I don’t consider a tattoo on the shoulderblade (or inside ankle, or upper arm, or chest, or lower back, etc…) to be visible. Being visible, to me, means on the neck, face, or hands; basically anywhere that it couldn’t be hidden by business clothes.
I focus on crazy face tattoos because there are people who claim they would never judge someone at all based on their tattoos. I throw out extreme examples to make them realize that, yes, they would (and should!) judge someone based on their tattoos, and then, as Winston Churchill might say, all that’s left is to negotiate the price.
EE: I wouldn’t hire someone who wore a t-shirt to an interview. I think it shows bad judgement.
Zeriel: Judging someone for the clothes they wear is exactly like miscegenation. I would never judge someone for the clothes they wore, unless what they were wearing was obscene or badly done or in bad taste.
EE: Isn’t that still judging someone for the clothes they wear?
Zeriel: No, you’re completely wrong! Let me explain this again with an irrelevant discussion of talking in public!
You work in IT, so let me use an IT example. Which is a better way to characterize things: Based on clear, spelled-out, transparent rules, so that each characterization decision can be duplicated by an independent party (e.g., standards), or based on one guy’s subjective judgement?
Well I don’t think anyone in this thread is going to get one to prove you wrong.
The critical distinction, however, is looking at the folks with the full facial treatment…the vast majority of them are from police documentation, so…shall we debate if facial tattoos are a cause, or -symptom- of bigger issues?
(all of the full-facial fund managers, priests, doctors, and Boy Scout leaders, feel free to chime in now)
In short, the person that thinks “thug life” on his forehead is a good idea isn’t likely to be in the running for that job as a Real Estate Agent.
That’s really the problem here. While EE’s busy working over the strawman he’s built, let’s go back to what people have actually said, which is simply "a tattoo (no further qualification, except perhaps “even a facial tattoo”) does not imply poor judgement. The SPECIFICS of a tattoo MIGHT imply poor judgement.
Dude might be the best salesman on the planet. Sure, I might try to put him in a neighborhood where people aren’t going to care about his tattoo or think it’s cool on the main, but I honestly don’t understand why the hell it’s an issue.
Then again, I’ve hired people who wore a t-shirt to the interview. Because they showed good judgment in calling ahead and asking about corporate dress code, and I said “I’m going to be in a t-shirt and jeans, so you might as well be.”
When evaluating things that are deterministic, rules are great.
When evaluating things that are subjective (like, say, “will this person fit at my company” or “does this person have good judgement”), informed subjective judgments are the only thing that makes sense.
You skipped a key word, by the way: “Arbitrary”. The T568A standard for wiring Ethernet cables isn’t arbitrary–everyone does it that way, and not following the standard means your equipment doesn’t work. Conversely, the IBM Dark Blue Suit standard of dress IS arbitrary–nothing about that suit affects the performance of a field engineer, who could do his job as well or better in work coveralls or street clothes.
Suppose there were a deterministic test to see if a person had good judgement?
And if you prefer informed subjective judgments, then my informed subjective judgement is that anyone with a face tattoo wouldn’t fit in my company, so why TF are you arguing with me?
I’d disagree with that conclusion. I’ve worked with a LOT of field engineers in my time - and when you step in the door, I usually have no idea of your skills. My first impression is made with your appearance, my second with your personal demeanor. Like most people, my first impressions count for something. If they are favorable, you get a little more leeway before I’ve decided you are an incompetent idiot. If they are very unfavorable, you’ve put yourself in the position of having to prove you are competent.
If instead of “field engineer” you were talking about a backroom engineer - one that has skills that are established among the people they work with, you have a point - but then you still have the establishment period - repeated every time there is a new hire.
We’d like to think that people are going to accept us for who we REALLY are and be able to judge our skills. But that is simply not how most people work.
Granted, it works the other way as well. If your client himself is a free spirit, he might take a look at the IBM Blue Suit (and an IBM field engineer hasn’t walked into my building in a blue suit in 15 years or more, no jeans, but no suit either) and decide that the field engineer obviously has a stick up his butt. Really good field engineers are really fast at figuring out what the culture is in the building they just walked into, and who they need to impress, and changing themselves quickly to adapt. (For several years I was a consultant and managed consultants - and field engineers).
The thing is, the interview depends on so many things.
If I walk into an interview, dressed appropriately. And I rock the interview. I’m smiling, friendly, intelligent. I am going to be really pissed if I found out I lost the job simply because the corners of my tattoo happen to be visible around the edges of my watchband. I will, of course, accept it, because that’s life, but that is beyond craziness, don’t you think?
It’s a whole different thing on a facial tattoo, but I admit if someone came in with a facial tattoo, but had the appropriate dress sense and rocked the interview, I might be more flexible on hiring them. Same thing about coming to the door. Fellow comes to the door from the gas company; he’s dressed in the uniform, neat and clean, but happens to have a unicorn on his face or whatever is going to be more likely to get in than the guy who has no facial tattoo but is slovenly and has half the uniform on and obviously doesn’t care about his job.
It’s all in presentation.
On the other topic, some of you who have said that a tattoo is permament and nothing we feel is permanent, I disagree with you. Sure, I might think tattooing something in Japanese on your skin is silly when you don’t understand Japanese, but that’s totally my opinion, and not a fact just because I say it is. My ‘Om’ is not a passing phase. I will always be Indian until the day I die, no matter how American I become. I will always be Hindu, no matter how atheist I am. These things don’t leave you…but there are days I fear I have lost my culture, and so I put a daily visual reminder on my skin, for myself, to connect to where I came from.
As long as I can confirm that he’s employed by the company that owns my gas lines, I will absolutely let him in. Of course, you’ve created a crazy scenario by which you will always be right, because if I say no I’m a hypocrite, and if I say yes I get raped and murdered. See what I mean about your analogies being terrible?
Here’s a silly hypothetical for you. You’re driving through a bad part of town late at night. Someone with a craaaaAAAaaAAAaaaAAAaazy facial tattoo comes up to your car when you’re stopped at a red light. Do you peel the fuck out of there or roll down the window to find out what they want?
If you say “peel the fuck out,” you die, because the guy with the facial tattoo is a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was trying to warn you that there was a suit-wearing serial killer in the back seat of your car.
Yyyyyyyyyyyup.
My perspective on marriages.
I’ll start by explaining why they are a permanent reminder of a temporary fancy and go from there.
Nobody I know plans on wearing the same shirt for the rest of their lives. As we get older our tastes change. What we thought was cool the year before is now in the goodwill store.
It’s an act of maturity to acknowledge that your future self will have different tastes. Because of this it’s an act of common sense not to make changes to one’s life that can’t be readily reversed. Most women don’t wear their makeup the same every day for the rest of their lives or plan on wearing the same hair style forever. The same applies to men. Mustaches come and go as time and styles change.
Putting this aside there should be the realization that marriages are not particularly useful. There’s nothing you can get from a marriage that you can’t get from a relationship with less commitment. People usually move on from this level of relationship as they grow older.
Whether a person thinks a marriage is really trendy or not has no bearing on a person who DOESN’T have a spouse. On one hand it’s a potential negative social cue for some people. On the other it’s a permanent reminder of something the married person thought was trendy or meaningful at some point in their life.
I’d like to address this part. You are a woman with 2 nipple rings and a chain running between the two and its obvious as you move and with what you wear that you’re sportin’ hardware, or you’re a man with a combined total of 9 earrings, or you’re into some significant ink that covers a lot of your torso, and arms; you’re making a statement about your level of self-comfort. About how you see yourself and since these are external visible elements, how you want the world to see and evaluate you. Time is mighty short when making a first impression..
IMHO it’s pathetic to be held to a certain image in order to be deemed valuable or appropriate for a corporate environment. So, hypothetically the senior V.P. in charge of Worldwide Marketing at WidgetCorp Inc® has sprawling tattoo of a tiger that wraps around her right breast, with the head of the tiger seen in a low-cut V neck dress and the body and tail curl around the outside curve of her breast, with the tail end wrapping up in her cleavage. ( I’ve seen this tattoo. :eek: ). So? Nobody can see a hint of it, she always wears a suit to work.
She’s at her job for 9 years and is superb at it. Just doing amazingly well. Then she goes on a work trip to Panama City Beach Florida and during an afternoon off sits on the beach wearing a bikini. The tattoo is partially exposed. Suddenly her entire company is on PC alert because someone who made a superb first impression and does an amazing job has ink? Really? Oh, the fucking hypocrisy. It is human nature that we evaluate as quickly and finally as we do as cited in the link above. It’s also a damned shame… because we miss being open to all sorts of folk who might greatly enrich our lives / our businesses/ our careers.
If you start off with an extreme and unsupportable statement (like, “I would never judge someone based on any tattoo they had”), then yes, you could be shown to be a hypocrite. But that’s on you, not on me: Like I said earlier, people are sending you a message with their appearance. That guy with the swastika and “skinhead” tattoos; he’s trying to tell you something. You can close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears and pretend that the swastika doesn’t mean anything, but…it fucking does.
Your problem is that if you admit that the swastika tells you anything about the person who has it, then you have agreed that you can judge someone based on their tattoos, and then all of your arguments fall apart, so you can’t do that.
Now, your arguments wouldn’t fall apart that way if you had taken a more intellectually defensible position, but…we are where we are.
I take off, because 99.99999% of the time, the guy with the crazy facial tattoo is trouble. I’m not trying to defend an intellectually indefensible position on a messageboard, so I’m free to play the odds.
Well, it’s certainly more palatable, friendly, and well reasoned than some.
Moving on:
I found an example where a full facial tattoo would not be an automatic FAIL…you have two candidates. Both are equal in all ways except the tat. But he’s Maori (Bonus points to the suit in the Very First Picture)
You might find it those things, but I think it’s the same tedious “all judgement calls have exactly the same moral weight” bullshit that most people I know gave up on in junior high.
I’ve already said that I don’t have a problem with Maori tattoos…which makes me wonder if people are arguing against something I’ve said, or something they think I said.
We made it 300 posts in before you cared to clarify your stance:
I dunno how light bends around your part of the woods, but in mine, there’s a GREAT DIVIDE between ‘visible’ and ‘crazy face tattoo’ no matter WHAT she charges for a Blow Job.
You glossed a lot, because I explained why I focused on crazy facial tattoos.
Shot From Guns is making the silly argument that all decisions have the same moral weight, so that, in her words, not hiring someone because they have a tattoo is exactly the same as not hiring someone because they married a black person.
Shot From Guns, of course, would never judge someone based on a tattoo, which is how she feels superior to those of us who do.
Which leads to me saying things like, would you let this guy in your house?
Now, no one in their right fucking mind would let that guy in their house, but Shot From Guns is in a bad spot; if she admits that she wouldn’t let that guy in her house, then she’s judging him based on his tattoo, and then her entire argument (and probably her sense of self-worth as someone who never judges others) is gone. Instead she’s got to cloud the issue by making silly false equivalence arguments, like the marriage one you liked so much.
Plus, I get to link to funny pictures of people who have tattooed stupid shit on their faces.
I’m amused on an ongoing basis by EE because he’s only actually able to defend himself against the strawman of “all tattoos are always good all the time”.
In the real world, where tattoos of different subject matter and quality exist, his absolutist position is indefensible.
