Can employers force you to work on your day off?

A question for employers/employees in the IT industry, about visible tattoos on your work force?

• My buddy is just finishing up school for information technologies (Not sure what he's doing, software programming or website design or something like that) and he's getting a big tattoo on his neck. I figured that in the industry he's wanting to go into, visible tattoos would probably make it pretty difficult for him to find work. He figures it won't make much a difference, so my question is, is having visible tattoos (non-offensive obviously) a rare thing in the IT industry? As an employer would you hire somebody with one, or as an employee, do you work with anybody who has them? TL;DR - Is having a non-offensive visible tattoo going to make it difficult to find work in the information technologies industry?

• Answer:

  If he gets one of these, it might help him (The first one is clever): http://www.businessinsider.com/geek-tattoos-2012-2#if-you-sometimes-lose-your-head-these-html-tags-could-come-in-handy-1 ETA: Oops, I didn't actually answer the question. I don't honestly know. None of the programmers I work with have tattoos. And my boss (who would make any final hiring decision) tends to be a bit on the conservative side (but not horribly). I honestly don't know if it would influence his decision, but it might. But if your buddy is smart and interviews well and knows his stuff, that would probably have much more weight. So maybe it hurts only if he is a weak candidate to begin with. Interesting question.