Do Tattoos Affect Your Professionalism

Visible tattoos are known to make or break the chances of someone seeking to get hired.

At least that was the case for Jessica Muron in 2014, when she first moved to Gainesville at 23 years old.

On her first day on the job at Panera Bread, she was fired within five minutes. The reason in question? A small tattoo with quotes from a song by the band Rush, "Changes aren't permanent, but change is." Tucked away on her left bicep, the manager wasn't aware of her tattoo upon hiring her. Muron has since revisited this Panera and noticed visible tattoos among its employees. She remains unsure if the rule against her tattoo was a corporate guideline or a personal preference.

Muron's termination from Panera left her discouraged at the time because it proved difficult to land a job. It was just the next week when she began her new position at a law firm and was eventually trained as a paralegal.

Since then, Muron acquired almost a full sleeve of tattoos on her right arm, a knuckle tattoo and others. While her current place of employment doesn't restrict her on her choice to have tattoos, she plans on adding more in the future. For Muron, she relishes in being able to carry meaningful messages with her.

While Muron has found comfortability in her line of work in regard to her tattoos, there are still workplaces that don't allow them.

According to Santa Fe College's nursing handbook, students with tattoos must either have them removed or covered before entering their clinicals. While it is not uncommon for nursing programs to require its students to conceal their tattoos, there are professionals in healthcare who are allowed to show them.

Britney Lassiter of Gainesville is a 33-year-old registered nurse with 10 tattoos. She is employed at North Florida Regional Medical Center as needed and a traveling nurse. When Lassiter first began nursing three years ago, she was required to wear long sleeved shirts underneath her scrubs to hide her tattoos. As the rules become more relaxed, tattoos are allowed as long as they are not offensive.

Lassiter says that whether she has tattoos or not should not change what people think of her. "I'm still Britney."

An Ipsos poll from 2019 found an increase of tattoos among Americans since 2012. In 2012, 21% of Americans reported having at least one tattoo, compared to 30% today. While the acceptance of tattoos seems to be increasing, it is hard to predict whether there will always be some kind of restriction on them.

Gainesville resident Gwenne Gorman, 65, got her first and only tattoo in 1975 during a Labor Day festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The matching tattoo of a butterfly on her right shoulder, that she and her boyfriend decided on at the time, was something she became self-conscious of.

For many years, she hid her tattoo because she didn't want people to think less of her. Even a simple tattoo had stigma attached to it.

"It was an issue having a tattoo in the 70s and 80s," Gorman said.

As time passed and tattoos became more widely accepted, she began to forget it was even there. Although she doesn't plan on getting more tattoos, she recently has been considering getting it re-done.

As a business owner, Gorman has hired over 600 people. Although she thinks there is a place for tattoos, she believes that tattoos have the ability to enhance a certain image that aren't suitable in some workplaces.

"I think in theory, it'd be nice if it didn't make a difference, but in reality, it does," Gorman said. According to a self-conducted Gainesville survey, 65% of the people sampled with tattoos have somebody in their life who disagrees with their decision.

Lifelong Gainesville resident, Caroline Rowe, has first hand experience with family and opposing opinions. Rowe shares that her mother, a traditional Christian, views the body as a temple that shouldn't be tainted with tattoos. As Rowe continued to accumulate more tattoos, her mother still holds the same opinion but has eventually begun to accept her decision.

As a 23-year-old inpatient pharmacy technician for Shand's, Rowe now has 13 tattoos. Throughout the five years she has been employed at Shand's, no one has questioned her tattoos. Being employed in healthcare, Rowe said that her having tattoos doesn't relate with the quality of care she gives.

"Now as we are kind of moving forward and being more productive, it's changing," Rowe said. "And that's good because doctors can give you good care and still be tattooed."

Although Rowe believes that society is undergoing a change in perception of tattoos, she still imagines that there are circumstances where employers can make those decisions. She said that some professions place a higher level of importance on the way their employees look, such as modeling.

With tattoos reaching new heights among the public opinion, it makes the idea of getting tattoos that much more inviting. Holding no regrets, Rowe finds gratification in embodying works of art that someone spent time creating on her body. Tattoos are a way for her to express her life in meaningful and unique ways.

Similar to Rowe, Shayna Donoghue, 35, thinks that tattoos serve as a way for people to exemplify who they are. As a laboratory supervisor at Thermo Fisher, she has science- related tattoos and others that she was drawn to.

When it comes to tattoos and professionalism in the workplace, Donoghue thinks that employers shouldn't let it interfere with their judgement. Having tattoos doesn't reveal anything about the person or whether they could be a great asset to a business. She said that if people allow tattoos to be a deciding factor for employment, they could be losing out in the long run.

It is no doubt that tattoos have persisted their way into what people can now consider a social norm. At their current popularity rate, there's no telling the heights tattoos are likely to break in the workplace.