By Andrew Court
She’s failed to ink a job deal.
A woman with 800 tattoos says she’s struggling to find gainful employment because bosses cast judgment on her inked-up appearance.
Melissa Sloan, 46, who hails from Wales in the United Kingdom, previously had a job cleaning toilets but says she hasn’t been able to find a similar gig because of the art that adorns her face and body.
“I can’t get a job,” Sloan bluntly told the Daily Star. “I applied for a job cleaning toilets where I live, and they won’t have me because of my tattoos.
“People have said I have never had a job in my life, but I have had one once and it didn’t last long,” the mother-of-two added. “If someone offered me a job tomorrow, I would go and work – I would take that offer.”
Sloan first started getting tattoos at the age of 20 and quickly became hooked.
Despite her struggles with employment, the Welshwoman told The Mirror that she still gets as many as three new inkings each week, describing herself as “addicted.”
“If I make it to 70 I’ll still be getting them,” she declared. “Every bit of skin will be covered even if I’m turning blue, my face is already turning blue — I look like a Smurf.”
Sloan has a particular penchant for facial tattoos and has no bare skin left on her visage. She’s inked over old tattoos three times, creating a multi-layered collage across her face.
“I’ve got three layers on my face. I probably have the most tattoos in the world, and if not then at the rate I’m going on I probably will have in the end — I keep going over and over them,” she enthused.
However, Sloan believes it’s her facial tattoos in particular that cause people to make snap judgments about her.
She told The Mirror that a lack of employment isn’t the only hardship she’s faced.
The mom has also been banned from her local pub and from her children’s school because of her ink.
Still, the defiant tattoo lover isn’t backing down and is determined to ink one record — employment be damned.
“I’d like to be a record holder, it’s just something different,” she declared. “I’m trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records.”
