Before I became a Front-End Developer, I was a Graphic Designer. My first job as a Graphic Designer was at the age of 17 working for a local company in Downtown St. Pete. The company consisted of The CEO, his wife (marketing), their lifelong friend (biz dev), a Head Graphic Designer & Photographer and myself (who played assistant to the Graphic Designer.) It was a small group of very close knit, creative and motivated people.

After about 6 months of working there, a few buddies and I were tossing around the idea of getting tattoos. We had some ideas, but landed on matching half-infinity signs on the skin in between our thumb and pointer fingers. The idea was when we shook hands, it would have made a full infinity symbol. Lame, I know, but we were 17.

As I approached Matt, the CEO, I wasn’t sure how he would respond to me getting a tattoo, especially one so visible. What he said changed my outlook on the perception of tattoos in the workplace from that day forward:

“If you came with me to a client meeting and the ONLY reason they didn’t do business with us is because you had a tattoo, I wouldn’t want to do business with them anyway.” — Matt Gough

Wow. I was floored. I had never heard of a business man have that reaction to having tattoos in a professional environment. Matt was a CFO of an international telecommunication company prior to starting this company. When I say “business man”, he was nothing short of what you would consider a traditional business man.

Needless to say, I never ended up getting that tattoo, but have since gotten six ranging from a three-quarter sleeve to a “mom” heart on my left wrist. Non of which have effected anything I’ve done in my career except keep me away from people I wouldn’t want to work with anyway.