Manager Accidentally Suspends Colleague For ‘Controversial’ Tattoo In Another Language — ‘I’m Going To Be Fired’
The manager was told that the tattoo was a "terrorist slogan."
BAZA Production | Shutterstock A manager landed himself in hot water after he received an employee complaint regarding a colleague’s tattoo. According to the employee, the tattoo was a “terrorist slogan” that he felt threatened by.
Instead of going through the proper channels, the HR manager impulsively suspended the employee. Now, he fears that he is going to be fired.
The manager suspended an employee for her controversial tattoo in another language — without verifying what it actually meant.
The manager took to Reddit to confess his wrongdoings.
"I know this is my fault and I'm going to get fired," he started his post. "I work in human resources. An employee came to me and told me that another employee here has a tattoo that is the slogan for a known terrorist organization."
MilanMarkovic78 | Shutterstock
He explained that the tattoo wasn't in English but that the employee who brought up the complaint provided the alleged translation.
“Myself and the manager of the tattooed employee looked up the slogan, and once we saw it was used, we started the disciplinary process,” he admitted. However, further investigation proved that the tattoo was not a terrorist slogan and that the employee who had originally made the complaint had mistranslated it.
“He recognized one word and used Google Translate for the rest. Her tattoo has nothing to do with any terrorist slogan,” the manager wrote. “I'm an idiot who took his word about the tattoo without questioning if he knew the language. So did the tattooed employee's own manager.”
Now, the tattooed employee is rightfully upset and consulting a solicitor in the wake of her suspension. She has since quit her job due to the treatment she faced.
The employee’s other manager is currently out of the country for business and was asked to come back to discuss the repercussions. The poster fears they will both lose their jobs because of how they handled the situation.
“I'm an idiot for not verifying the actual tattoo. I can't believe I was so stupid,” the manager confessed. “My wife just had a baby, and I don't know how to tell her I'm going to get fired."
If tattoos in the workplace are not an explicit dealbreaker for employment, this should have never been an issue.
Tattoo fails happen every day. What's worse? Tattoo fails in a language you don't speak. But the fact remains that they happen all the time.
The larger issue here is not that they mistranslated the tattoo but that it was grounds for termination. Tattoos are accepted in this workplace. That means you can't fire someone because you don't understand or don't like their ink.
This is no different than if an employee arrived with a new tattoo that they thought meant "love" in a foreign language, but it was actually an expletive. "No regerts," and all that.
Commenters agreed that the manager handled the situation poorly and should have taken the proper steps before suspending the employee.
“So you started a disciplinary process without even calling the employee in and verifying the tattoo. That was a huge mistake,” one Redditor wrote.
“I'm sorry you're about to lose your job, but you're bad at it, so maybe you should work in some other field,” another bluntly commented.
Miljan Zivkovic | Shutterstock
Others argued that the employee who reported the tattoo should also face disciplinary action and focus on their job instead of fretting over their colleagues’ body art.
Depending on the work environment, employees are generally allowed to have tattoos that are visible to others as long as they do not depict anything offensive or graphic. Regardless, the manager also noted that the tattooed employee usually keeps her tattoos covered with a blazer or jacket.
If it had been an offensive tattoo, her colleague had a right to bring the issue up with HR. However, typically the employee would then be called into a meeting — not immediately suspended without an investigation.
While the manager was, fortunately, able to recognize his disastrous mistake, it may have just cost him his own job as well.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.