Have you looked into the kind of wrist brace that people with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome wear? Those might do a better job of covering the tattoo which you said wasn’t covered completely by the cuff bracelet…
No.
But i think that that ladyfoxfyre’s more general point stands: given the number of military personnel who have tattoos, it seems rather unlikely that many of them would actually find tattoos offensive, or would cease doing business with a company because one or two employees have tatts.
You can’t turn a corner here in San Diego without running into a tattoo parlor, and the military make up a huge percentage of their business. I’ve seen new recruits with tattoos; i’ve seen retired officers with tattoos. Anyone who has spent any time in the military has worked and socialized with literally hundreds, probably thousands, of tattooed servicemen and women. I just find it hard to believe that there’s any sort of substantial anti-tattoo conservatism in the forces, to the extent that it would lose business for a company that works with military and former military folks.
It seems to me that Crafter_Man, like the OP’s bank, is actually far more conservative in his policies than his customers would be. I think that most customers, in most businesses, are far more concerned with tangible issues like good service and reasonable pricing, and that even socially conservative customers who dislike tattoos would be incredibly unlikely to stop using a good company just because of some tattoos on a few of the employees.
I never said you were. The point i was making is that the company might argue that your tattoos, in and of themselves, constitute a disruption to their operations.
Yeah, I know, I lived in San Diego for eight years. Crafter is only asking of his employees what the military asks of their enlisted and officers. The same exact thing. It’s certainly not what I would do though.
I work at a very well respected high tech firm. If such a rule was put in place where I work, we’d lose the Director of Manufacturing and the VP of Engineering among many others. Banking is way more conservative though. The OP is wise to move to a different sector.
I understand your point, but on a practical basis the number of forcibly tattooed concentration camp survivors still alive today who are personally interfacing with the US banking system is an infinitesimally small number relative to any retail bank’s customer base.
I guess, but i’m not sure that’s a very convincing explanation.
I’ve met lots of military folks since i moved to Southern California. They’re students in my classes, they’re the guys and women i play softball with, and they’re the people who work out in my gym. And every single one of them, as far as i can tell, recognizes that the military does things differently, and that the standards that they are expected to uphold while in uniform don’t necessarily apply elsewhere. I’ve never heard one of them whine about the DMV employee or the bank teller with a tattoo, or complain that "If i can’t have visible tattoos, why can they?"I’ve never heard a marine moan about the fact that my hair is longer than theirs, or that the guy who works in the local bar is allowed to have a green streak along with his six piercings.
My point, i guess, is precisely that there’s no need for non-military businesses to have the same requirements as the military, just because they happen to deal with folks who are, or have been, in the military. In the days before the repeal of DADT, how many people would have supported a company discharging a gay employee just because that’s the same standard that the military upheld?
Unless Crafter Man owns the company, they aren’t “his” employees. He’s posted no clarification of the situation, so I am going with he’s just using his supervisory position as a way to throw his weight around and enforce a personal preference on other employees. I’ve dealt with the type before. They always have a hard-on about something…hair length, tattoos, skirt length, you name it…there’s a petty tyrant out there somewhere who gets off enforcing his personal preferences on it. I’ve taken some pleasure over the years as a union officer in telling such bullies to “MYOFB, tend to your job’s real responsibilities, and let my client tend to his/hers.” Alas, the people **Crafty **bullies apparently don’t work in a union environment.
Did you read hajario’s link? It said visible is ok as long as it doesn’t exceed 1/4 of the exposed body part.
I’m a supervisor and if I wanted to let someone go because I just plain old didn’t like them, my boss wouldn’t stand in my way. Not that I would. But if your boss doesn’t like you, you can hold on for dear life and hope you outlast him as your boss, but don’t expect the company in a non-union shop to stop him.
Yes, and it also says nothing above the collarbone, one of the tattoos in question is on her lower neck.
snip.
I understand it fine, I simply don’t give a shit. I’m hardly insisting that my choices be embraced by everyone. I could care less if someone hates tattoos. If they want to be an irrational ass, then so be it. The problem arises when the hatred is completely unrelated to the person, or the subject of the tattoo. Simply hating on someone for having one is idiotic, bigoted, and just as bad as hating on someone for any other lifestyle choice. When we make a blanket policy to give those whiny babies their bottle, we are engaging in tacit approval of intolerance.
Yes, true, but this was your post:
I was pointing out that what you wrote is not correct.
They are allowed to have visible tattoos.
You are right, but its a very narrow range of permissible.
Would you say the same thing about dress codes?
Businesses routinely set rules about employees appearance. Whether it can be scientifically proven that any of those rules are valuable or not is a different story, but having rules about tattoos isn’t really different from being forced to wear long pants, or wear a suit, etc.
It’s certainly somewhat restrictive, but 1/4 of the portion of my arm that is showing in short sleeves is a pretty good sized tattoo.
The other point about the tattoos the Nazis created is that they did this, in part, because they knew how offensive it was to Jews (cite that tattoos are forbidden within Judaism). Obviously, being forcibly tattooed against your will is not a violation of Jewish law, but at the same time Nazis knew that Jews did not tattoo themselves recreationally. Some Jews, on the other hand, feel that the very Holocaust itself changes this prohibition, and have tattoos explicitly in solidarity with the survivors. I can’t cite this¹ as I learned about it in an academic conference paper (given by a Jewish scholar: it was called “Jews with Tattoos”). There is, of course, no absolute consensus within the Jewish community.
The point is, the fact that the Nazis forcibly tattooed Jews is an important factor in the discussion, but Jews themselves have reacted in different ways: like Broomstick’s friend, in exactly the opposite way from Broomstick’s friend, and by continuing or ignoring the cultural prohibition on tattoos without considering the Holocaust.
Therefore, people who are not Jewish, but still respect those who perished in the Holocaust and those who survived it, can’t really follow the definitive Jewish position on the subject. There isn’t one.
¹ Well, I sort of can: Heather Joseph-Witham, “Scenes from the Jewish Body: Jews with Tattoos.” Paper presented at the U.C.L.A. Jewish Folklore Conference, Feb. 10, 1997; and presented in a slightly altered form for the Armand Hammer Museum’s Teachers In-Service Day, Feb. 9, 1997.
According to an article from Fox News (I know Fox might not be the best source), about 25% of Americans aged 18-50 have a tattoo. My advice to anyone wanting to get a tattoo would be to avoid getting one that cannot easily be covered up. This doesn’t really help the OP thought. I think the best advice for the OP is to comply with the policy as best you can. There’s nothing wrong with talking to management about the policy. If you have a good relationship with them then I think you can talk to them without being branded a “trouble maker.”
Madam (for some reason I have the impression you’re a woman) you have demonstrated reasonableness in your posts about your work vs. tattoo conflict. That wasn’t directed so much at you as at Acid Lamp’s attitude of “screw them if they don’t like it”. For every positive use of tattoos - decoration, identification, rite of passage - there has been a negative use to mark prisoners, slaves, criminals, outcasts, etc. The notion that suddenly more than half the populace is now in favor of tattoos is, I think, in error. I think there are quite a few who tolerate them grudgingly, because in a civilized society you sometimes have to tolerate what you find distasteful, but if they had their druthers inked skin wouldn’t happen.
In this article it claims only slightly more than a third of people 25-29 had tattoos, and overall only 16% of adults. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement from the majority.
I do think your company has a shit policy not only for imposing a tattoo-free appearance on those who have no face-to-face public or customer contact (as someone else noted, I don’t know and don’t care if the person I’m talking to on the phone has tats). It’s irrelevant to getting your job done. I also think they’re shits for not grandfathering employees who already have tattoos, because it’s not like you can have them removed over the weekend.
You know, that’s all very interesting, except the friends I mentioned aren’t and never have been Jewish. They were and are Catholic Austrians. Or did you think it was just the Jews who were thrown into camps and forcibly tattooed? Everyone held prisoner in those camps had their ID numbers tattooed on thm. It had nothing (or very little) to do with being Jewish. I don’t think the guys doing it knew or cared about Jewish law, they just viewed it as a convenient way to track people.
I’m aware that a substantial minority of holocaust victims were not Jewish, and I’m aware that these people were also tattooed. I was not aware that your friends were Catholic Austrians—how could I be? When someone brings up victims of the Nazis with no other contextual information, I think it’s reasonable to assume we’re talking about Jewish people, especially given that group’s historic relationship with tattoos. I disagree with you about the Nazis’ awareness of the tattoo prohibition but I’m not certain where to go for a definitive answer.
I don’t think any of this really affects my point, though: people who were forcibly tattooed by the Nazis have different reactions to contemporary tattoos, so you cannot make your decisions regarding tattoos contingent upon how they, as a group, would react.
As many non-Jews died in the the WWII camps as Jews, so I would not call them a “minority”, they were half the people involved. As far as people *imprisoned *go, more were non-Jewish than Jewish although unquestionably Jews were one of the larger identified groups.