As long as you learn...

I decided to change the name of the blog as it occurred to me the other night, while leaning against the bar watching a girl in green lycra trying to seduce a fat office worker, that I should try to learn from the time I spend in that place. No time is wasted if there is a lesson learned. So here we go...

Things I learn in a strip club. Not much really, or lots, depending on how you look at it. One thing I have definitely learned is how to manipulate and charm men into giving you money. Admittedly not really a skill I use outside of work, unfortunately I’ve never found myself attracted to rich men! However this skill is undoubtedly useful to some outside, and definitely useful in the club. Linked to this skill is another that I have mastered, which is to know in an instant how a customer wants to be treated and how to act accordingly. Now this may sound simple, surely you just need to be polite? No. Absolutely not… some people actually like to be taken the piss out of, some like to joke around, some like to be respected, some want to be feared, some want you to fancy them, some to talk them through their problems. Some want to be rescued, some just want you to serve them and shut the fuck up. But the important thing is to know straight away…lots of the time, the customers with the most money are extremely sensitive and if they aren’t treated in precisely the right way, you can kiss your tip goodbye.

I guess they know what power they have in a place like that, they know everyone is hoping for a handout and kissing their arse to get one. There are some customers that can flip and turn nasty if you say the wrong thing, some that literally refuse to let you serve them for some unexplained reason. However, if you behave in just the right way, and know what buttons to press, you can twist that man right around your finger. Which is exactly how the best dancers make their money. Trust me, looks have almost nothing to do with it. The highest earners in the club are nowhere near the most attractive, in fact quite the opposite. It’s all about the mind. It might sound like just becoming an expert in arse kissing, and yes, that helps, but that’s not really it. It’s all about analyzing the psychology of the man, why he came here in the first place, what does this mean to him? Does he want to use his wealth to feel powerful? Does he need a shoulder to cry on? Does it make him feel like more of a man? Is he lonely and craves the attention? Or is he just having a bit of fun? Interesting really, who would have known that working as a waitress in a strip club could become an exercise in psychological analysis? And I’m not even a dancer! Maybe I should be…

Am I a bitch for thinking this?

I wonder what it is about strip clubs that attracts the most bizarre of regular customers. It was a quiet night last night and on account of this, downstairs opened late. All the staff were sitting by one of the bars chatting, tightening corsets, eating twiglets and generally reveling in the excitement of another night at work. Normally at this time, customers are not allowed downstairs, but on the other side of the room at the opposite bar we could see a man standing, waiting in anticipation for the lights to turn down and the music to begin. Shit…it was Baz… Now Baz was keen but I’d never seen him waiting before opening time before. Poor guy… I should feel sorry for him and be compassionate, but there’s only so much compassion you can muster when trapped in a conversation you have heard 35 times before, in a cloud of musty unwashed clothes smell and being told you are ‘naughty but nice….ha ha ha…naughty but nice…’.

Baz comes in probably about once a fortnight, maybe not even that often, but when he comes he stays from the beginning to the end. He even used to call one of the old bar tenders for a lift in, and eventually said bartender used to call in sick when he received one of these calls to avoid running into him at all. Baz is one of those guys with milk bottle bottom glasses, that always carries a plastic bag and shuffles around selfconciously. He knows all of our names and remembers EVERYTHING we have ever told him…each time he comes in he asks how our family are, our boyfriends, what our holiday in Thailand was like, did we get sick from the food, did we buy that nice dress we were talking about, are we exited? It’s only two days till our birthday… He has a fixation with Kumi and brought her in a card and £50 for her birthday. This was a lovely gesture but unfortunately for her means that she now has to pay him the most attention when he comes in to show her gratitude. He also probably used all of his benefits for the week to give her that £50 so she better be damn grateful. Poor girl.

Now one of Baz’s favorite things in life is Lamborghinis. Apparently he used to be a professional photographer and take photos of Lamborghinis and Ferraris with beautiful models lounging around and life was great! Until his photographer partner died suddenly from an unexplained illness and life has been going down hill ever since. Ever since 25 years. However things are looking up now that he has decided that Kumi is to be his next model and he will take photos of her by the Lamborghinis with her shoes off. He will give her £100 and pay her bus fare to the garage so she won’t have to be out of pocket. He won’t sell the pictures but he might put them up in his house, and she can have one too if she wants. Somehow I don’t think she wants…

Kumi and I were talking the other day and we were musing over the possibility that Baz could actually be a serial killer and an all round general psychopath. Apparently he lives with his mother who he looks after…slightly reminiscent of Psycho don’t you think? Or that film where the guy loves his mother so much that when she dies he takes off her skin and makes things out of it for use around the home. Then he goes on to do the same to any woman that he has feelings for, murdering them, skinning them and making little bowls out of their skulls or cushions from their buttock skins. In the finale of the film the man emerges from his patio doors, basking in the glow of the moon light, wearing his latest victims skin draped over him like a shawl and joyfully playing a drum fashioned from her skin stretched over half of her skull. So now in our minds this is Baz. Playing a drum with a rose tattoo on the top, taken from Kumi’s shoulder, immortalized forever. Amazing what you come up with when you're bored...

From Russia, with Disgust.

Last night was pretty crazy…it’s been quiet for a few nights and then this. First of all, this Russian customer came in who is a bit of a regular and causes a circus every time. He has this one dancer who he likes to spend his time with, a ginger Russian girl with frizzy hair who he loves. She wasn’t there last night so he went a bit AWOL. Thank God I wasn’t serving him…ok so he is a big spender and tips well, but he is also a complete idiot. Let me paint the picture for you… He swans in trailed closely by his wife, his PA, the floor manager, the general manager, the security guards and a swarm of girls, I mean literally 30 dancers crowding round him and trailing his every step in the hope of being picked to have a ‘sit down’. The floor manager, lets call him Gaz, runs ahead frantically preparing the VIP room for his entrance, moving chairs a couple of inches to one side, picking up the reserved sign and putting it back down again, shaking the curtains, fluffing the pillows…basically stuff that doesn’t need to be done (he is really good at that which is an essential skill for his job).

So the Russian enters the VIP room in a flurry of activity and is roped in, leaving the crowd of girls trapped behind the rope and building rapidly, with the addition of other curious girls that have noticed the commotion and can smell the money. Now comes the waitress…thankfully not me but my friend Kumi. She is shouted over by the floor manager and told to take the order. The time I did serve this customer, my experience was cut short by the fact that as I was serving his champagne he was talking to me in Russian and looking at me with complete disdain. Apparently I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t know what and I couldn’t understand what he was saying to me. I tried to be charming but he had already made up his mind and called Gaz over. ‘Change her…’ he barked at him in a thick Russian accent, waving his hand at me but not looking at me. ‘I don’t like this one…this one’s not for me’ shaking his hand up and down infront of me the way a camp person does when describing their disgust at a particularly bad outfit someone might be wearing. So I was unceremoniously turfed out of the VIP room and swapped for another waitress. Wanker.

This time my friend Kumi was to his liking, although that probably wasn’t exactly a blessing as he kept pulling her to sit on his knee and manhandling her, obnoxious bastard that he is. He ordered crystal rose which is about the most expensive champagne we do, so this was good for Kumi as we get paid by service charge and tips. However, when he realized his usual girl wasn’t in…things started to take a turn for the worse. He emerged from his VIP room (again trailed by his wife, his PA, the floor manager, the general manager and the security guards) and proceeded to trawl the club searching for someone he liked. But this search wasn’t just based on looks, the girls had to pass a variety of tests to be the chosen one. The first girl he wanted to check out was actually already sitting with a customer by the stage. He interrupted their conversation and told her to get up and dance on the stage for him. There was already a girl on the pole on stage so the manager chucked her off and told the other girl to get on. She danced for about 15 seconds with the obnoxious Russian standing 6 inches away, scrutinizing her, before he curled up his lip in distaste, waved his hand at her as he had done with me, and walked off. Bastard.

Then he moved on to another group of girls and began to prod one of them to feel how firm she was, squeezing her arm gently like you do to check the ripeness of an avocado. Still he hadn’t found his princess, another girl discarded for being too ripe, as the epic search continued. He moved purposefully upstairs…which is bad news for Kumi as once he places an order upstairs, he is then the customer of the upstairs waiters and Kumi can no longer serve him, meaning she misses out on great service charge and a potentially massive tip. Wanker.

5 minutes later I went upstairs to ask the chef to warm up my spaghetti Bolognese that I had brought in for dinner and saw the whole restaurant area full to the brim of scantilly clad girls standing with fixed smiles on their faces while the Russian stood analyzing closely, before grabbing one girl and sitting her down at the table with him. Now I know it must seem unbelievable that the girls would put themselves forward for this kind of treatment, they are certainly not forced to, and some of them would do nothing of the sort. But this guy can spend up to 40 grand on girls in a night and tips a grand at a time so I guess you have to weigh up how much dignity you are willing to lose for a deposit on a house. Anyway, the infatuation with the chosen girl was short lived as, I heard later, when she was dancing he decided her arse wasn’t good enough and sent her away. In the end he wound up with his PA sitting on his lap and his wife about to kick him in the face.

But this wasn’t the only excitement of the night. I got to serve a Hollywood actor, one of whose films is among my top 5 favorite films ever. I won’t say who it is, or the film as that might give it away. But he’s big. He was a lovely guy but by the end of the night he was completely annihilated. And I mean completely. After an hour or so talking to girls, he had got bored and wandered over to the bar to talk to the Philipino busboys and buy them a round of drinks. There he stayed for the rest of the night, he didn’t even have one dance… Before long though, it got ugly…he was swaying and slurring and for some reason took his top off and wouldn’t put it back on. It was all my effort just to get him to work out what the bar bill was. As we were doing the bill he fell over and I had to pick him up, and try to hold him straight, topless and sweating…nice. At that moment it all seemed a little bizarre as when you meet a famous person, you don’t know the person at all, you only know the characters they played and his characters were a world away from the vulnerable man I had in my arms. It must be really hard to be that famous, you can’t just go out and get fucked and be relatively anonymous. EVERYONE will know…and I don’t just mean everyone in your friendship group, everyone on facebook…I mean the whole fucking WORLD… Can you imagine? The worst part was that someone in the club, don’t know who but most likely one of the managers, had called the paparazzi and so they were waiting outside in eager anticipation of snapping the most humiliating picture possible. Now there’s a lowlife job if there ever was one. Ok, so people in the public eye should be careful of how they represent themselves, but we are all human, we all have our problems and issues and, although some people are paparazzi whores, most famous people just want to be left alone at times like these. No chance. And worse are the people in the clubs who call the paparazzi to come down, they get a cut of the picture fee if it gets sold so in typical strip club fashion, never mind scaring away celebrities (this guy will never come back) as long as there’s an extra buck involved, it’s fair play. Bastards.

Outrage

There’s this guy that comes into work. He and I don’t get on so well… mainly because he’s a total wanker but hey, who am I to say? Anyway, so I’ll call him Habib, he’s from Egypt or something. Now apparently he used to come in a lot back in the day and spend loads of money. But those days are gone and now he wants pretty much everything for free. He will buy one bottle of vodka about every three months and drink tiny amounts each time he comes in, reluctant to share with too many other people incase he has to do the unthinkable and actually buy another. Now if someone has a bottle of spirits kept for them behind the bar, when they come back in they have to pay for the mixers to drink it with. So, last week I was summoned to serve Habib. I’d never served him before and when he asked for two jugs of cranberry juice to go with the vodka I duly charged him for it.

Habib is horrified by the mere hint of a suggestion that he, the king of kings apparently, Sultan of the West, must pay for something. He looks at me with his bulging toad eyes and tells me ‘NO!…I don’t pay’ waves his hand dismissively and looks away towards the stage, fat cigar in his mouth (which he cant even light under the smoking law but he likes to keep his teeth permanently champed around to signify his wealth.) Now I don’t see why this guy shouldn’t pay like everyone else, and no one has ever told me this is the case, as the manager would normally do. So I proceed to tell him, ever so politely of course, that when you have a bottle behind the bar you have to pay for mixers. He turns aggressively towards me and barks ‘I DON’T pay! go and ask Philip…’.

Now, let me take this opportunity to introduce Philip. Philip is the most ridiculous manager I have ever encountered in my many years of working in the service industry. Mainly because he has no clue about how the club runs and tries to enforce rules that make no sense and make changes that have no point. For example, one night before the club had opened, myself and my good friend Tim, another waiter, were standing at ‘our station’ as Philip likes to call it, ‘the bar’ as it is in reality. Philip limps over (he has one leg that drags behind him when he walks like a crazed war victim) and he points to one of the empty tables in front of us and demands angrily, ‘whose is this table????’ Now this is a nonsensical question because a table is only ‘someone’s table’ when there is a customer on it and they have been assigned to serve that customer by the floor manager. I mean the club isn’t even open yet! So Tim and myself look at him blankly, not quite knowing how to respond to that question, as to reply in anyway that made sense would be to have to explain to your manager that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Never a good idea when you are trying to remain in the good books.

Not one to remain in the good books for long anyway, I cant resist but to set him straight ‘Um Philip, its no ones table because there are no customers and the club isn’t open yet, that’s not how it works’ I’m amazed that I’m having to explain to my manager how his own club works, a man who two weeks ago held a disciplinary hearing for me because I was chewing gum. ‘Well…’ Philip replies, becoming more and more frantic and snatching up the menu from the table violently ‘why are there are no STAPLES on the menu??!!!’

Here we go again… the state of the menus is the job of the bus boys, not the waitresses, we have nothing to do with it. By this time, Philip is quivering and beginning to sweat due to the copious amounts of cocaine he consumes every night and Tim is struggling to stifle a laugh. ‘Um Philip,’ I venture, reveling in the comedy of the situation ‘We don’t look after the menus, that’s the bus boys job’ Uh oh…wrong comment… Philip has lost it, ‘I don’t care!!!!…Who’s STATION is this??’ Again…doesn’t make sense. I open my mouth to say so when I am interrupted by Philip, chin thrusted forward, steely eyed and determined, flinging the menu with all his might towards the two of us, all the pages flying out and fluttering to the floor around us like confetti. He turns on his good leg, almost falls over due to the temporary lack of concentration on balance and limps off, dragging his leg behind him and flailing his arms, muttering something about ‘All hands to the wheel!’ …Whatever that means. He heads straight to the toilet for a quick line to restore his confidence and emerges a little while later nodding and smiling as if nothing had happened.

So this is the authority that I have to consult to find out whether this arrogant and idiotic man must pay for his cranberry juice. It’s at moments like these when I question whether I’m really fulfilling my full potential in life.

Dutifully, I climb the stairs to the restaurant where Philip is usually hanging out eating, and he proceeds to tell me that yes, it’s fine, Habib does not have to pay for mixers. Fair enough, no skin off my nose, I don’t care whether he pays for mixers or not, I just don’t like being spoken to like I’m a servant in the king’s palace. So it’s all sorted, no money will change hands, I tell Habib everything’s fine and, as far as I’m aware, everyone’s happy. Wrong again. I am later approached by the floor manager, arse-kissing champion of the world, asking me why on earth I charged Habib for mixers! What the fuck? Since when did Habib become VIP extraordinaire, able to transcend any rule of any club, anywhere? So in his true style, after having just kissed Habib’s arse, gushing about how sorry he is and how he will sort the waitress out that deigned to have the nerve to even suggest such a thing, the floor manager comes over to me and tells me that the guy is a wanker and we have to just do what he says because he is The Owner’s friend. Now although Floor Manager is far enough up Owner’s arse that he can see out of his mouth when he talks, I know from other sources that the management are not nice to Habib because of The Owner, they are nice to him because he slips them 50’s each time they bow down and do what he says.

So last night I am serving another table, a young, fat drug dealer who is always sweating and drinking shots of sambuca. He is a nice guy and always buys lots of drinks for anyone that may be sitting with him. This night he had a few friends along for the ride and all was going well. A little later my friend Habib turns up and invites fat drug dealer to join his table for a drink. So he sits with him for a while, meanwhile still ordering drinks from me for his friends on the other table. So when I think it might be time for another drink I go over to where he is sitting with Habib, not knowing that Habib is still harboring deep resentment for the cranberry juice fiasco the week before. I ask my customer if he would like a drink and as he opens his mouth to reply, Habib buts in, waves his hands towards me and says ‘NO!!...We don’t want anything. Go away!’

I don’t think much of it at first, and inform him that I am asking my customer if he wants any drinks for his table, then look back to my customer to receive his impending order. ‘No! Go away, get away from my table NOW!’ Ok so now I’m pissed off, who the fuck is this guy?? I let him know that I am not talking to him, and ask why he thinks he can talk to me like that, but he continues, standing up threateningly ‘ Shut up! Get away from my table and SHUT UP! …You know why I am talking to you like this… you know why…’ He hisses ominously, narrowing his eyes in pure hatred. I’m dumfounded…could it be the cranberry juice???

I tell him he has no right to talk to me like that and that I don’t care whether he wants a drink or not because I’m not serving him I’m serving someone else and if he could kindly stop talking and let me get on with my job. But he doesn’t shut up, starts to point his finger in my face and at this point I cant take anymore without taking my tray and smacking him around the head with it, so I walk away before I use up my last warning at work. To my sheer horror, a few minutes later, the floor manager comes up to me and tells me that I am not to serve my customer anymore…my customer, my only real source of income for the night, and I cant serve him anymore because of Habib??? And wait a minute; it was Habib that was rude to me! Not the other way round, in fact I think I dealt with the situation quite well given my limited patience for being talked to like a twat. But no, here was my manager, telling me that I cant make my money for the night because Habib is The Owner’s friend and we have to kiss his big hairy Egyptian arse. No fucking way… Where is co-worker loyalty? Does a manager not stick up for his staff in the face of abusive customers anymore?

Obviously not a chance when a sneaky £50 tip is involved. I tell the Floor Manager what I think of the situation and that I think it’s pathetic that my manager is allowing me to be treated this way to keep a friend of the owner happy. It would be a very bad idea to mention the fact that Habib tips him; my own income would be significantly reduced by a spiteful floor manager. It is not strip club etiquette to talk about who gets tips from whom, especially the managers. They always expect it but never admit it, we even have to tip them ourselves to make sure we get a good table every now and then…all the while acting as though it never happens. My complaints fall on deaf ears as usual and he walks away from me in mid sentence (a favorite avoidance technique of his) towards Habib, who is reclining proudly like Jabba The Hut, to collect his payment.

Gratitude

Everyone says they hate working in the strip club…everyone is always waiting for the time to go home, or their day off, or when they will eventually get out of there for good. Everyone is always complaining about how there isn’t enough money, it used to be so much better, how the place is full of wankers, the DJ is shit, the customers are all twats and the hours are terrible. I myself am definitely guilty of that on many occasions but whenever we get together outside of work and have a few drinks we all seem to come to the joint conclusion that its actually a pretty dam good job. Where else can you earn 600 to a grand a week after tax standing round doing fuck all most of the time? Where else can you text your manager to tell him you aren’t coming in an hour before your shift starts on account of the fact that you are out getting pissed and don’t feel like it? Where else can you take an 8 month holiday and come back to your job exactly as though you had never left? Is there really any other job where you get to drink expensive vintage champagne and eat continental cheese platters all on the customers expense?

Ok so its not exactly impressive when you meet new people and they turn to you confrontingly at the dinner table and ask the obligatory question ‘SO…what do you do?’ , ‘uh'...slight hesitation while my mind works out the best response based on the current company - all upstanding members of the community, concerned with the best solution for social housing in the North West and how to make the perfect beef wellington - shit, I don't have an alternative... 'I’m a waitress’... and yes, you heard right before, I did actually turn thirty last year. ‘Oh, where do you work?’ and then you decide whether it is going to be disadvantageous for you to tell this particular person the exact details of your employment.

People who it may be unadvisable to tell: the letchy boy at the bus stop who is trying to chat you up at 4 in the morning after you have just finished work and he has just spent the last 5 hours unsuccessfully looking for something to shag, the young bar tender at your dad’s local pub after your socially retarded father drunkenly dragged him over, for you to tell them that you are a ‘very special’ waitress (why dad, why?)… I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of personally, its just that sometimes to make life in the immediate future easier you just smile and say ‘La Tasca’.

The need to share

I am a waitress, I wear fishnet stockings and I work in one of the most well known 'Gentleman's Clubs' in London. ‘Gentleman's Club’ not really being the most realistic of descriptions but hey, just trying to make myself sound more professional.

I wanted to write this blog as I have always felt a strong urge to share the ridiculous stories and situations I have found myself in after working for 6 years in this industry. Sometimes I feel like I should be ashamed to still be a waitress at 30 years of age but fuck it, this has to be the easiest job I have ever had! And more money…ok so I have to wear a short skirt and deal with constant unfunny sexual inuendos from most of my male colleagues over 50 (the younger ones are relatively normal as they actually get laid) but it’s not such a bad deal…when on my third day at my current club I was given a £500 tip for serving champagne I was convinced it’s all worth it. Such a sell out…