Visible tattoos - Are they as damaging as they sound?

My dad used to always say that he would never hire anyone with a tattoo, but I don’t know how many people turned down for that reason, and he wouldn’t have been hiring programmers, lawyers or sales reps. For everyone who says they wouldn’t hire someone with a tattoo, how many people have you personally not hired because they had a tattoo?

Holy crap! It’s Permanent!?!

I’m curious - why do you think there is an ethical question here? I only see a preference.

I used to work in management for a call center (part of a Fortune 500 company). This was the kind of place where holding down a McJob for 6 months qualified you, as long as you didn’t seem like an utter crackpot or a criminal. Tattoos? Upper management hated them and they had to be covered up. This was a place that was scandalized because the written dress code (which forbade visible tattoos and most body piercings) didn’t actually forbid earrings that weren’t in the earlobe. I remember clearly my manager going on that body piercings and tattoos were disgusting, and completely inappropriate, etc.

One person who was extremely qualified but came in with some modest visible tattoos in areas visible in business attire was told in no uncertain terms that they would not be hired unless they could get makeup to cover the tattoos every day without exception. This was the same job where I was given the third degree if I didn’t hire any prospective applicant who passed the background check. Seriously, if it wasn’t a slam dunk no – pretty much admitting criminal activity and having tats/piercings were the only two I can remember – I’d have to go through an interrogation if I tried to pass on an applicant because we were so desperate.

Now, frankly, it was a shitty place to work – but there are still a lot of people around who have very strong opinions about body modification. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to take the chance that I’d need a job someday that would be blocked to me.

I was joking, although thanks to Google cached pages and/or The Wayback Machine , it could be.

What if it was a tattoo of the name of the adult child they lost in a terrorist attack?
(One man I knew had this as his first tattoo when he was in his fifties)
Come to think of it, which tatoos are too bad?

What about veterans with a tattoo to remember their unit?
What about Christians who get cross tattoos, or lesbians who have black triangle tattoos?
What about tribe members getting a tribal tattoo?

Though, I admit, some tattoos can be pretttay bad
World’s gayest nazi

This statement is utterly ridiculous. You’re equating a distaste for tattoos with prejudice in the same vein as racism or bigotry? Tattoos are the equivalent of a hair style or a style of dressing. It’s cosmetic. It’s not a race, religion, physical defect or sexual preference.

Not hiring someone with a tattoo is like not hiring someone who has a mohawk or someone who shows up for a job interview in a polyester leisure suit. Here in the real world with real people, a world where potential clients and customers can be as capricious as the weather, placing an emphasis on professional appearance is often a requirement. You can piss and moan all you want about how unfair that it, but it’s reality. You aren’t born with a tattoo any more than you’re born with pink streaks in your hair. The choices people make in how they represent themselves is reflective of how they’ll represent your business. You damn well better believe that companies take this stuff very seriously, that will never change in our lifetimes.

I live in a college town, and tats are so common they are simply not noteworthy, unless it’s something really bizarre, facial, that sort of thing. One of the factors you might consider is where you intend to live. The west coast is generally more liberal and tolerant of that kind of diversity than the heartland, though there are plenty of exceptions. If you’re thinking of settling in Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, you probably won’t have the same problems you would in Omaha or Duluth. Well, I don’t know about Duluth; I’ve never been there. But moving to Omaha from Seattle was an eye-opener for me and my wife, in terms of encountering conservative cultural attitudes we hadn’t known before.

Yeah, I’m not seeing tattoos disappearing on the young folk anytime soon. I work with a girl who got a tattoo as an 18th birthday present to herself and she’s planning more. Her boyfriend is similarly inked and her younger brother is already planning his own tattoos.

That said, full sleeve tattoos bother me and I know exactly why: because the people wearing them are usually jerks. I’ve met a handful of people over the years who had full sleeves and wore a tank top to show them off. Out of a dozen or so people, I think one could be considered “not a jerk.” The rest ranged from mildly jerkish all the way up to full-on asshole. So I’ve got some bad associations and I’m sure a lot of other people do too.

I’m with you actually. You have every right to hire or not hire anyone you want…but it does seem silly. It doesn’t mean you have to hire every person with full arm tattoos that come in the door, but it seems kind of…unneccesary to give all tattoos the same treatment.

In my office there’s two of us with tattoos, and both of us you’d never know if we specifically showed you. That’s a lot different than a mohawk and you know it. But people, as evidenced in this thread, even Cat Whisperer (:frowning: Does that mean you don’t like me, CW?) equate one tattoo with all tattoos. I would equate it more to having, say, two piercings in the ear instead of one.

I think it will change in our lifetime, though. I have seen investment bankers and lawyers and other people in serious, professional jobs, that have a hint of a tattoo poking out from under their sleeves. Again, there is a vast difference between an Om (which is what I have), or initials of your dead sibling (which is what my coworker has), or a tribal tattoo, or a naked woman. These are all degrees and it seems weird that these degrees are never taken into consideration. Because after all, if my tattoo is well-hidden, what effect does it really have on my work ethic?

In fairness, if you have full sleeves how could you wear a tank top without showing them off?

If it’s well-hidden and no one would notice if you didn’t point it out, it’s not much of a visible tattoo, is it? Which, if you read what she wrote, is what CW said she’d view as a negative in the hiring process.

All this wailing and gnashing of teeth that’s happening about how horribly prejudiced and unethical she is is just plain stoopit. People are making it out like she said she’d never hire anyone with a tattoo ever, for any reason, or that she’d hire someone unqualified just to avoid hiring the tattooed candidate, and that’s not what she said at all.

If she’d said the same thing, except the difference between the applicants was that one was fat and one was thin, or one was ugly and one was pretty, or one was tall and one short, and she expressed a preference for hiring the thin/pretty/tall one, nobody would be talking about how “unnecessary” such behavior was, or accusing her of being unable to treat fat/ugly/short people ethically. People would mostly shrug and say “eh, I guess you have to base your decision on something.

And yeah, if I had two equally qualified, equally inked applicants, and one of them showed up for an interview with all of the ink covered and one had 'em hanging out for me and the world to see…I’d go with the one who covered it up. Not because I’m an unethical asshole with a problem about tattoos–I like well-done tattoos and plan to get one myself eventually–but because showing up with readily visible tattoos to an interview where you don’t yet know the corporate culture and how much of a problem the ink will be indicates one of two things to me. 1) You don’t have enough sense to stop and think about the potential consequences of your actions. 2) You don’t give a flying fuck how you fit in with the rest of the staff, our business model and client base. Neither of these options is going to push you ahead of the competition, ya know?

I don’t have a problem with any of what you said, CrazyCatLady, and I don’t think she’s horribly prejudiced and unethical. I was just musing.

Are we on the same message board? :wink: That said, I think this reinforces the old truisms about advice threads and about tattoo discussions around here.

I always love the chance to pull out this quote from one of my favorite bands, Emmet Swimming:

And that sums it up. I speak as a successful professional with ink done. But I kept them from visible spots and very few people see them.

Having visible ink, or ink in aggressive places (face, neck, and so forth) will hamper your ability to get hired for professional jobs, even in a ‘creative’ industry. Even if you do get in the door they will certainly hold your career development down and meeting with clientele will be a handicap because even if the client is cool on it businesses are instinctively conservative and will want to put forward someone without the potential liability of visible tattoos when clients come over to visit.

So go ahead, get some ink if you want. But make it chest, back, upper arm, whatever. You’ll be better off in the long run for it.

You’re equating your own personal aesthetic choices and reasons for not getting tattoos with those of the entire rest of the human race. Let’s say I really hate paisley.* If someone started a thread asking about the pattern, and I came in to say that I would never, ever hire a man who came to an interview wearing a paisley tie, don’t you think that would make me sound really immature and petty?

You’re saying, “*I *don’t like this thing, so that means no one *else *is allowed to like it, either.” You really want to encourage a world where everyone only hires people who share their exact same interests, regardless of how they impact that person’s ability to perform the job?

*Total lie. I love paisley. When people ask me my favorite color, I say paisley.

I’d say there’s a difference between “checking for public approval” and “taking a poll of people’s actual, real-world experiences with visible tattoos.”

Because you’re projecting your own personal fashion sense and justifications onto every other human being on the planet. You are judging them purely on a cosmetic choice that in no way affects their ability to do the job. (I assume this is the case, because your reasoning was that you just don’t like tattoos, not that the clients they’d have to work with would freak out, or anything like that.)

You just need to stop hanging around with assholes. :smiley:

I think everyone is overlooking the subject of the tattoo and how that would affect employment and social opportunities. Getting a permanent homage to one of the prime forces behind the Reign of Terror tells me you’ve either got a warped sense of humour or a thing for vicious, murderous, mob rule. Either way, my first impression wouldn’t be positive, and if you’re going to have any client contact I’d think twice about hiring you.

Robespierre.

I’ve worked with two people with visible tattoos - down their arms, on their necks, and in one case, one his hands. One I hired, because of the candidates he was the most qualified. One was hired by my boss and she was getting the more visible ones removed. My other coworker at that place had large tats, but hideable ones, and was trying to become a tattoo artist.

All three of these people were my age or younger - so between 20 and 25. I have no problem with tattoos or other body modification, but I’m on the West Coast, liberal-leaning, in a creative industry, and young. I’ve thought about getting tattoos, but I have problems with needles and a low pain tolerance and what I want would be fairly large but non-visible.

I say go with it, but make sure it won’t show, especially since it sounds like a cool design.

Slightly off-topic, I know a friend of a friend that had her boyfriend’s name tattooed on her neck. :smack: Then, she had to try and cover it up when they inevitably broke up, and last I heard, she was attempting to get her current boyfriend’s name tattooed on it.

Some people never learn.

Sorry. What I meant to say is I’ve met people with full sleeves who go out of their way to wear tank tops (like in Western New York in the middle of Winter) to show them off.