I have this client under contract that does job fairs about once a quarter, and I and another recruiter are invited to send our candidates to them for 80% of our fee if they are hired as entry level sales reps. This place isn’t WalMart or Denny’s, but it’s where the folks that think they are above either of those two wind up. Usually this is where I send all those candidates that reside on the Island of Misfit Toys that can’t figure out that I can’t help them and keep bugging me. Yesterday was the big Employment Extravaganza and this morning I started getting feedback.
Their favorite person I sent showed up in a “Blossom Hat”. Thank God I’m old enough not to have to Google that. Blossom has two graduate degrees and was applying for a 32K job. She has strange choices for her body art. Stars behind each ear, the Illuminati Eye on the back of her neck, and a Bettie Page-as-a-devil tattoo on on of her inner forearms. But hey, long hair and long sleeves can hide all that nonsense. I have to admit, the hat was a good idea. It hid the head tats and as long as she dressed like a polygamist wife, nobody can see the pinup girl. This isn’t a tattoo friendly place, by the way.
Oh, and they’ll pass on everyone else. No surprise there.
So I call Blossom, tell her that she is a finalist, and let her know she has to take a Batrus test in my office Thursday. She says that she’ll call me back ”after they are done”. I get suspicious and ask what she is doing. Her and her boyfriend listened to some MP3 about a Indian warrior that went off into the unknown to retrieve a flute for his people, and were so inspired that they immediately went to get the characters from the tale inked. I tell her to stop by and get the application and background check on her way home.
Blossom now has a deer head, an owl, the Florida State helmet logo, a flute, an arrowhead, and a woodpecker tattooed around each wrist like bracelets. I actually wrote that down so I wouldn’t forget. When I tell her that her hopeful employer isn’t going to like that, she says that she can wear a wristband or clunky bracelets and cover them up. I actually keep a fucking athletic wristband in my desk thanks to all these people that insist that the Super Mario mushroom or the Chinese ideogram for sex machine is important enough to brand their wrists with. This thing didn’t even come close to being wide enough to win the Pepsi challenge, and she had to keep her wrists open and lubricated anyway.
So I sadly inform her that her new body art is going to disqualify her from consideration, and instead of being pissed off, she smiles and says that ”it wasn’t meant to be”. I’ll never understand how a tattoo is more important than a job.