Metal and Employability

Metal and Employability
How Our Taste in Music Could Compromise Our Employment Prospects
By Dark Juan

There is a myriad of other things I should be doing right now, which is unsurprising in my life. However, I need to get these words recorded because it was an idea I had when I was going through a massive bout of impostor syndrome at work earlier in the week. I have been promoted, you see, and this means a whole lot more responsibility. This got me thinking, instead of attending to what I should have been doing, and during this bout of contemplation, I got concerned with how we, as Extreme music fans, are perceived in the workplace.

I am fortunate in that my line of work places little importance on your appearance, being as it is judged that the young people I look after (I work in children’s homes) should have a seasoning exposure to all kinds of people irrespective of colour, creed, and religion. However, there seems to be, in the wider workplace, some stigma still attached to the tattooed and pierced people, the long-haired (or no-haired), and the kind of music they listen to. This is not prevalent as much in what we shall call jobs with… less responsibility attached to them. It is perfectly possible to be a factory worker or a lathe operator and have no comment made on your appearance, and have no judgment placed upon you for your music tastes and how you conduct your duties. However, as you get promoted (as I have), your appearance and demeanour appear to matter more and more. 

I can only speak from my own personal experience – the point of this article is to create a debate among you folk out there. Have you experienced prejudice because of your appearance or music tastes from your employer? I am not that concerned with from your workmates, as I wish to concentrate on the perception of us Metal fans from the point of view of employability and whether our achievements at work are diminished because of our refusal to comply with the norms of how we look. Plenty of us do have responsible posts, but are we managers and supervisors, or do we rarely find our way off the bottom rung simply because of how we are viewed? When younger, I simply took jobs because they were the ones offered to me, whether or not I wanted to do them, which is why I spent so many years driving trucks, forklifts, and working in warehouses. They were all I could get at the time, more often than not, because of my appearance and my taste in music. Even then, I fudged at the interview and merely said that I liked Rock music and left it at that. That was many years ago, however, and the landscape has changed.

There is a point to this. I was, when I applied for this promotion I have now gained, concerned about whether I should compromise my appearance in an effort to seem more… more “diligent”, more “employable”, more “responsible”. I am covered in tattoos, shaven-headed, and have piercings in my face. I decided, in the end, although I was clad in a most elegant black suit for the interview, that I would not compromise anything beyond taking my lip rings out. I would do this for any interview. Hence, the beard stayed, I shaved my head so I looked presentable, and I prepared myself for the interview to a truly single-minded degree. Thankfully, I am knowledgeable about my duties and was therefore, armed with a Powerpoint presentation (although I made sure that my desktop picture of the Dark Judges from 2000AD were not visible – there’s another part of me I cut out of my interview for employability purposes) and notes, I delivered my pitch and was duly promoted. This was entirely because the interview panel were people I have known for many years during my work, and they have learned to look beyond my appearance. How would I have fared had I been going to another employer for the same job, up against the same candidates? How would my refusal to compromise myself entirely have been seen? Would my tattoos, my piercings, and my taste in music have gone against me in any way?

Employment Law in the UK says no. However, as long as lip service is paid to that law, the authorities have no interest in whether or not a highly qualified, but alternative individual gets a job or not, and let’s face it, interview notes can be fudged. The question is, from the point of view of an employer, and the optics of their business, does the highly qualified alternative person get the job because they are basing their interview criteria solely on merit, or does the appearance of that person preclude their employment or promotion, no matter their achievements or suitability? I find that most employers are painfully conservative (with a small ‘C’, we are not concerning ourselves with politics here) and that they might sometimes pass over the ideal candidate for the next best, who doesn’t listen to Morbid Angel and have a tattoo of Eddie emblazoned on their forearm, or whose hair isn’t green and blue. What is an acceptable level of compromise of ourselves? 

There have been ways we have come up with to combat this – the subtlety of Corporate Goth is a very good example. Ties of silk with small skulls, black business suits, pencil skirts and silk blouses, unobtrusive esoterica on understated jewellery and the like. However, this still marks you out as someone who the conservative employer might overlook simply based on their perception of your appearance. What is the view of these conservative people of us Extreme music fans? Do they view us stereotypically? Do they see us all as stoners and pissheads who spend all weekend getting wrecked at gigs, or can they see beyond the outward and see that we are just as, if not more so, diligent and capable people who excel at what we do?

In my case, thankfully, it is the latter. This might not be the case for others. I have ended up, quite by accident, overseeing two children’s homes, the staff, the budgets for those homes, and the wellbeing of several children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The buck now stops with me. My loving music that is fast, aggressive, loud, and decidedly anti-establishment has no bearing, in the eyes of the people who have given me these responsibilities, on my ability to do a good job. I feel that the landscape of the employment world in the UK is slowly changing, what with the explosion of tattooing in the UK over the past 15 years. Skin art is no longer the barrier it once was, when tattoos were regarded as the province of sailors, ne’er-do-wells, and prostitutes. Music, I feel, has a bit of a way to go. Interviewers are always taken aback when they ask, in an interview situation, what my favourite song is. I could lie and simply say that I am a fan of obscure 80s Electronica, which is unusual enough to be interesting and non-threatening from the interviewer’s point of view, but when I say ‘Slateman’ by Godflesh (because apart from a small adjustment to my personal appearance I refuse point blank to compromise my integrity) I am met with raised eyebrows and a slight recoil. I am not usually invited to explore this and my wider love of Industrial music. Being honest has cost me opportunities in the past. This I can state with certainty. Of course, the feedback I have asked for has never said this, preferring instead to come up with more spurious and smoke-and-mirrors explanations.

I can’t speak on what it is like for people in other parts of the world. The US, for example, has very loose employment law compared to that of the UK and EU, for example, where you can be told you’re fired and be out of the building three minutes later with no severance or anything. It would be instructive for some of our US cousins to discuss their experiences. 

There are successes, though. I am now a manager of children’s homes, Dr. Von Stottenstein of Ward XVI is a nurse, our good and noble Victor Augusto of Ever-Metal.com is an air traffic controller, our equally estimable Rory Bentley works in a bank playing with the finances of many other people. The Metalphysicist is a lawyer and writes under a pseudonym for the same reasons I do.  We can do it. And we can do it without compromising ourselves, and that is what matters to me.

Over to you lot, then. What are your experiences? Have you been discriminated against because of your taste in music, or the stereotypes perpetuated from it?

Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.