Tattoos in Retail.

In the previous post, my group member said appearance is everything- which I agree with to a certain extent. However, when it comes to retail, I think it depends on the atmosphere in which you work and company you work for.


AJ Welsh is a 27 year old male from Boise, Idaho. He has been living and working in Utah for about 3 years. He has ears gauged to a size 4, his nose pierced, and tattoos covering both his arms, both hands, stomach, chest, and back. He got his first tattoo when he was 21 years old, and has been consistently adding more work to his body in the nearly 7 years since. At the time, he was also working retail, which he seems to genuinely enjoy. He described his job as, "Selling shoes. It's a fun work environment and a fun job. My customers are usually 15-25 years old." He works as a manager of Journeys shoes store at The Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah.

For AJ, his tattoos and piercings have not affected the jobs he has or hasn't been offered. "I've had the same job for six years," he stated. I asked if there was a career outside of retail that he would be interested in pursuing and his response was, "maybe doing tattoos. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to get a job as a server or a bartender with my tattoos either. The only jobs I feel like I couldn't get with my tattoos are jobs I don't want, like working at a desk." That being said, I went on to ask AJ if he were a business owner, if he would allow his employees to have tattoos or piercings that showed at work. His response? "As long as they are in good taste." Being that this is quite open to interpretation I asked him to clarify what he meant by this exactly. "If they had a tattoo of a naked girl on their arm they would have to cover it up." Fair enough.

I wanted to see how people, mainly his customers, react to his authoritative position in regards to his tattoos and piercings. "Most people think they are 'cool' because tattoos are becoming more widely accepted. The only negative interaction I receive from having tattoos is bad looks sometimes," AJ said. "They probably assume I'm a certain type of person-a bad person- because of these but then they realize I'm a normal human being and that I'm really nice, and none of them say anything out of line to me," he continued. I wondered if these odd looks occured more in Salt Lake City than they do elsewhere, even in the same industry. AJ felt that working in SLC with tattoos and piercings is different because people seem to look down on it more here, because a lot of people are so conservative and see tattoos and/or piercings as distasteful.

I went on to ask what interested him in piercings and tattoos, and he said, "as an artist maybe it's just the artistic side of tattoos that I like. And the piercings, just for fun-to be spontaneous." AJ is quite content with all of the ink on his skin, and feels that he will never regret any of his tattoos. He feels as though they haven't yet negatively affected his life, and doesn't see why they would in the future. "Sometimes people ask, 'What're you going to do when you get old?' and I guess I don't really know. But I don't think my tattoos are going to stop me from doing it."

In some instances tattoos and piercings may inhibit you from being hired somewhere. These days its becoming more and more common to have tattoos and piercings, and alot of employers are becoming more lenient with their policies about them.