Piercings & Work
WARNING!!!!!
Thinking of getting pierced? Better hold on there my friend, cos if you want any piercing that’s visible you probably wont get that job you wanted!!!
My story. . .
A little while back (A long time ago now, since I wrote this in 2001) I applied for a job with a well know Telecommunications Company here in the UK, who we shall refer to as ‘Titish Belecom’ for the purposes of this story.
Now I’m not a total twat, so I thought ‘better replace the circular barbell in my Septum with a keeper, don’t wanna freak-out the interviewer, so of I go goes to the interview with ‘Titish Belecom’ with just my Labret stud ‘on show’. . .
The interview went real well, the panel asked me loads of questions and they were well impressed, in fact so much so that they offered me the job there and then, on one condition. . .
The condition was. . .Yeah you guessed it; remove the piercings! I then and there told them where they could stick their job! Of course if I were in a wheelchair or in any kind of ‘recognised’ minority I could issue a writ on grounds of discrimination because ‘titish-belecom’ are an “equal opportunities employer!!!”
Equality, apparently does not stretch as far as anyone who has decided to have a piercing! I say piercing cos there are load of ‘TB’ employee’s who have tattoos and plenty of nasty ‘piercing gun’ ear piercings.
Now I’m not pissed off about not getting the job, what does piss me off however is the blatant discrimination displayed by this so called ‘Equal opportunities employer, If a company as large as ‘TB’ harbour these kind of ill conceived prejudices, I hate to think of the views held by other big organisations. . .
Most of the ‘pierced’ people I know, work harder, are more conscientious and generally have a superior attitude than their non-pierced colleagues! (it is possible that my sample of people is not truly representative) Why? Well let’s look at some possible reasons:
- By being pierced they have shown that they are open to new ideas! (Something which, in business is highly valuable asset)
- They show dedication! Piercing requires a fair degree of dedication to get the initial piercing then to maintain it and put up with all the; “Oh- didn’t that hurt?” comments.
- Facing fears. An important part of piercing (and most other body mods) is facing up to your fears.
When you actually approach some these organisations and ask what they have against piercing they’re normal response is; “having pierced people in a customer facing role, does not portray an image of professionalism” NO??? Neither does ‘fucking-over’ your customers, by employing incompetent people but you still do that!
I could name at least 10 companies that I have personally had dealings with, that have demonstrated they are TOTALLY INCOMPETENT, and not a PIERCED person in sight. . . .
- Like the well know anti virus company that can’t respond to E-mails, to request registration info…
- The mail-order company that can’t deliver and don’t even apologise!
- The bank teller that had to use a calculator to “work-out” my change.
I think everyone can list many examples of poor customer service and incompetence, the issue here is more than just ‘how you look’ in fact many companies should look further than ‘just’ the appearance of their prospective staff.
I’d much rather deal with someone wearing a t-shirt and a Mohawk that successfully answered my query, sorted my issue or whatever, than someone in a suit that stares at me as if I’m mad when I ask a simple question.
Of course this crap all starts at school for many! Hands up all those who were made to wear school uniform; this is societies first attempt to crush your individuality! Even the word ‘uniform’ is a bloody insult to most free thinkers . . .
School teaches you to conform; ready to be pushed around for the rest of your crappy little existence, they have nice little ’set’ hours to prepare you for the ‘real’ world too! Schools have a type of attitude to life that goes; “This is how it is - Dare to question it and you are expelled!” Thus producing perfect little citizens to go in to industry!
This also produces nice little malleable ‘consumers’ for big business to abuse, for an example of this you only have to look to the fashion industry! Produce a $5 T-shirt, put your ‘fashionable’ name on it and charge $50 to gullible consumers to advertise your brand - fucking amazing! Wish I’d thought of it:)
As we get older we tend to shun this kind of stupidity, or so we like to think. . . Other things start to become ‘cool’ as you mature like, house ware (stuff for the home) and cutlery! I recently had the misfortune to view one of these crappy ‘day-time’ house makeover shows, you know the one’s, where some poncey design ‘guru’ comes round your house and tells you that you have no taste! Well this particular twat was telling us; ” these ‘Kevin Slime’ cups are simply wonderful! You should buy them” Excuse me Mr poncey twat, but I don’t like you telling me what I should be drinking out of! Especially as in six months time you will be telling me how ‘outdated and passé those ‘Kevin Slime’ cups are and that I should replace them with ‘Rolf Lowrent’ ones (at great expense no doubt).
I have always liked the expression; “there is nowt so stupid as folk!” call it a crappy truism if you want, but the public in general are basically sheep, you can spot em’ they wear uniforms, go to any shopping centre and you will see ‘gaggles’ (the plural for a group a young women) of girls all dressed in the identical clothes, men are starting to do this too as well, we refer to them collectively as ‘bunches’ as in; “bunch of tossers”. Before you mail me and say: “You hypocrite, you are discriminating against ‘gaggles’ and ‘bunches’” I’m not! I simply draw you attention to them in the same way that people point out those with any kind of behaviour or attribute that makes them stand out, I would not however, deny them any opportunity on grounds of how they appear.
But it’s not just the fashion industry that has this has this ‘mind control’ over its customers, the consumer electronics sector is now trying to generate this brand desirability as well, look at Sorny!
Of course we all like to think of ourselves as individuals, with rights and we really ‘kick up a stink’ when we think we are not being allowed to exercise those rights. Truth be told, we are all guilty of following the crowd, when I feel myself doing this is give myself a mental ’slap’ in an attempt to ‘do the right thing’.
Faced with all this, how does anybody with prominent piercings get on? Many don’t, they give up, you’ve got to live and faced with the fact that most employers will not even talk to them, many just remove their piercings, others are lucky and find employers that are understanding (yes there are some!).
Another way of ‘bucking’ the system is to have concealed piercings, therefore giving society the ‘finger’ but ever so subtly.
UPDATE 2006
I penned this article a about five years ago, so I thought I’d do a little update.
What’s Changed?
Some companies have a better attitude, especially if you have the skill-set that they require. They key here is to make yourself desirable to a potential employer. Get a good education - you can do this after leaving school if necessary, by going back to college/uni.
I’ve seen many people that claim they can’t gain employment because of their piercings, when clearly it is down to them being total idiots! Don’t be one of them!
Big companies still dictate what they expect from their staff, with dress codes etc. Don’t work for them! For every big company there are dozens (even hundreds) of smaller competitors, send your application to one of these. They’ll generally much nicer to work for too!
One example of this is IBM; When I went back to university, virtually every undergrad wanted a job with IBM - I used to question this, the answer; IBM are the best!!! Really, have a look at this Robert Cringely article about IBM.
The other option you have is; self employment / forming a company — this is the hardest route, but if you’ve got the dedication, commitment and sheer bloodymindedness then it may be for you. I know, it’s what I did!
One of the things I learnt about me was that I could never work for a company. I’m not a team player and I can’t be creative on demand. If I feel like writing code at 3 in the morning then that’s when I’ll do it, OK. Also the I.T sector (and I’m sure that many others’) are filled with Pointy Haired Bosses.
So it probably just as well I didn’t get that job with British TelecomT erm, I mean Titish Belecom 