When you get fired, the most important thing is to put it swiftly behind you. That is going to be quite hard for Jill Abramson, who was sacked as editor of the New York Times last week but who has part of the newspaper’s logo tattooed on her back.

当你被公司炒鱿鱼的时候，最重要的就是迅速地把整个事情抛在脑后。不过对于吉尔•艾布拉姆森(Jill Abramson)来说，这将非常困难。这位《纽约时报》(New York Times)总编辑最近被炒了鱿鱼，不过此前她已将纽约时报的标志纹在了自己背上。

To ink a curly black gothic “T” into your skin is the most tragically misplaced act of loyalty to an employer I’ve ever heard of. It is even less explicable than getting tattooed with the name of a current love. At least then a) there is a chance that the object of your affections will be charmed rather than horrified and b) it is at least possible that the two might stay together forever.

在我所听说过的向雇主表忠心的举动中，将一个弯曲的黑色哥特体字母“T”用墨水纹入自己的皮肤是错得最可叹的。这种行为比将现任爱人的名字纹在身上更加让人难以理解。毕竟对于后一种举动来说，有一定概率你心爱的对象会因此感到喜悦而非害怕，而且两人从今以后白头偕老至少是有可能的。

By contrast, to have your employer’s name branded indelibly on to your skin makes no sense at all. Far from being pleased, your boss is more likely to think it creepy and weird. Jobs are not for life any more. All jobs end; often they end badly.

相比之下，将雇主的名字永久地纹在皮肤上则完全没有任何道理。你的老板不但不会因此感到高兴，反而更有可能认为这种行为既古怪又令人汗毛倒竖。工作已经不再是一辈子的事了。所有的工作岗位都会走到尽头，而且结局通常并不愉快。

The only other case I can find in which employees have had the company’s logo emblazoned on their bodies is at Rapid Realty, an attention-seeking New York real estate firm. More than 70 staff have now become what it calls “tattoo brand ambassadors” and have had a pair of Rs inked on arms and heads, while one beefy looking chap has a vast picture of the company’s store front tattooed across one half of his bulging six-pack.

除了艾布拉姆森以外，我能找到的唯一一个员工将企业标志纹在自己身上的案例是在Rapid Realty，这是一家非常渴求关注的纽约房地产公司。超过70名员工成为了该公司所谓的“纹身品牌大使”，在手臂和头部纹了一对字母R。在一位肌肉发达的小伙子凸起的六块腹肌上，有二分之一的区域都纹上了该公司门店正面的巨幅照片。

“It’s no big secret. Our agents love where they work . . . and they’re not afraid to show it,” says the company. Nor is it a secret that they were offered a pay rise in return for disfiguring themselves, which might also have shaped their decision. Maybe it seemed a good deal at the time, but one assumes it will seem less so once they realise that a tattoo always outlasts a job in real estate – or in journalism.

该公司表示：“这不是什么重大机密。我们的员工热爱他们工作的地方……而且他们不怕将这一点展示出来。”同样不是秘密的是，这些员工获得了加薪奖励，作为对他们损坏自己外貌的补偿——而这或许也影响到了他们的决定。在当时看来，这或许是个不错的交易，但一旦这些员工意识到，一个纹身的存续期永远比一份在房地产业——或者新闻业——的工作长久，那么我们可能应当认为，这个交易的吸引力将会下降。

Yet just before she was fired, Ms Abramson gave an interview in which she made the idea of getting permanently marked with your employer’s logo sound a little less crazy. “It’s become for me a strange form of personal hieroglyphics,” she explained. “I think they eventually, when I finish doing them, will tell the story of me, of where I lived, and what things have been important to me.” So far, she has four, of which two are for the “institutions that I revere, that have shaped me”. A curly “T” for the Times, and a crimson “H” for Harvard.

但就在被炒鱿鱼之前，艾布拉姆森做了一个访谈，她在访谈中的表述使得在自己身上永久刻下雇主标志的主意听起来略微没那么疯狂。她解释称：“对我来说这已经变成了一种古怪的个人象形文字。当我完成这些纹身的时候，我认为它们最终能够讲述关于我的故事，我曾在哪里生活，哪些事情对我来说有过重要意义。”到目前为止，她已有了四个纹身，其中两个“代表了我所尊崇的机构，它们影响了我的人生”。一个弯曲的“T”代表纽约时报，还有一个深红色的“H”代表哈佛(Harvard)。

Suddenly one sees a whole new use for tattoos. As the NYT’s first female editor, Ms Abramson had always been something of a trendsetter. But this new fashion could be far, far bigger. With the H and the T she has made herself a global leader in wearable CVs.

突然之间，人们发现了纹身的一种全新用途。作为纽约时报的首位女总编辑，艾布拉姆森一直是个类似于潮流创造者的人物。但纹身作为一种新风尚的影响可能会大得多。凭借H和T两个字母，她使自己成为了可穿戴简历领域的全球领军人物。

The idea would be to mark your body with the names you most wanted to associate yourself with. The tattoos would be a more painful and permanent version of the badges that boy scouts have been sewing on to their sleeves for over a hundred years. Whereas the boy’s badges say “insect study” and “archery” and “fire safety”, the grown-up equivalent would say Cambridge, Google and Goldman Sachs.

可穿戴简历就是在你的身体上纹上你最想与之联系在一起的机构名称。这种纹身的作用与100多年来童子军们在他们的袖子上所缝的徽章类似，不过是个痛感更强、更加持久的版本。男孩子们的徽章上写的是“昆虫研究”、“射箭”和“防火安全”，成年人则纹上剑桥(Cambridge)、谷歌(Google)和高盛(Goldman Sachs)等的标志。

The only thing Ms Abramson did wrong was to have them on her back, where they could only be seen if she pitched up to work in a backless dress – generally not a great look for working women of a certain age. Instead, she ought to have had her wearable CV tattooed down her arm or hand – or even on her neck or forehead. Then every time she wanted to impress, those institutions that shaped her would be proudly on public view.

艾布拉姆森唯一做错的一件事就是把纹身刻在了自己背上。在这种情况下，这些纹身只有在她高调穿着露背装工作的时候才能被人看到——对于到了某个年纪的职业女性来说，这通常不是一个好看的造型。相反，她本应将自己的可穿戴简历纹在小臂或者手背上——甚至脖子或者额头上。这样每当她想给人留下深刻印象的时候，这些曾经塑造了她的机构就能骄傲地展示在公众面前。

The idea of the wearable CV strikes me as no more visually disgusting than tattoos of butterflies or skulls or barbed wire – and a lot more useful. It would have the advantage of freeing people from having to drop into conversations tiresome boasts about what university they went to, as everyone would be able to see that for themselves. It would also mean that if at a party you spotted someone heavily inked with establishment names you could make a point of talking to them or of avoiding them – according to your preferences.

在我看来，可穿戴简历在视觉感受上并不比蝴蝶、骷髅或者带刺铁丝网更令人反感——相反还更加实用。它的好处在于，人们无需继续在谈话中装作不小心地插入令人生厌的自我吹嘘——例如炫耀一下自己上的是哪所大学——因为别人自己就能看得到。这还意味着，如果你在一个宴会上看到某些人的身上布满了代表著名机构的纹身，你就能根据自己的偏好，考虑一下究竟是要走上前去和他们交谈，还是避开这些人。

If Ms Abramson has showed us one excellent use for tattoos in professional life, a loutish Manchester United football fan has recently demonstrated another. While the former editor’s tattoos are a display of achievement, his represent a darker side of office politics. Back in February, disgusted at his team’s performance, the fan had “Moyes out!” inked across a hairy buttock. When the luckless David Moyes was fired as manager last month, the fan went back to the parlour and had the words “job complete” added underneath. The lesson: when arse-kissing is not called for, arse-dissing might work instead.

如果说艾布拉姆森向我们展示了纹身在职业生涯中的精彩应用，不久前一位粗野的曼联(Manchester United)球迷则展示了纹身的另一种用途。前任总编辑的纹身是个人成就的展示，这位球迷的纹身则展现了办公室政治更加黑暗的一面。今年2月，这位球迷对自己所喜欢球队的表现感到忍无可忍，于是在自己毛茸茸的屁股上纹上了“莫耶斯(Moyes)滚蛋！”的标语。上月当倒霉的大卫•莫耶斯(David Moyes)被解除主帅职务后，这位球迷又去了一次纹身工作室，并将“任务完成”纹在了上一条纹身的下方。从中我们可以得出的教训是，当主动拍人马屁不招待见的时候，用屁股进行诅咒却可能有点效果。