A woman who is covered from head to toe in tattoos says he was sacked only half an hour after being offered her dream job because her new employers found out about the inkings peeking out from beneath her clothes.
Claire Shepherd, from Swansea, said she had a half-hour phone interview for a retail merchandising role with shopping logistics company Dee Set and was offered the job shortly afterwards.
But then she received an email which mentioned the company’s "no visible tattoos" policy and so she called them up to confirm that they were still happy for her to start.
She said: "To double-check it was okay I rang (the manager) up, and then she retracted the job offer there and then, saying they wouldn’t be able to employ me. I’d had the job for about half an hour.
"I was so horrified I posted it on Facebook and then it just blew up and the story went everywhere.
"After a couple of days they offered me the job back, but I didn’t take it."
In her Facebook post about the incident, she wrote: "In my opinion, tattoos do not affect your performance or ability to do a job and do not pose a health and safety risk or cause any harm. It is literally just some colour or a picture on your skin.
"I was previously an assistant manager and it never posed an issue. As long as the person is capable of doing their job then I do not see how it is justifiable."
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Claire says that companies that have "no tattoos" policies are behind the times, considering how many people are tattooed these days.
She stopped short of calling the way she was treated “discrimination, though, because she accepted that the inkings were her own choice.
Claire says that despite the current popularity of tattoos, she still gets abuse from some members of the public.
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She told the Sun: "To me, it’s a form of art and self-expression – but sadly not everyone sees it that way.
"I get comments in the street and have been bullied online by trolls."
Claire, 32, got her first tattoo during a girls' holiday in Magaluf when she was just 18, and now 14 years later she is covered in them virtually from head to toe.
Even her eyebrows are tattooed on.
She says that over the years the designs which include stars on her neck, a bird escaping from a cage and various abstract patterns on her hands and arms, have cost her in the region of £3,000.
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