[Gemme]

I currently live in the PNW but was born in the South. I've also always worked in customer service industries. These things together have molded my views of tats and piercings in the professional and public arenas, which is basically HAVE them but don't SHOW them.

Here's my personal experience:

I work for a hotel. We are situated in a military town. During months with higher turnovers, it is reasonable that I will come into contact with well over 25,000 people. These would just be those *I* came into contact with, no more than 8 hours a day for a month or so. These would be folks who are enlisted, officers, transients, corporate hounds, families and/or civilian contractors. They could be from Kentucky or Japan or Virginia or Hawaii (and have been, within the same hour, no less).

Each region and each culture has its own views on public displays of private choices. Some are obviously more conservative. Some are more progressive.

The hotel once hired a woman who was covered in tats. They started on her upper neck and were visible on her chest and arms and one thigh. First of all, she wore clothing that was too revealing or a number of those tats would not have been seen. Second, we lost business because of her. We lost a $15-20,000 stay with one of our long time contractors. He walked in and was horrified by her appearance and cancelled his reservations on the spot. Actually, I was too, but not just because she had so many tats (some of which were inappropriate...sexually aggressive, I'll call them), but because of her work ethic and resistance to the rules of the house (having nothing to do with the tats...she had authority issues).

Anyway, back to the contractor....as I mentioned, we had a strong relationship with him as he and his men had been coming to us for about 6 years. We couldn't get him back in until after she was fired (the tats were not the focus of her termination, for the record), during which we lost more than $60,000 in revenue from his company for all the stays he would have stayed with us.

If it seems as if I didn't care for this person, that would be correct. There were conflicts between her and every other clerk, management and most of the housekeepers. Perhaps my views of her taint how I view the tat situation. Perhaps I resent her for contributing to a very difficult time with the hotel (hours cut due to lost business, fostering poor relations within the Front Desk clerks...etc). Perhaps.

I feel similarly about our current maintenance assistant. He has tats on his arms, which is no biggie to me, as they can be covered and sometimes he does. But the piercings get me. I really wish he'd put in silver or clear diddly bobs instead of black. He has several piercings and the dark blobs and dots makes his face look dirty. If he did a fabulous job, I might not *see* the piercings as much but he doesn't. He is a lazy and a bum who would rather work less so he can collect more on his unemployment. He's also toked on the property.

Maybe I just need to find a job where my coworkers are good workers who just happen to have tats and/or piercings. Or maybe where the bosses have balls.

Anyway, that's how I see it. It's not very progressive of me, I suppose, but I have to put myself in the place of the guest who may be coming to us for the first time. They want to see a professional appearance. That doesn't mean I can't have tats (which I do), just that I need to present "cleanly", especially in an environment that they are going to sleep and eat in. This includes hair being pulled back and no dangly jewelry as well.

My ex husband works in IT and they give him a lot of leeway for his fro. *grin* He is a red-headed half Italian, half Puerto Rican man that looks like a nice Jewish boy. The last time I saw him, it was pretty wild. That's in central Florida, the retirement capitol of the world, so they tend to be pretty conservative. Granted, hair is not the same as tats or piercings, but he'd probably be able to get away with those too since he totally kicks ass at his job.

I definitely think that ability plays into jobs that are less forward-facing more than appearance and appearance plays a more important role in jobs that have more face to face interactions with guests/customers/clients/etc.