Ya know, I've been really, really drunk in public a few times. Like combative, mindless drunk and I'm not proud of it. Even at that level of hammered I could still tell you what club or bar I was in, even if I couldn't explain how I arrived there. I don't think there's ever been a time where I didn't know what bar I was in, when I was in it.
There may be an exception or two, but if I was drunk enough to not know where I was, I probably shouldn't have been allowed entry in the first place.
So it amuses me when some functionally drunk shuttle patron asks "So where does this thing go?" I mean talk about an utter lack of situational awareness. You just hopped on a shamelessly corporate emblazoned limo bus the size of a garage, garishly painted with suggestive images in lurid colors, and you don't know where you're going?
How can you still be walking around? How can you not have skinned by a serial killer by now? Getting into random vehicles piloted by a stranger with absolutely no idea where said vehicle goes, even when it's written in 10 inch lettering on the side in retina-searing hues.
To me, it's astounding how trusting and utterly culpable people can be, especially when drinking.
I'd love to buy a limo bus and paint on it in perfectly respectable lettering "Mikey's Rape, Murder and Sexual Torture Mobile!" right next to some cute corporate logo and see how many people climb aboard, blissfully unaware of what they'd just stepped into.
I could have meat hooks dangling from the ceiling and blood drenching the floor and I guarantee I could still catch one or two on the weekends.
Odin have mercy on us all.
Here's where the alcohol industry is in a Catch-22 situation because of lawyers. Especially upscale strip clubs.
Getting searched at the door is an extremely unpleasant thing to have to go through, and our most desirable clientele aren't used to it because they don't go to the kinds of clubs where you get searched at the front door. I've never worked at a strip club where we searched people at the door and I've worked at seven different strip clubs in two states, some of them appalling in aspect.
I've worked bars and concert clubs where we patted down or wanded people at the door, but never a titty shack.
Therefore, people can generally get into a strip club anything they want provided it isn't something as obvious as a shotgun strapped to their back, or a chainsaw where their hand should be. We won't control what comes through our doors, and thus are forced to merely react to it, rather than being proactive about it.
It's the strip club curse, People have literally come into the club with a dozen of those little airline bottles of booze in their socks or pockets and proceeded to get massively hammered even though they were told the only reason we were even letting them in the club in the first place was because they agreed to not drink anymore.
If we're not going to search people, which will never happen, then these things will continue to occur. The lawsuits will keep coming, our lawyers will grow wealthy and we'll still amble about our jobs, going through the motions and hoping for the best. Seems counter productive, dumb even.
So let's get into a few more slices of the shit-pizza, shall we?
We had the best Friday night we've had in a long time and instead of being happy or god forbid telling the team what a great job we did tonight, our Manager, Sir Desperately Ineedov-Valium IX, starts yelling at the Floor Staff about how four or five of our dancers weren't 'checked in' but the House Mom.
Some of you unfamiliar with titty shack procedures may be wondering at this point what the fuck I'm talking about. So let me explain.
The House Mom, who is much less effective here than at any other strip club I've ever worked at, is supposed to give the girls a little card she has signed that states said dancer has been House Mom Approved. I.E. she has met all the club requirements on appearance, attire, nipple armor and various other esoteric mandatory bullshit that the club and laws demand.
Whichever Floor Cunt is running the Counter is supposed to make sure they have this piece of cardboard before he signs a dancer in and thus puts her on the clock. We had almost 80 dancers tonight, which is a record number for the time I've been here. Well in the chaos, the Counter missed*1 roughly a half dozen dancers and since Sir Desperately didn't have anything else to bitch about, he selected this meaningless cause to get all pro wrestler about.
Literally fucking screaming at us about how if we can't do our jobs right, he'll find some that will. Fortunately for us we've learned from past experience that this is just his way of letting off steam and we nod and put on our repentant faces and otherwise ignore him.
But it still sucks to be rage-spittled at by someone who should be thanking you for a non-murderful job well done. It's fucking demoralizing on every level. I don't mind being yelled at when I've done something wrong, but here's the part about this particular situation that gave it an extra layer of shit frosting:
While it is a Floor Guy's job to clock dancers in, it's the Dancers' job to check in with us when starting their shift. It's in their contract for fucksakes. They are also obligated check in with the DJ before they start "work" and required to check out with first the DJ and the Counter at the end of their shifts.
Beyond 'Don't break the law', strippers here don't really have any procedural obligations other than what I listed above. That's about it.
And because so many of them are so bad at it, many of these things end up as Floor Guy responsibilities. Literally stuff that is the responsibility of the Stripper, but becomes a Floor Ape thing because too many of the girls can't be trusted to do them.
Let me give you two examples of this titty-centric madness.
1) "Check out with the DJ". The poor bastard running the Counter has to tell all the strippers to check out with the DJ first before they can clock out. Then he has to wait for the DJ to radio him that Whatsherface is checking out and then he can sign them out for the night.
We were forced to start doing this because strippers would just plain lie about it. "Yes, I checked out with the DJ" they would say very convincingly. An hour after the girl had left the DJ's calling her to stage and this throws the rotation into chaos.
2) "Did you check out with the Counter?" Just asking this question proved fruitless in many cases because, again, bitches just plain lied about it. I know, I know, it continually shocked me too.
So we began to have to call the Counter for each and every stripper we walked out, to make sure she'd done the two steps required of her.
This is a recurring theme in all strip clubs I've worked in: Give It To The Floor Staff. Everything management doesn't want to be bothered about, or by whose lack of consistency extra work is created, goes to the fucking Floor Grunts. The buck, more often than not, stops with us.
#floorguyproblems
-The StripperHerder
*1 And by "missed" I mean the dancers didn't bother checking in with him. Ain't his fault.**
**But did the dancers who failed to check in get covered with scream-spit?
Nope.
