Body Art, Discrimination in the Workplace, and What You Can Do

I’ve hemmed and hawed on the subject of naming names, but have decided that I’ll simply say this: I used to work for a very large department store. Okay, yeah, you can probably read between the lines there. Lawsuits against this department store include such a huge variety of items that an entire website has been dedicated to tracking lawsuits against them – including those filed by employees, ranging from Sex/Race/Age Discrimination to the Wrongful Withholding of Wages.

Within 2 years of working for this store, I crawled up the ladder from being a Cashier to representing the front end as a Customer Service Manager. Obviously, my work ethic was never in question – I constantly dealt with extremely large amounts of money, and worked directly with customers and fellow employees alike. Things started going downhill when a manager noticed something absolutely shocking:

I have a tongue ring.

Horror of horrors, sin of sins, that little silver stud in my tongue started a chain reaction of nastiness that ended with my resignation.

Body Art in the Workplace

As body art – everything from tattoos to piercings – becomes more mainstream, a trend ushered in by those icons of our day, celebrities, more and more employers are becoming accepting of body art in the workplace. Part of this “acceptance” might be nothing more than necessary; a recent study performed by the Mayo Clinic found that about ¼ of all college students have up to three tattoos, and more than ½ of all college students wear pierced jewelry in spots other than the earlobe.

The question comes down to ability: body decorations don’t affect the reliability of an employee, so employers who value ability over appearance are starting to overlook body art. Even with that, though, nearly half of the employers surveyed in a National Association of Colleges and Employers study stated that a “nontraditional appearance” would sway their hiring decisions.

So, we come down to the fact that an employee’s ability to express themselves depends on the nature of their job.