Pierced, Dyed, Tattooed--and Hired

A shock rocker with 2 feet of black-dyed hair, 10-gauge earrings and a pronounced tongue hoop isn’t most employers’ idea of the perfect hire. But in today’s job market, even self-described Gen X freaks with the right skills are finding their way into mainstream workplaces.

That’s what happened to Elton Palmer, 25, who moved to Los Angeles from Denver to make it big in rock ‘n’ roll but soon learned he needed a day job. With a high school degree and computer-programming training, Palmer easily landed a software development job with a fairly conservative firm in Ojai.

Palmer went to the interview with his hair pulled back in a ponytail and without his most obvious jewelry. For months, he wore a shirt and tie and began each day with a 10-minute camouflaging routine, taking out his jewelry and inserting clear plastic posts in his ear holes and a flat red retainer in his tongue.

Over time, however, he came to feel so indispensable that he began to flout company norms, going to work as his rocker self, “L10,” and creating a stir among co-workers. Palmer was moved to a rear corner cubicle with floor-to-ceiling partitions. His photograph was left out of the company directory and he wasn’t invited to informal employee gatherings. But he kept his job.

“I was an outcast of the company culture, and I was hidden away,” Palmer recalled. But “they couldn’t afford to lose me. And I loved that. I loved that I was getting raises because of my skills.”

With employers struggling to find workers, job candidates in their 20s and early 30s with tongue studs, eyebrow rings and tattoo anklets are finding their way into offices, warehouses, hospitals and even banks, often by concealing their body modifications, but sometimes by openly ignoring traditional business dress codes.

“The tightness in the labor market affects everything. I don’t want to say people are compromising, but they are not as stringent,” said Ellen Hendrickson, market vice president at Initial Staffing Services Inc.’s Upland office.

Alysia Vanitzian, vice president and chief learning officer at the Employers Group in Los Angeles, the nation’s oldest and largest human resources organization, said many employers, particularly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, look the other way when it comes to body modifications if candidates have needed skills. “At this stage, a warm body is better than nobody--piercings included.”

Many employers also are afraid of appearing intolerant, she said, and “are turning a blind eye.”

That’s exactly what they ought to do in many circumstances, said Jack Tanenbaum, a San Francisco-based employment attorney. Unless there are solid business or safety reasons, Tanenbaum said, managers and human resource officers usually have better things to do than enforce strict dress codes.

“It almost makes me feel faint, putting your tongue on a clamp and having something driven through it,” he said. “But to each his own. It’s a generational thing.”

Tanenbaum is fielding more calls lately from employers seeking counsel about visible piercings and tattoos. One morning last week, he scored a hat trick of sorts: “Three calls--one tongue-piercing, a tattoo that somebody finds offensive and . . . a general question on whether to establish a piercing policy.”

Although no one tracks the numbers of Americans with tattoos or piercings, there is ample evidence that both have risen dramatically over the last 10 years. Membership in national tattooist and piercer organizations is growing, as is attendance at conventions, and manufacturers of body jewelry report business is booming.

“It’s becoming more mainstream now. It used to be strange to see someone with a small nose piercing. Now you see that at the bank and at the lawyer’s office,” said Stephanie Davis, who with her husband, Jim Coffman, owns Tears of the Moon, a manufacturer of body jewelry in Montclair. Coffman opened shop 10 years ago as a fine-jewelry maker, but dropped that as body jewelry began to take off in 1994, expanding his company from two to 60 employees. Business has doubled each year for several years, Davis said.

Body modifications are particularly popular among those in their 20s and 30s, who grew up watching corporate Americans take off their suits and ties and blaze khaki trails to the office. It is perhaps not surprising then that many Gen-Xers expect to be able to work with tongue barbells, arms covered with tattoos and blue hair.

Katrina Hegge, executive director of the Maryland-based Alliance of Professional Tattooists, with more than 1,000 members, attributes the popularity of body modification to a youthful rejection of modern man’s lack of meaningful ritual.

“Then again, it could just be a lot of kids who want to be different--just like all their friends,” she said. “There still is a shock value to be had in it.”

But many employers continue to draw the line at visible piercings, tattoos and non-natural colored hair. “You still are not going to see IBM execs walking around with piercings and tattoos hanging out,” Hegge said.

Starbucks Corp., which employs 40,000 coffee servers, many of them Gen-Xers, forbids piercings other than ears (a two-per-ear limit). The dress code also bans visible tattoos and unnatural-looking hair colors.

“One of the things we’re striving to do is present a clean, neat and professional appearance,” spokesman Alan Gulick said.

Resistance isn’t limited to large corporations. At Mother’s Market in Huntington Beach, managers began enforcing a 3-year-old ban on tattoos after a customer complained. Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena also bans visible tattoos, as well as visible piercings (except earrings, up to three per ear), and requires hair color to be natural-looking. Supervisors enforce the rules among 130 employees, some of whom have been sent home to don socks over ankle tattoos.

“The market right now for employees is very tough, but we have not changed our policies in regards to what we find acceptable for our clientele,” said Karen Watkins, vice president and general manager.

Like Vroman’s, employers who forbid visible body modifications often work with offending employees on concealments, such as opaque tights for ankle tattoos and adhesive bandages for tattooed roses that bloom on shoulders when workers go sleeveless in summer.

At Millennium Staffing in L.A., which places Web designers and graphic artists, recruiters try to send candidates with piercings and tattoos to open-minded ad agencies, Internet and entertainment companies.

“We wouldn’t ask them to change their appearance,” said area manager Alissa Nial. “We’re going to tell you that for the way your appearance is, you may not feel comfortable in an environment that’s more conservative.”

Brittany Petros, a contestant on CBS’ “Big Brother,” who changed her hair color on the show almost as often as her clothes, made the ultimate Gen-X sacrifice for a job. When Petros, 26, graduated from the University of Minnesota with a chemistry degree, she had waist-length synthetic dreadlocks in black, yellow, green and blue with interwoven shells.

When she got an interview with a major pharmaceutical company, she spent eight hours taking out her dreads. She died her hair brown and borrowed a gray business suit from her mother.

After a while on her new job, Petros felt the urge for an eyebrow piercing. But, knowing that would be hard to conceal, she settled for getting the septum of her nose pierced. “I just wanted to pierce something because I hated wearing business suits all the time.”

Petros wore a black retainer to keep the hole open, never allowing the piercing to show at work.

“I’m a woman and young, and that’s hard enough in that business,” she said. “If I’m going to go in looking like a freak, no one’s going to listen to me.”

Petros said she was thrilled when the producers of “Big Brother” said she could join the show as her freaky self. She showed up with her hair in two pigtail bunches on top of her head in hues of fuchsia, green, yellow and blue. “I said, ‘Oh my god. I’m so cute now--instead of lame.’ ”

Geography also plays a role in acceptance of body modification.

Corolla Fleeger, 25, of Hollywood, wears a tattoo on her left arm that depicts a scene of sadomasochism, along with tattoos on her arm, shoulder, rib cage and hip. Her hair might be colored bright red, blue or purple. She has two piercings in her lip, one in her left nostril, one in her tongue and 13 in her ears.

Needless to say, her part-time job as an American Red Cross disaster relief coordinator, flying around the country to help victims, hasn’t always been a cakewalk, especially in the rural South.

“People from Oklahoma and Texas were hostile,” she said. “Now I’m not allowed to go to certain places because I cause them so much discomfort.”

She said she has no problem with that and understands that her appearance may be disconcerting to some stressed disaster victims. She is bothered, however, when she gets guff from other disaster relief officials.

“Some days it really gets to you. It’s like, ‘Why do you judge me by my cover?’ I originally did this to rebel against my mother. . . . But now it’s who I am.”

Sometimes body modifications get old. J.T. Katzman, 29, got tired of his body piercings and allowed them to fill in. But he still has multicolored tattoos covering his arms.

“I’ve always sweated it in case I had to become a real adult,” said Katzman, who has managed to find work in creative environments where his tattoos have been overlooked and even welcomed.

Katzman, director of new ventures at Artistdirect Inc., was the first person Elton Palmer talked to when the software developer traveled from Ojai for a job interview at the Los Angeles-based music Web site network, where tattoos and body studs are routine.

“I’m like, ‘Thank God. I will get a job here.’ And I did,” Palmer said.

“I am definitely not the freakiest guy here.”