Recently I was offered a job at Honeywell of Tucson to manage Honeywell physical assets.
Prior to this offer, I've worked in different positions that required me to be less than this professional... Freshman year I decided that I'd wanted to piece and stretch my ears, and put all sorts of jewelery in them from jellyfish plugs to custom cherry wood inserts. Every since I was young I had the idea of getting my ears pierced in some way, however, I never knew how undesired these "modifications" are in the professional world.
By why is this? Why is a professional society so scared of a new standard? It seems as if with my hiring, and the hiring of others who are adorned with tattoos and similar "counterculture" norms, companies are being reformed by those they are hiring. In my career searching, I have met countless individuals who have gotten past the traditional American thoughts on these personal choices of their employees, yet the traditional atmosphere lingers.
Over time our generation will become the new norm, but what comes next... well, that will be very interesting.
I definitely agree with your last sentence. It always seems like the cultural and professional norm is always caught in a tug-of-war between the constraints of the past and the present. Perhaps there will come a time when pierced ears are considered too traditional by that generation's counterculture.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird how that works. This past summer I worked at a pizza restaurant in downtown Flagstaff and the atmosphere they were trying to go for there was the "relaxed, hippie, only-in-Flagstaff" vibe. My nose is pierced, but it's very small, and barely noticeable stud but my parents warned that if I wanted to get a job I would have to take it out. But I got the job and pretty much all of my coworkers had piercings and tattoos; mine was of course very mild by comparison. It was simply the "countercultural" vibe that the owner wanted to go for, even though piercings and tattoos can hardly be called countercultural anymore. I found it odd that the restaurant still relied on that outdated association.
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