Ding! Ding! Ding! This is the exact reasoning just after the corporate image excuse.
I don’t care if your 30 or 80. If you call me to reset your online banking password, I’m pretty sure you don’t give a damn about my tattoos.
Well, that would depend, now wouldn’t it… 
Spam reported (post #62).
But, according to the Montana Code, under the Wrongful Discharge From Employment Act (39-2-9), you can be fired for “Good Cause,” which is defined under the act as follows:
It seems to me that the question here might turn on whether having a tattoo would qualify as “disruption of the employer’s operation” or “other legitimate business reason.” My bet is that your employer would argue precisely that the ban on tattoos was put in place for a legitimate business reason, and that the wearing of tattoos constitutes a “disruption of the employer’s operation.”
It’s not clear to me whether such an argument would be successful. You’d need to talk to an employment lawyer in Montana to find out whether your situation would constitute a “good cause” termination.
My employer has a strict anti tattoo policy, which I violate daily. I also only shave twice a week and I don’t keep their impossibly short-torso’d uniform shirts tucked in. If a customer wrongs me I write them off and go about my day. I’m openly hostile with coworkers who I feel are lazy and incompetent. If I’m having a tough day and I want to sit at Ihop and eat pancakes and look at porn on my phone from 11-2, I don’t hesitate. Today I came in an hour late and went home two hours early; it just felt like the thing to do.
At the end of the day my work speaks for itself. I’m not a squeaky wheel. I bring my skills and talents with me every morning and every evening I take home a modest salary and a reasonable commission. If they want to fire a skilled autonomous employee who’s “in the black” that’s their loss. They know this. I do okay.
My advice- find an employer like this.
I work in bars/nightclubs and I’m the exception to the rule, having no tats at all. Not because I have anything against them, I just never had the confluence of disposable cash and a design I was excited about. Waiters/waitresses, bartenders, bouncers…I’d guess that >75% of the people I work with now or in the past 12 years have generally visible tattoos of some sort. A large proportion also have other body art such as non-ear piercings, large “plug-style” earrings and what-not.
FWIW, I feel that as long as they’re not offensive (or on the face, admittedly a pet peeve) people can have whatever the hell body art they want but my work environment is strictly “blue collar”. In a white collar/corporate environment I would expect standards to be different. I know many professional types that have body art that is easily concealed by their typical work attire.
You know, I have a good friend who’s first awareness of tattoos were the concentration camp numbers scrawled on his mother’s arm. He doesn’t like tattoos. He tolerates them because, as noted, so many young people have them and it would be hard to hire people completely free of them in his industry these days. However, give two equal candidates with the only difference one is tattooed and one is not he’s going to pick the ink-free every time. If the guy with the tats is better sure, he’ll take them, but I don’t ever expect he’s going to change his base opinion.
His mother, of course, is never going to “get over herself”. For her, being tattooed meant having guns pointed at her, having someone hold her down while the tat was applied, rape, beating, starvation, more beatings, more starvation, watching people die around her, rinse and repeat for several years. She was around 14 when it all started, if I recall. Can you understand why she is so down on the idea of inked skin?
Show a little sensitivity to those old folks who are anti-tattoo - some of them have quite a bit of trauma around the concept. Prior to around 1980 tattoos were found on criminals, prisoners, and victims of the Nazis. 30 years of growing tolerance is usually not going to wipe out 40-50 years of prior conditioning in someone 70 or 80 years old.
No. One thing is not the other. Her horrific experience does not re-write the simple reality that tattooing has been performed since the beginning of history for a variety of reasons both positive and negative. It does not give her license to look down upon those who choose to decorate themselves. Her anger, sorrow, and loss is ill directed here.
Tough shit. You obviously have no understanding of post traumatic stress disorders. I’m not asking you to remove your tattoos to make her world happy, I’m asking you to understand that for her tattoos are inextricably connected to trauma. You’re insisting that your personal choices be embraced by everyone, thereby denying them their choice to not like what you like even if they have some pretty damn good reasons to dislike something. That level of trauma is not something you just “get over” because some young’un doesn’t think you’re hip enough.
Uniforms are pretty innocuous, too, serve a useful purpose, and are admired by many. Nonetheless, many who have been traumatized find uniformed people terrifying.
Fireworks on the Fourth of July are fun, but I know two vets who, due to battlefield trauma, can be reduced to sobbing wrecks by the noise and generally spend the 4th inside, in as quiet a place as possible, and have been known to ask their docs for a tranquilizer to get through it. Maybe they should just “get over it”, hmmm?
Rinse and repeat for a number of things. Telling someone forcibly tattooed against her will during circumstances involving multiple beatings, assaults, starvation, and daily threat of death is displaying a pretty nasty insensitivity. Want people to accept your bodyart? OK, how about showing some acceptance for those who don’t care for it, rather than just telling them to suck it up and change their minds?
Admittedly, the numbers of such people that still exist are going down rapidly with each passing year, but I’m just trying to point out that there are reasons some of the old folks don’t like inked skin that go beyond “we didn’t do that in my day”.
Note: Once again, I’m going to emphasize that I generally don’t give a damn if the people around me are inked or not, and if it’s really well done I’ll ask for a closer look to admire it in detail. But I swear this is like the arguments between vegans and carnivores, only worse. The only thing more irritating are the tattoo enthusiasts who try to convince me to get one myself when I don’t want one to somehow “prove” my tolerance or something.
Time to find a religion that requires you have a tattoo. Then get a lawyer.
As with all discussions of tattoos, it comes down to “you can only control yourself, not the perceptions others have of you.” Some people are going to look at inked skin and believe its a signal for independence, originality and creative thought. Others are going to think its a sign the person is irresponsible, lacks forethought, and is probably a criminal. It doesn’t matter why people carry this baggage, the only thing you get to control is how you present yourself. Those perceptions have changed, and will continue to change, over time - and perhaps not in a continuous stream towards acceptance. (As a friend’s daughter said ‘tattoos aren’t cool cause most of my friends’ Moms have them!’). But trying to rush acceptance doesn’t help.
Yes, because if there’s any demographic that absolutely hates tattoos, it’s people who work with the military…:rolleyes:
It’s clearly your personal preference that you hate tattoos. You’ve made this position wildly clear during your participation in every tattoo thread that comes up here. Stop pretending you’re just a pawn of your industry, and admit that you’re just imposing your personal beliefs on the subject onto your hiring responsibilities.
I’ve never said I intend to cause a ‘disruption of the employer’s operation.’ I’m not going to give them a reason to fire me. I will play their stupid game until I get the resolution I would like. I will wear a cuff bracelet when I’m outside of my office. If that turns out to not be good enough for the powers that be, or they are completely inflexible with the new policy, I will continue to play the game until I find a new job.
Although I love my tattoos, they are not worth screwing up my professional reputation.
Broomstick, throughout man’s time on this earth, we have done unthinkable things to our fellow human beings. But I’ll be damned if I’ll live my life trying not to offend people who’s troubles, (a) I have knowledge of, and (b) am not personally responsible for.
I have empathy for them, but I can’t fix their issues.
Military officers are likely among the group of people who are most likely to make class distinctions and professionalism distinction based on visible tattoos. The culture may be tattoo prone, but I’m willing to bet that there is a huge gap in per capita tattoos between enlisted men and officers. And visible tattoos on enlisted men in uniform are not permitted - they must be covered. Crafter_Man’s take matches military policy on this. He may personally hate tattoos, but his position on this does make logical sense. As does, I hate to say it, a bank - whose server team does need to be able to impress outside auditors with their professionalism - and the KPMG guys are also not known for multiple piercings and visible tattoos (I suspect one of the guys I’m working with now has tats, but they sure don’t show while wearing that Brooks Brothers jacket).
I know of few people who have been in the military without tattoos of some kind, officers included.
And are those tattoos visible in uniform? All Crafter Man is saying is that the tats need to be covered at work.
Frankly, if you are capable of covering your tattoos at work and do so, there is no way anyone ever needs to know you have them and then they can’t be an issue. Unless Crafter Man makes his staff strip down for a tat check, which I suspect wouldn’t be legal.
Visible while in uniform when they were in?
No, not visible in uniform, as that’s clearly against the rules. But it is very uncommon to find anyone in the military contracting world that doesn’t have them if they have been in the military. But, I’ll drop the issue as it’s his personal experience versus mine.