I've waited to do my more freakish styles until there was no job conflict. Like, not when I'm new at a job; or I'll wear a cap to tone it down, that sort of thing. The closest it's come is when I waited tables once at a kinda fancy restaurant, and I got a really botched haircut from a friend (was supposed to be just a normal trim) and the owner and a few of the regular customers told me outright that I looked like a doofus and needed a real haircut a.s.a.p.

Also, I think I grossed some customers out a bit when I worked at a bookstore and had a really long, fluffy goatee. I would carry my pen around by just sticking it in there, kinda like how in the old Jackson 5 cartoon one of them would keep stuff in his afro. But no one ever actually said anything to me about it. Well, separately from work -- one day while standing on the subway platform waiting for the train, a woman walked up to me and asked, "is that real?" while simultaneously grabbing and yanking on my goatee. I took it as a compliment.