A) I am not ranting about tattoos in general.
B) Yes, he has the right to do whatever the Hell he wants to with his body.
C) I personally, would try to avoid letting it affect a hiring decision, but I’m not totally sure I’d be successful, depending on the position.
Anyway, a young guy, very late teens 19 or so, comes in from one of the other call centers and wants to know if any positions are available in the tech support department (none are). He seems intelligent, personable, etc. Except. He looks like an escapee from the circus. Yes it’s politically incorrect to think this and I’d never dream of saying it, AND in a call-center environment, it doesn’t really matter, so if he was qualified I’d hire him, but…
Starting with the hands: He’s tattooed his hands on the back (not the palms as far as I can tell) in solid ball-point pen blue/black. It looks like he’s wearing fingerless gloves. This goes up to the middle of his forearms where the solid blue turns into flame-shaped solid blue. He’s got tattoos on his face…mime-type teardrops from the corner of one eye. I could get past that. However, on one bicep he has, in lurid colors, a petagram with a naked female demon (very <ahem> well developed) squeezing her way out of the center of the star as though she was digging out from underneath the pentagram…her pubic hair is clearly visible. The other arm (also in lurid color) has a Conan-type pulling the hair of a naked snake woman as though Conan was going to initiate/force oral sex upon the snake-woman.
Through his white, short sleeved button-up shirt, I can see other tattoos of a similar nature.
I keep wondering "What were you thinking? Do you know how hard it’ll be to get a management position? To get hired for any job that interfaces with the public? I understand the need for self-expression, but the…misogynistic overtones of some of your tattoos could very easily be considered as contributing to a “hostile work environment” (and don’t blame me for that, I don’t make the rules.) Why in hell would you screw up your future this way? If nothing else, you’re limiting the hell out of your future opportunities! Is “self expression” worth potentially flushing your future down the toilet? (If the answer is “yes” that’s fine, but…)
Look, as I said, I’d hire th’ kid (assuming he was qualified) for a phone position. But if I were in the position to hire him for a sales/management type job, the sexual and anti-woman nature of his tattoos would make me have strong second thoughts unless I found out that I could, as a precondition of hiring, insist that he keep his tattoos covered up.
Whatdaya think? Am I a jerk for feeling this way?
Fenris