Discrimination By Employers Leading To Tattoo Removal Boom

By Cornelius Nunev


The tattoo removal business is flourishing these days. Partly, it is because of some businesses refusing to hire those who have been inked.

Getting a job requiring tattoo removal

In an ideal world, image wouldn't matter to employers and peers as much as character and achievements. Sadly, that is not the way it works. Aside from discrimination on basis of age, gender, race, sexual orientation and so forth, another as-pect of a person's makeup that is topic to discrimination is whether or not they have a tattoo.

Tattoo removal businesses are getting a ton of consumers, according to the Daily Mail, because employers are not very accepting of tattoos. It does not even matter that tattoos were an extremely important part of culture in the past; in fact, the work "picture" comes from a Celtic tribe called Picts which were known for their tattoos.

The inked cannot sort mail

According to Forbes, the United States USPS, Denny's and Starwood Hotels will not hire anyone with a visible tattoo. Likewise, anybody with visible ink cannot help people save 15 percent or more on their car insurance by switching to GEICO, as the business will not hire them. Neither, according to the Omaha World-Herald, will sandwich chain Jimmy John's. However, B of A and All-state Insurance will.

CareerBuilder.com did a survey of HR professionals that showed the top three reasons a hiring manager would pass on an applicant. Bad breath and piercings were two of the top three, and visible tattoos were number three. This is why 40 percent of people getting tattoos removed, according to Forbes, are doing so to try and get a job. According to the Daily Mail, the publication Patient's Guide showed a 32 percent increase during the last year in tattoo removals.

Laser removal works by breaking up the ink in the skin, which is absorbed to the blood-stream and filtered out. It is very painful and demands application of a topical anesthetic. One session of tattoo removal can cost upward of $200 and each tattoo, dependent upon size, can take up to 10 treatments to dissolve, which can practically require some to get short term loans to fund.

Not good for consumer ser-vice

Part of the problem with tattoo discrimination is that the bulk of job is in some sort of service, where an individual may have to deal with cus-tomers. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, roughly 90 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are in services. Not all people take kindly to ink.

There was one court case in 2011 where a male sued the state of PA be-cause they would not hire him with tattoos to work as a liquor enforcement agent. The Equal Oppor-tunity Commission points out religious tattoos are always protected, as was the case when Red Robin was sued for firing a male who had religious tattoos. The restaurant had to pay $150,000 in 2005 in a settlement with the man. It is unknown what legal rights people really have on the subject of tattoos.




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