I have a few friends who work in this industry and some of them I actually stay in touch with. The following story is about my buddy Berg, who I used to work with at Griselda's Gash Gallery, but who moved to Florida some years ago.
Berg's a good dude. He's big like me, friendlier than me, complains less than me and doesn't miss shifts, which I sometimes do. All in all, any titty bar would be better off with Berg working for them than me. Probably.
Funny though, when we talk and compare notes, there are a lot a parallels in our "career" paths. To enumerate these similarities, I'm gonna use one of my favorite literary cheats: The List.
Ready? I knew you would be.
A) Neither one of us gets any respect. We both joined very long lived and established Floor Staffs at clubs that don't really feature a revolving door policy on new hires. Ergo, we'll never be equal to the 'senior' Floor Drubs no matter what we do or what miracles we pull squalling from our asses.
B) He gets schedule-fucked too. He cops to the fact that he and the Manager in charge of scheduling don't get along all that well, thus are some of his schedule woes created. I on the other hand thought I got along very well with my scheduling Manager, yet we have what would best be described as a multifaceted relationship. I.e., we get on well face to face, but judging by his actions, he doesn't like me very much and the moment my back is turned he work-fucks me. Shorting my days, preferring any and all Floor Grunts over me, never scheduling me on his nights, etc etc.
Actions speak louder than words, Sir Ornery RipClaw VIII.
C) All the extra shit Berg does is taken for granted by his Mana-Jurs. Sounds vaguely fucking familiar to me. Berg is like me in his view of his job situation. He wants the club he works at to look and smell as good as possible, so therefore he knows how to use a broom and dustpan and more importantly, understands when they need to be deployed. He cheerfully mops up vomit, because it's part of the job.
He happily refrains from beating drunk twats senseless on a nightly basis and actually gets along with the majority of the dancer herd, both of which can be hit or miss with me.
D) In three years he has watched two new hires surpass him on the Floor Guy food chain for reasons that are never articulated to him. This too is oddly reflective of my own situation because I've watched six Floor Dicks do this in my own club in five years. Also without a management 'talk' of any sort.*1
Pretty damn consistent and similarly punitive I'd say.
E) He gets stuck working the door almost all the time. Being the largest biped on a given team frequently results in having to work the door, trust me on this. That being said, no one really wants to work the door. It's a fuckton more responsibility that any other post in a club of any sort because you are the first filter and you're gonna have to strain a lot of human garbage that the rest of your team will probably never even know about.
Meanwhile the lazy bastards who always get to work the VIP rooms will enjoy an environment where they generate more money with a lot less doucheness, thanks to the guys who work the Godforsaken Portal and all the assholery, attitude and cuntiness they sieve from the potential inhabitants. Like those bristle-things a whales uses to strain krill from ocean water. We're like those things, but for fuckwits.
F) Berg's admitted to me that the rest of the Floor Shits at his club ask him to cover shifts for him all the time, which he does when he can, but then they are universally unavailable to cover one of his when he asks them to return the favor.
Golly, that sounds completely unheard of where I work.*2
G) Berg makes more money that me. He always has since he moved down south, but his cost of living is higher and he probably has to deal with more bath salted Floridians than I do so I figure it all works out in the end. That stated, 2018 has proved to be an aberration on this theme as his 2018 has been pretty standard while mine has been a downward spiral of ever increasing financial violence.
But enough about Berg, in another fine example of an abrupt segue, let's talk Milestones in Stripperherding, because there are many. Some of the most important of which, don't even involve strippers, if you can believe that shit.
So, to continue my mediocre effort in this particular post, let's do another List.
Fuck yeah!
Milestones in the stripperherding industry:
1) Learning to accept the fact that some people, a segment of which may or may not be titty dancers, are just going to be drug and alcohol wrecked shells of human beings and that nothing and no one can save them from themselves. Don't get attached is my advice. Never learn their real names or feed them caramels from your hand.
2) My legal team has advised me to refrain from stating publicly that I no longer care if a drunk dancer squeals away on wheels of terror in the small hours. A large, misguided missile too busy arranging a drug deal on her phone to notice the family of raccoons crossing the highway in front of her which cause her apathetically piloted car to skid on baby raccoon guts and plow into a bus full of seniors returning to Iowa after a night at the casino.
I have agreed to their advice with the proviso that I might do it by accident if I'm drunk and that I will have very little control over it because I'm drunk. But dammit I'm gonna try my best and bunch up my lower lip in what I hope looks like a determined fashion.
3) Accumulating enough cock-control to not bang every hot skank that has made themselves available to me for the most trivial of reasons. This is a big one, folks. The banging of the wrong va-jay-jay and/or the improperly handled cessations of banging is a major termination factor in many a Floor Guy's demise. Probably the leading cause of Floor Host mortality in an industry crawling with ways for you to get yourself fired.
4) Accepting the fact that although some strippers NEVER tip you, they do in fact tip other Floor Dudes and thus, on an honest team*3, end up tipping you, if only indirectly. Sure they have nothing for the guy who may save them from a violent crime, but shit yeah, a guy who makes you ninety bucks after the club's cut? Totally worth a fiver.
5) Becoming innured to the everyday depredations that strippers indulge in with their prey. About the fifth time you see a stripper leading a dog collared, subservient regular around the club like an AKC Pomeranian, making him do tricks like sitting up and begging, rolling over, playing dead and the ever favorite making him withdraw a thousand dollars on his Amex.
You just don't notice it anymore. It's like white noise that tips you $50 or so to not throw it out.
I believe I've fulfilled my contractual obligations at this point, and thus will retire with my dignity if not intact, then at least gracefully defiant.
Your Worst Uncle,
-The StripperHerder
*1 Call me crazy, but I've been Management before in a couple of other situations. There are ways you do things and there are way you don't. Bitching out an employee in front of staff, God and customers is NOT how you do it. All it does it build ill will between you and whoever you bitched out and anyone who works there who witnessed it, because if it can happen to you then it could happen to them.
If an employee needs a dressing down, you pull them aside into an office, or in my reality, an unoccupied champagne room and yell at them. If you want anything productive to come of the interaction, try not to yell at them at all. Explain your position, list your gripes and set some fucking parameters for their improvement.
It's ain't rocket science...
*2 This is an example of sarcasm. Look it up on the interwebz.
*3 Which I believe I belong to, there is a lot of team camaraderie here when it comes to money and I figure I haven't been ripped off since I was brand new at the club and hadn't wormed my way into their hearts yet.
