Starbucks employee claims he was fired because of his tattoos

He'd worked in the Starbucks in Sherman, Texas -- an hour due north of Dallas -- for seven years, and shift-manager Benjamin Amos wouldn't have been blamed for thinking that his tattoos were a non-issue. It hadn't just been the cultural mainstreaming of tattoos in the past decade; the popularity of the A&E television series Inked in 2005 and 2006 was just one indication; but he was hired with the tattoos firmly in place and he says he'd worked, covering them per dress code, for so many years.

Last February, however, it suddenly became a problem and, say filings with the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas, and the store manager told him the regional and district managers didn't like the tattoos. When he refused to resign, according to Amos, she fired him -- later phoning him to apologize for the poor handling of his termination.