I was working with a visiting Kaizen (it's a method of continuous improvement started by Toyota) trainer from Japan, and he kept staring at my arms/hands/throat when we were trying to work. I was starting to get annoyed because the entire point of Kaizen is lean management. No wasted efforts, no straying off task, etc. Finally, he tried to roll up my sleeve without permission and I told his translator that he had crossed a line of politeness and that it wasn't acceptable. He was terribly embarrassed and excused himself.
Before he left, he asked to see me again, and showed me his AMAZING tattoos that he keeps hidden. The translator had a WTF moment since he didn't know his boss was tattooed and my crew kept razzing me that I managed to get a guy who gets paid 20K a week to train people to keep on task (which is an oversimplification of the kaizen process) to be distracted while working.
For the most part, I think I'm heavily tattooed (to untattooed people) enough that it's "safe" to approach me. That any stigmas or stereotypes of someone with tattoos ceases applying to me in the minds of the people I have to deal with- that I'm a "tattoo guy" not a "guy with tattoos". Does that make any sense? I've found when I'm with people with just a few visible tattoos, I'm the person that gets approached the most often. Could be a coincidence.
Personally, I find that it's rarely an issue. The places I'd work that would have too big of an issue with visible tattoos are places I'd likely not be working at. At my previous job my tattoos made senior corporate management more likely to remember me and gave them something to talk about to me (despite me hating talking about tattoos at work) that put me in their heads when it came to special projects et all.