Would you hire this man? Unemployed dad with enormous face tattoo can't get work [Archive]

Teh One Who Knocks

07-14-2017, 10:58 AM

FOX News

http://i.imgur.com/7v5FjRS.jpg

Mark Cropp just wants to to get a job and support his family, but something unique is holding him back.

A giant tattoo saying "DEVAST8" covers half of his face, and, perhaps not suprisingly, it's off-putting for potential employers.

The Oamaru-born teenager told the New Zealand Herald he had it inked a few months ago, while drunk on homebrew in a jail cell in Christchurch.

He was locked up in 2015, at 17, for aggravated robbery, after he and a friend pulled a knife on a tourist in Nelson.

Cropp pleaded guilty to a range of charges, including aggravated robbery, escaping custody and assault with a weapon.

http://i.imgur.com/8aBCZ2g.jpg

He told the Herald he committed the crime to get enough money to help house himself and his pregnant girlfriend after they were kicked out of his parents' home.

"My partner Taneia was just a month due to drop my baby, and we had nowhere to go so I committed the crime - and I never got to see [the baby] again."

Teh One Who Knocks

07-17-2017, 11:43 AM

By Belinda Cleary For Daily Mail Australia

http://i.imgur.com/4Do7pbM.jpg

A teenage father with 'DEVAST8' tattooed across his face is 'waiting for the right job offer' after his desperate plea for work went viral - and he has revealed he will be getting the jailhouse ink lasered off.

Mark Cropp, 19, from New Zealand, took to social media on Wednesday afternoon to beg someone to look past his criminal convictions and heavily-tattooed face and give him a chance at work.

Within hours he had been inundated with job offers and said he had 'stopped counting when he reached 45'.

But he told Daily Mail Australia he still hadn't 'done a day's work'.

'I am just waiting for the right one to come about,' he said.

Some of the jobs required him to have his own car - he clarified - but he will need help getting to the work site.

'Until I get my first paycheck and get a car I won't be able to get myself around,' he said.

The former criminal revealed he will be getting the artwork - designed by his brother after a night of drinking home brew in jail - removed as soon as possible.

'I am just working out a date to get it taken off - which sucks because it is going to hurt,' he said.

'And because, you know, this tattoo means something to me and my brother did it for me so it is hard to make the decision to get rid of it.

'But I know it is the best thing for my future - and I want to be a person my family can look to for support.'

The artwork was designed to make him 'look tough' when he landed in jail following a long string of violent behaviour.

It was meant to be a 'little one along the jawline,' but the pair got carried away after drinking home brew made from fermented apples, sugar and bread.

'I went into jail with four tattoos and I came out with a full body suit,' he said.

But the face tattoo was the biggest shock to his family.

'A week before I got out I taped a picture of my face to the inside of an envelope so my partner could see it - she was devastated - but now she likes it and can't see me without it.'

DEVAST8 happens to be the 19-year-old's nickname.

'You know there was a long time there where I would devastate everything I touched,' he said.

'I would end up devastating everyone I met or got close to.

'They would be disappointed with something I had done or said - I was always hearing "that's devastating",' he said.

But he hopes the devastating chapters of his life are over - erased along with the ink on his face.

'I have learnt from my mistake,' he said.

'I still don't think people should be judged by the tattoos on their face - but I know it will keep happening unless I do something about it.'

Before his final desperate plea on Facebook the teenager said people had 'laughed in (his) face' when he had asked for work.

The tattoo was drawn with a homemade gun which used a needle made from the spring of a pen and powered by a cassette player.

Plastic knives and forks are burnt to a black plastic powder and mixed with toothpaste and water to create the ink.

The teenager has been out of jail for two weeks.