Lifestyle

Body inc.

You could never accuse these people of not being dedicated to their work.

New York City is home to a subculture of people who get something about their jobs literally tattooed on their bodies, and its members reveal a different attitude toward careers than you might find in the typical cubicle farm.

It includes people like Matthew Tilden, who so believed in his idea to open up a neighborhood bakery in Brooklyn that he got his hypothetical company’s logo tattooed on his arm, long before he even had a bakery or storefront to work in.

For them, the body art symbolizes a seamless interface between work and life, and their desire to treat jobs less like a way to pay rent and more like an extension of their personalities and passions, be it baking cupcakes or saving the lives of exotic animals.

Katie-Jo Glover, 25

Lives in: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Job: Veterinarian assistant at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine, which treats reptiles, small mammals, birds and other critters. “We basically don’t see cats and dogs,” she said.

Tattoos: The skull of a coyote on the underside of her forearm; a woman holding a burrowing owl on her thigh; a sparrow being stabbed by an antique hairpin on the other side of the forearm.

The skull on Glover’s left arm isn’t just any coyote: it’s Snix, one of the first ones she tracked while doing wildlife research on Cape Cod. The job entailed raising coyote puppies, monitoring them, even showering, sleeping and eating with them, part of an affection for the critters she developed growing up on a farm in Massachusetts.

By the time she started working as a vet for exotic animals, she decided to get another piece: a sparrow being stabbed by an antique hairpin, to symbolize the breadth of odd maladies she sees.

“You would not believe the things that people will come in and say happened to their pets,” she said. “I wanted something that looked bleeding, that looked like an accident.”

The office — where the current slate of patients includes a chameleon, an albino hedgehog and a chinchilla — attracts a certain breed of person who is more likely to be tattooed, she said.

“There’s a little bit of a subversive culture there,” she said. “The applications you get from reptile people who want to work there; they’ve got split tongues and things.”

Bethany Costello, 25

Lives in: Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Job: Head pastry chef at Dough

Tattoos: A mixer with tank treads and a banner with the words “Bake and Destroy” on her right calf; a whisk and a cupcake fighting on her ribs.

Costello took her first baking class, called “Sugar and Spice,” at age 5, where she learned to make things such as chocolate-dipped pretzels. By the time she had was immersed in the professional culinary world in New York City, she had been sitting on an idea for a tattoo design for three years. When she got promoted to pastry chef at a big restaurant — Blaue Gans — she decided that was a good enough reason to get it done.

The idea for a kitchen mixer with tank wheels came through an amalgam of inspiration from World War II miniseries and cooking shows on TV.

But talk to a few bakers, and you’ll find that they have the dedication of soldiers when it comes to broadcasting their career through body ink.

“This is a profession you’re really passionate about,” Costello said. “It’s not just what you do, it’s who you are. I’m a pastry chef. That’s what I’m known for. This isn’t just how I pay my bills.”

Until she moved to New York about three years ago, the idea of being a professional baker still seemed like a kids’ dream.

“I grew up in the suburbs in the South and I didn’t know pastry chef was a thing,” she said. “My mind got blown and I fell in love. Pastry chef, that’s a thing you can do that the rest of your life.”

James David, 25

Lives in: Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Job: Works at the Love Brigade, a clothing line and former retail store based in Williamsburg; also a freelance hair stylist.

Tattoos: The Love Brigade logo — a stack of hearts arranged like sergeant stripes — on his left arm; a pair of hair shears on his hand.

David wasn’t exactly lacking in tattoos by the time he got a job at the Love Brigade about four months ago. He’s covered body art in different sizes and shapes from over the years. He had only been working for the Williamsburg clothing line for about a month when he decided he loved the company’s logo and its collection named “Soulmates Never Die” enough to add it to the mix.

“I saw the logo and I just immediately liked it,” he said. I had a spot I needed to fill, and it fit in really well.”

Love Brigade’s showroom recently closed, but the clothing line continues, and David still works for the company because he likes the style.

“I describe it as Tim Burton meets the Beatles,” he said. “I feel like that’s the aesthetic. It works really well in Brooklyn, and it goes along with my style too.”

And although he has worked as a freelance hairdresser for six years, the scissor tattoo was less thought out: he got it because of a Friday the 13th flash sale at a tattoo shop.

“I wanted to get a scissor one anyway and I just happened to work out really well,” he said.

Hanna Schwartz, 32

Lives in: Brooklyn Heights

Job: Formerly a lawyer, now a legal recruiter for law firms, working at an agency in Rockefeller Center.

Tattoos: Lady justice, with scales, down her right side

In 2005, Schwartz had been practicing law for about a year and a half and already had several tattoos. She was working at what she described as a “super-corporate” 100-person law firm where suits were the daily dress code.

Deeply involved in the work, she decided to go a little more hard-core than her fellow barristers by getting large tattoos of scales and lady justice, about as close of avatars to the legal world as you can find. Schwartz said her hidden tattoos made her feel like she was undercover in the conservative environment.

“I certainly didn’t tell anyone about it,” she said. She kept the tattoo a secret, since she was already the lawyer her coworkers called “crazy” for going out to punk shows on a Tuesday night and “just generally being 26-years-old,” she said.

A friend from college drew the designs, which added to the allure, and the fact that Schwartz is a Libra also solidified her decision.

“That sort of made it more poignant,” she said. “My mom is a lawyer and she strongly encouraged me to go law school. I liked law school a lot. Being a Libra, that whole balance and justice kind of thing goes hand in hand.”

Now she works as a legal recruiter, where tattoos still aren’t a common sight.

“I’m into the offbeat tattoo punk scene,” she said. “I think it’s just me, that I have friends and happen to be part of this world.”

Matthew Tilden, 29

Lives in: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Job: Founder of Scratch Bread bakery.

Tattoo: The Scratch Bread logo on his forearm.

If Tilden’s idea to start his own neighborhood bakery hadn’t been a success, he would have been stuck with one a big lifelong reminder of what could have been. He asked his brother to design a Scratch Bread logo and then got it tattooed on his left forearm, months before he even had a bakery or storefront to speak of.

“I didn’t have a penny to my name,” he said. “ I started this place with $4,000 and that’s it.”

Lucky for him the bakery turned out to be a hit and he’s about to celebrate its second anniversary in July. It wasn’t so clear how much of a success it would be when he quit a job running a restaurant in Cape Cod to start his own venture, though.

“The logo alone is more of a reminder to focus and really truly believe and never give up,” he said, in between instructing his staff on the proper way to fold and cut bread dough. “It needs to be a complete part of me. My industry is my life. This is what I do.”

Was it just an in-your-face marketing ploy? Tilden said it was more of a challenge to himself.

“This is my own dedication to pull this off,” he said. “I was willing to sacrifice everything for it.”

Jesse Alexander, 37

Lives on: Upper East Side

Chris Tracey, 23

Lives on: Upper East Side

Job: Instructors at Flywheel Sports

Tattoos: The company logo, on the calf for Alexander, on the left butt cheek for Tracey.

The competition at the Flywheel holiday party’s scavenger hunt in December 2010 had gotten intense. While other employees tried to add up points for getting a sandwich at Katz’s Deli or taking a picture with a New York City police officer, Alexander and Tracey decided they would go for the 100-point item: getting a tattoo of the logo of the personal-fitness spinning company.

“I don’t think they expected anyone to go through with it,” Tracey said.

The two helped their team win the competition, but the tattoos symbolized more than just a flash of holiday whimsy. Alexander said he was in a bad place professionally and personally before he came on as an instructor at Flywheel earlier that year, working a gig as a massage therapist that he said really “broke my spirit.”

“This place changed my life on so many levels,” he said. “It all started from here.”

The body art symbolized his belief that it’s always possible to improve your situation.

“You’re never too old to make a change, to find yourself,” he said.

Tracey took a different path in life: He studied finance in school but ended up at Flywheel because the work was more intriguing than number crunching. The logo on his butt cheek represents a feeling of comfort and coming into his own.

“When I showed up with the Flywheel tattoo at the holiday Christmas party,” he said, “one of our execs jokingly told me they would sue my ass for copyright infringement.”