke my own “no piss test” rule once (and no, I’m not a drug user) and I’ve never felt so ashamed and dehumanized as when some lady watched me carefully while I peed so that I could get a seven buck an hour job at an auto parts store. I cried for a whole afternoon after that because my last bit of dignity was gone.
That job didn’t even have a chair in the break room where we could sit down to eat our lunches. Which was okay because they often didn’t give us our lunch breaks. I won’t get in to how well they followed OSHA standards regarding the numerous dangerous chemicals they dealt with.
And yet a large segment of America deals with that every day. Yes, drug tests can be justified when the job could put others in danger. But there is no reason why a piss test is needed for a retail-counter position. If drug use on the job is suspected, an on-the-spot intoxication test does just as well. Drug use off-the-clock for a non dangerous position is not really anyone’s business.
I find this amazingly easy to dismiss, most likely because I’ve generally lived in fairly conservative areas. Most of the more polite people I know are conservative as hell, and disapprove of crossing the ‘one peircing per ear, females only, period’ line on moral grounds.
To put it extremely bluntly, if the employer thinks that the person’s obesity will interfere with their effectiveness as an employee (obvious example: hooters) then yeah, the employer should screen out fat people when hiring. In other cases not so much; it’s the employer’s discretion who they hire. To add in a little realism, there is a lot less choice in a person’s weight than a person’s peircings, so people (empoyer and customer alike) are less likely to hold a person’s weight against them than their decoration.
You’re awfully intolerant of the intolerant, aren’t you? As you concede it’s not the shopowner’s job to change society, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Should we boycott employers that impose excessive restrictions on their employees? Go right ahead. I know I boycott anything that I find sufficiently offensive… which may include stores that present a repulsive appearance in employees. YMMV.
The banking industry has that many labor violations? Most of those yahoos have to wear suits! Or, I know, you’re talking about the military! You don’t get much more of a restrictive dress code than that; they must be rife with labor code violations. Police? Firemen? Secret service men? White collar businessmen? Or on the other end, do itinerant laborers have dress codes? I think that if you drew a correlation across industries, it would be a moderately negative one, with the industires sporting both strong dress codes and labor violations pretty well outnumbered by the ones that had one and not the other.
On another note, it wasn’t until now that I realized what you meant by ‘film of fake leg’. Nice one, there. I find most dress codes bizarre and repulsive myself, particularly the ones that women are held to, but that doesn’t mean that they mark a trend of labor violations across all industries.
You clearly had a terrible experience both applying for and working at this job, whatever it was; I do symapthize. In the unlikely event that you had the flexibility to, you should probably have refused to piss wile being watched, and if they refused to cave, walked out. Clearly that was only the first violation of dignity that that job put you through.
However, I don’t believe that all jobs that tell you to take a shower and put on a tie before coming to work are doing it for the sheer thrill of breaking your will; I actually think that most of them do it fo the reasons I’ve been pointing out, relating to meeting customer expectations and/or maintaining a certain atmosphere to the store or workplace. One example to the contrary doesn’t prove that all businesses work that way, any more than the fact that shit is brown indicates that all brown chocolate tastes like shit.
As for the piss testing, as an uneducated rube, I don’t think that there’s such a thing as a part-time druggie, and I would be worried about them showing up late, missign days, showing up under the influence, being arrested out from under me, storing drugs on my premises and getting me arrested, etcetera. That’s trouble I wouldn’t need. If I seriously thought my average applicant would be a user, I might ask for urine samples, but I’d let them close the bathroom door.
I think it’s so awesome that you can know everything about me from the holes in my ears. Any piercing or tattoo means someone is “punk rawk”? I can’t even begin to say how stupid that is. If you were willing to do more than make stereotypes based on my appearence, you’d find that I would probably be a lot more likely to spend my weekend doing macrame than I would be to go to a local dive and dance to death metal.
I have stretched piercings. I also love to knit and sew, and I never listen to punk if I can help it. I wouldn’t be caught dead at a death metal show. I can spell “rock” without an “a” or a “w.”
There’s no one category of people who have tattoos or piercings. The fact that you insist that I’m “punk rawk 24/7” because of my piercings makes you sound biased and stupid. All you know is that I have piercings. You don’t know anything else. I suggest that instead of making blanket statements based on a person’s appearence, you withhold judgement until you know them.
Well, I made sure all my tats are positioned so people see them only if I make a concerted effort to show them. Know why? Because tattoo’s aren’t the first impression I always want to make. I’d love to walk into a job interview with my balls hanging out (hey, don’t judge me!)
But I don’t because I know it isn’t very professional. If you have a job and an employer that doesn’t mind multi-tats and 18 earrings, half of them visible but not in your ears, then good for you. Just don’t expect to get that executive position.
That’s all a customer knows, too. They don’t know that you craft and knit and love kitties and have “The Best of Bread” in your CD player. They see big holes in ears, very visible tattoos and unusual clothing. I’m not talking about your cool city-dwelling “seen it all” type of person; I’m talking about your 50-year-old accountant who’s led a quiet suburban life and isn’t sure about trusting his expensive and delicate electronics with this weirdo behind the counter.
The fact that you think I am JUDGING YOU!!! says far more about you than it does me.
I’ve been trying to explain situations in which one’s appearance can effect one’s ability to do one’s job. In the post you reference, I was trying to demonstrate this concept. Meanwhile, you’ve gotten shitty with me and basically accused me of being judgemental and closed-minded. I don’t give a rat’s ass what people wear. I’ll trust the 'hawked guy with permanent horns and nipple rings showing through his paper-thin shirt before I’ll trust the slick corporate shill in the three-piece-suit with the “Close-Up” teeth. And even THAT is a value judgement based on a person’s appearance.
I suggest you read for context, and try not to see personal attacks where there are none.
Well, here’s what I know when I see somebody with numerous tattoos and peircings:
they have numerous tats and peircings.
they chose to have these modifications, of their own free will.1
3a) they had these done in a culture none too different from mine.2, or
3b) they didn’t miss the fact that they’ve since entered my culture.
in my culture, numerous tats and peircings are commonly associated with punk rawkers and their ilk.3
The tat/peirced person isn’t a blind stupid idiot4, so they know this.
Because they choose to present themselves with these tats and peircings in a culture that associated the resulting look with the punk rawk crowd, the person in question wants to be percieved as being part of the punk rawk crowd.
So you see I do know something about you, just by looking at you.
Judging by appearances isn’t ‘JUDGING YOU!!!’; it’s normal. Everybody does it all the time, including you. So if you don’t like that people are ‘misjudging’ you based on the fact that you choose to look how you do, then stop looking that way!
1 Okay, I suppose you could have woke up in a bathtub with mysterious peircings on you, and your liver missing. But if so, why do you still have rings and whatnot in them?
2 An assumption I admit, but see part b.
3 Well, if you just have tats, you could be a biker or heavy laborer.
4 Another rather large assumption.
Ah, interesting question. Well, the first thing it tells me is that I’m going to feel symathetic pain at every spike they’ve driven through their flesh, wether it hurt them to do it to themselves or not. (I don’t even like looking at singly-pierced ears.) This is something of a personal problem, but in some extreme cases it alone is enough to send me to the next counter.
I also know that they were willing to make these alterations to themselves; a choice that I can literally not understand making for any rational reason. (I don’t consider ‘juvenilely succumbing to peer pressure’ a rational reason.) Because the person in question has made this decision, I know that they’re capable of what I consider extremely irrational behavior. This doesn’t mean they actually are going to go off and do something crazy or dangerous in the immidiate future, but it does reinforce the fact that I don’t know what they’re going to do. (I concede this is true with anybody, but the visible proof reinforces it.) This uncertainty makes me ever-so-slightly nervous, and decreases my interest in getting to know them as a person, since they seem more likely to be unlike me anyway. Plus, if I got to know them, then I’d have to, you, know, look at them. (That pin through the tongue, ouch!)
The following doesn’t really apply to me, but I can easily see it applying to a lot of people around my geographical area.
Punk rock types seem much more likely to be liberal; sort of how persons with fishies on the backs of their cars seem likely to be christian. By liberal here, we of course mean ‘Democrat’. Things could deteriorate from there. I know people around here who see democrats as supporting the murder of babies, hating and destroying the family unit, destroying the economy and undermining the country itself. Scary, but it happens. These people are going to label the hell out of you for your appearance, but it’s more because you seem to have decorated yourself to be a a liberal first, and they’ve merely reacted to things from there.
Are you a liberal, by the way? (Not that your answer changes the percieved trend any.)
Err, presuming that ‘you’ (whoever might be reading these posts) are even one of the people presenting the punk persona. Aw, bugger it, I retract that question.
As the thread’s current “ambassador of punk rawk,” I will confirm that I am a liberal. But so are a lot of people who aren’t “punk rawk,” like, for instance, my mother, who is even more liberal than I.
Succumbing to peer pressure? Unlikely, because I don’t know anyone else with stretched piercings. Other piercings, sure (especially lip and nose rings, which I hate hate hate–people with lip rings always play with them, and nose rings I just find unattractive. Wear a stud!), but not stretched lobes.
And by the way, in the interest of fighting ignorance, stretching a piercing, if done correctly, is painless. The best way to do it is to use Teflon plumbing tape, which is hypoallergenic and sticks to itself without adhesive, and is very thing. By wrapping the earring with a couple layers of Teflon every couple of days, the piercing will slowly get larger. Going too fast (putting in an earring too large for the hole) can result in tearing the skin and the formation of ugly scar tissue (which makes it harder for the piercing to shrink if you take out your earrings if you decide you don’t want them anymore). Getting the piercing to start out with hurts, of course, but done correctly, stretching only feels like a little pressure.
Well, the punk->liberal implication is one way. You know, all socrateses are men, but not all men etc… There are a lot of liberals who aren’t ‘punk rawk’ but when a rabid conservative does see a person with that look, they can be fairly sure they’re not dealing with a fellow GOPper.
As for the rest: I suppose it’s good to know intellectually that stretching the peircing didn’t hurt, but I doubt that’s going to do much for my gut reaction. And I merely said that peer pressure was a reason I could understand (though not respect); the fact that it’s not your reason just means that I can’t imagine what your reason might be. (Thus underscoring your unpredictability to me, etc etc.)
The long and the short of it is, I don’t like peircings, tattoos, or other decorative body deformations, particularly the more extreme examples thereof, and have a mild aversion to interacting with people who have done that sort of thing to themselves. I don’t feel particularly guilty about my feelings on the matter either. Does this make me a hypersensitive predjudiced discriminatory bigot? Sure, why not? You can think whatever you like about me; whatever gets your game on. I mean, I’m probably going to display most of the reactions you expect from those types (other than being a bad customer), so I can hardly complain if you react to what you see rather than what I’m actually like as a person.
As you concede it’s not the shopowner’s job to change society, I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Should we boycott employers that impose excessive restrictions on their employees? Go right ahead. I know I boycott anything that I find sufficiently offensive… which may include stores that present a repulsive appearance in employees. YMMV.