There is a unit for the measurement of time only used in the strip club industry: songs. As in “I go up in two songs” or “two songs will cost forty dollars”. You are buying the dancer’s time usually defined in songs. Some time VIP sales use the more mundane “minutes” methodology. For the most part, the industry sells time in units of songs.
This creates some problems. There are no NIST standards for the exact amount of time one song is. Typically a song lasts from three to four minutes. In theory the DJ is tasked with making sure each song falls into that range. In practice it tends to vary greatly from the three/four minute mark. Sometimes there are technical difficulties. Sometimes there are managers who insist on talking to the DJ while the song plays on. Other times the DJ needs to grab a quick smoke (of some sort), attend to biological needs, wants to irritate the dancer on stage, or just forgets.
From a customer point of view you want the songs to run long. You get more for your money. From a dancer point of view she’ll want the song to run short, she earns more per minute. If the song is too short that will back fire. The dancer is put in a difficult situation of either extending the song, or going short. This may piss off the customer who will feel ripped off and result in an argument. Continuing into the next song she risks giving away her time or setting a precedent that she owes the customer more time. Most dancers are pretty fair about time. A few have told me “thank you” after the song stopped roughly a minute after it started then ask me if I wanted another. Uhm, no.
Running a song long seems to be a favorite way for DJs to piss off dancers. I've seen a few times when a DJ decides to play the entire uncut version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” for that special dancer, stranding a dancer on stage for all 18 plus minutes of 60’s psychedelic goodness. This will usually enrage your average dancer. Another favorite trick is to start a song, stop it after a minute, and start another song. This puts the dancer is situation of getting her set extended for no benefit. Once the “second” song starts she’s stuck until it’s finished. Most guys at the rail quickly forget the first partial song, and the dancer may get into trouble if she abandons the stage.
I’ve noticed that dancers tend to use the term song slightly differently than customers. When Dancers refer to “song” it’s usually only for the time when she’s getting paid. Customers think of songs in absolute terms. A dancer will tell me she is going to do three songs for another customer and she’ll be back. The number of songs that go by before she returns will probably five or six. It will take probably one song for her to get the other customer get him settled on the couch, dance for three songs, take another song to collect the money and say good by (five songs). Then maybe one more if she goes back to check make-up or burn her outfit depending on the customer. Sometimes the maintenance can go on for longer than a couple of songs. Is she putting on makeup or painting the Sistine Chapel?
From the customer point of view he’s started counting songs the second she walks away. After exactly three songs have transpired he’s beginning to wonder where she is. I know I’ve come across as an impatient jerk to a couple dancers for this exact reason. Three songs came and went why is she making me wait? Until I learned more about the dancer’s job it was a point of irritation with me. I didn’t know any better at the time if the dancer if had explained things to me she would have made more money. When you add to this the experience most regulars go through with a dance who genuinely doesn’t give a shit you’re waiting, I have to be sympathetic to customer. I know there are massively egocentric customers out there, but getting upset with a customer because they don’t know any better just kills your money.
Showing posts with label tippimg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tippimg. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Dude, it's not a contest
I don’t go to strip clubs to interact with guys. Fortunately most of the guys who come into clubs don’t want to interact with me so its happy situation. The only exception is when it comes to tipping. I generally don’t comment about customers, mostly because I am a customer (something about throwing stones in glass houses) and there are far better blogs out there by dancers that cover this. That being said, I’ll talk about other customers.
It might seem peculiar but I had to learn about tipping through trail and error. It takes a nut job like me to take something simple like tipping and over thinking it. I had rather naïve idea that the amount of time a dancer would pay me was directly proportional to the amount of my tip. If I was sitting at the rack with three other guys who each had a dollar in front of them and I had three dollars in front of me the dancer should be spending half the song dancing for me. It seemed logical there was six dollars on the rack and I contributed half of it, I should get half the girls time. It’s not the simple. I larger scheme of things my three dollar tip probably represents less than one percent of the dancers take that night. I’m not sure what I was expecting, “Ooh, Todd tipped me and extra two dollars! Early retirement here I come.” Eventually I figured out that the dancer’s customer management issues where far more complex than that. Even if the other guys weren’t tipping as much during that set, they might be dances later or be their regular.
What was weird was when I ran into another customer who would turn the set into a tipping war. If I tipped three he would tip four. This was good for the dancer on stage usually. Sometimes it would cause problems. Puppet master type customers need to occupy every second of her time and gets upset if anybody else takes her attention away can get ugly. For me this has never gone beyond dirty looks, but some dancers have had pretty bad evenings dealing with a temperamental child masquerading as an adult at a strip club. Somehow they think it’s a contest or I’m stealing from them. I’ve had one guy intentionally sit between me and the stage. When I moved he’d move, always staying between me and the stage. I fully expect to see his mug shots on the 5 o’clock news some day.
Another type of customer I really hate is the rail thief. This is the guy that waits for me to put a tip at the rail then proceeds to sit down behind it as if he put it up. I really don’t care if he sits between me and the stage, if it was that important I’d sit at the stage. But don’t sit at the stage like there’s time left on parking meter. It’s stealing from the dancer and disrespectful of the other customers that actually do tip.
Squatters are more of a nuisance to me, but a major point of irritation for the dancers. These are the “customers” that buy a drink and spend the entire evening sitting at the tables never tipping a thing. At least throw a buck up there on occasion. I admit I don’t always tip, but I try. Some times these guys can a bit creepy for customers. They are kind of the opposite of the puppet master, on the rare occasion I’m at the rack they’ll intentionally sit behind me or somebody else who is tipping. I assume its to get a closer look at the dancer, who is most likely ignoring these guys. Its definitely uncomfortable to have somebody constantly making a point to sit behind you.
I’m sure there are a few customers out who think I’m an idiot. I’m not too worried about upsetting folks. I’ve managed to crush my traffic with my summertime melt down. When I had this blog on myspace I averaged about 300 hits a week. My current rate is about 2 percent of that number. Oh well, at least I don’t get any more messages asking me how to get a dancer to go out with you. (You can’t. Give up now and save yourself some grief. Just enjoy the visit.)
It might seem peculiar but I had to learn about tipping through trail and error. It takes a nut job like me to take something simple like tipping and over thinking it. I had rather naïve idea that the amount of time a dancer would pay me was directly proportional to the amount of my tip. If I was sitting at the rack with three other guys who each had a dollar in front of them and I had three dollars in front of me the dancer should be spending half the song dancing for me. It seemed logical there was six dollars on the rack and I contributed half of it, I should get half the girls time. It’s not the simple. I larger scheme of things my three dollar tip probably represents less than one percent of the dancers take that night. I’m not sure what I was expecting, “Ooh, Todd tipped me and extra two dollars! Early retirement here I come.” Eventually I figured out that the dancer’s customer management issues where far more complex than that. Even if the other guys weren’t tipping as much during that set, they might be dances later or be their regular.
What was weird was when I ran into another customer who would turn the set into a tipping war. If I tipped three he would tip four. This was good for the dancer on stage usually. Sometimes it would cause problems. Puppet master type customers need to occupy every second of her time and gets upset if anybody else takes her attention away can get ugly. For me this has never gone beyond dirty looks, but some dancers have had pretty bad evenings dealing with a temperamental child masquerading as an adult at a strip club. Somehow they think it’s a contest or I’m stealing from them. I’ve had one guy intentionally sit between me and the stage. When I moved he’d move, always staying between me and the stage. I fully expect to see his mug shots on the 5 o’clock news some day.
Another type of customer I really hate is the rail thief. This is the guy that waits for me to put a tip at the rail then proceeds to sit down behind it as if he put it up. I really don’t care if he sits between me and the stage, if it was that important I’d sit at the stage. But don’t sit at the stage like there’s time left on parking meter. It’s stealing from the dancer and disrespectful of the other customers that actually do tip.
Squatters are more of a nuisance to me, but a major point of irritation for the dancers. These are the “customers” that buy a drink and spend the entire evening sitting at the tables never tipping a thing. At least throw a buck up there on occasion. I admit I don’t always tip, but I try. Some times these guys can a bit creepy for customers. They are kind of the opposite of the puppet master, on the rare occasion I’m at the rack they’ll intentionally sit behind me or somebody else who is tipping. I assume its to get a closer look at the dancer, who is most likely ignoring these guys. Its definitely uncomfortable to have somebody constantly making a point to sit behind you.
I’m sure there are a few customers out who think I’m an idiot. I’m not too worried about upsetting folks. I’ve managed to crush my traffic with my summertime melt down. When I had this blog on myspace I averaged about 300 hits a week. My current rate is about 2 percent of that number. Oh well, at least I don’t get any more messages asking me how to get a dancer to go out with you. (You can’t. Give up now and save yourself some grief. Just enjoy the visit.)
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Reply to a Tweet
I got a tweet from a dancer regarding my last post. She pointed out an issue that I had forgotten about: tip outs. Dancers have to pay (tip out) the bouncers, the DJs and sometimes the bar staff depending on the club they work at every night. There is a minimum amount (usually $10 but it varies widely) but there is an expectation that the dance will pay more if she has a good night.
Required tip outs is a method the clubs use to defer the payroll costs from themselves to the dancers. They simply pay the club employee’s minimum wage and tell them to go get the money from the dancers. They’ll make the “real” money from tips. This is all to the clubs advantage. They minimize payroll costs and put the responsibility of getting paid on the employee. If a dancer doesn’t tip out enough she might find herself on her own with a jerk customer or find herself getting skipped for stage sets. Both of these directly affect her personal safety and her money.
If I compare this to the hair stylist model, it doesn’t have a direct comparison. The stylist doesn’t have to tip out the janitor or the cashier. Yet there are expenses a stylist has a dancer doesn’t. Most stylists are required to carry insurance or even a bond to work at a salon. So who should carry the insurance the salon or the stylists? Without the stylist the salon cannot make any money and in theory since they can bring multiple people to the policy they should get a better rate but its still money out of the salon’s pocket, not the stylist.
The major factor here is supply and demand. If there are more stylists than chairs the salons can make the rules. If a particular stylist doesn’t like paying her own insurance the salon can simply lease her chair to somebody else who is willing to carry insurance. At what point do you need to intervene with legislation? Do salons have such a grip on the industry that they can extort the insurance cost out of the stylist? I really don’t know. One thing that prevents any real change to the dancer industry is the seemly inexhaustible supply of girls who will dance.
This is not like a company store at a coal mine where it was they only employer in town. In those days you worked at the mine or you starved. If the cost is too high to be a dancer is it time to get another job? It’s a hard question, is the current tip out business model completely unfair? From a dancers point of view who is watching 30% or more of her nightly income disappear in tips its probably yes. For somebody flipping burgers at McDonalds who’s take after eight hours is still less than a dancer who works six hours it's probably no.
In my opinion instituting a minimum wage for dancers would alter the industry completely and probably not for the better. The cost to a club to pay dancers minimum wage would force a lot of clubs out of business. I was able to figure out the number of employee man hours a club would have to pay in wages. I went to the Sassy’s web site since they both post the number of dancers working a shift for a week and the length of each shift. Dancers work 502 hours a week. At the Oregon minimum wage a club would have to pay an additional $4216.80 every week. There is 52 weeks in a year so that would be a additional cost of $219,273.60 year in payroll expense. I don’t think clubs operate at that level of profit that they could absorb that much expense. If a minimum wage was implemented the major result would be a bunch of unemployed dancers. To control expenses clubs would vastly restrict the number of dancers per shift. They simply couldn’t afford to pay shifts with large number of dancers. They would become much more militant about attendance since the pool of dancers (who would basically have to be employees) would be reduced.
Using the Sassy’s schedule as a typical model there are 12 dancers working daily on weekdays and 15 dancers working on weekends. Assuming the minimum tip out of $20 per dancer that’s $1800 a week in tip outs the DJ and Bouncers get. That’s $93,000 additional payroll cost yearly for a club if they were to wave the tip out fees and pay the DJ and bouncers an equivalent amount.
The biggest difference is that the tip out cost is distributed over many dancers over a single entity (the club). Should the club have to shoulder 100% of all the operating costs if a major percentage of the revenue that walks in the front door goes to the dancers? One thing the club owner has assumed that the dancer has not is risk. If nobody comes in the owner is stuck with a bunch of liquor and furniture he can sell at a loss. While he may have a bunch of booze to drown his sorrows in he is faced with a failed business. Financially the dancer risks a nights work, if the club fails she can move on to another location. While this isn’t a trivial thing it’s not like closing down a business.
The stripping industry is built around the concept that dancers will make enough in tips to support the rest of the workers in tip out. Once the tip money falls away the compensation structure fails. From a libertarian point of view, if a girl doesn’t can't enough money dancing, she shouldn't dance. Its harsh point of view but most industries face these same questions. I used to be a design engineer, but all those jobs were getting sent off shore. About ten years ago I was faced with either becoming unemployed or switching careers. At age 40 I went into sales and marketing. That was a seriously scary point in my life.
I think what needs to be prevented is dancers getting gouged because they don’t know any better. I think a standardized pay scale for fees should be set. Another thing I think would be fair is a tip out vs number of dancers per shift adjustment. If the club allows thirty girls on a shift then the amount they tip out should be less. The club doesn’t bring in more bouncers and DJs if there are more dancers, they just collect more tip fees. This isn’t fair. If their are more girls to defer the cost of the staff, they should have to pay less. The clubs operating cost does not go up with the number of dancers. More dancers means more competition for the dollar that are available. Girls get less time on stage and have to compete with more dancers for specialty dances. I don’t know how to enforce this but this is definitely on area dancers get taken advantage of.
I think the dancers can do is to setup a system where they can compare costs, earnings, and treatment. If the top dancers start switching to clubs where they get treated better it might force a change. Dancers are simply not making as much as what they used to, the smart clubs will acknowlege this and work with the dancer to help them out. After re-reading this post all I can really conclude is this is a complex problem I don't have any good answers to.
Required tip outs is a method the clubs use to defer the payroll costs from themselves to the dancers. They simply pay the club employee’s minimum wage and tell them to go get the money from the dancers. They’ll make the “real” money from tips. This is all to the clubs advantage. They minimize payroll costs and put the responsibility of getting paid on the employee. If a dancer doesn’t tip out enough she might find herself on her own with a jerk customer or find herself getting skipped for stage sets. Both of these directly affect her personal safety and her money.
If I compare this to the hair stylist model, it doesn’t have a direct comparison. The stylist doesn’t have to tip out the janitor or the cashier. Yet there are expenses a stylist has a dancer doesn’t. Most stylists are required to carry insurance or even a bond to work at a salon. So who should carry the insurance the salon or the stylists? Without the stylist the salon cannot make any money and in theory since they can bring multiple people to the policy they should get a better rate but its still money out of the salon’s pocket, not the stylist.
The major factor here is supply and demand. If there are more stylists than chairs the salons can make the rules. If a particular stylist doesn’t like paying her own insurance the salon can simply lease her chair to somebody else who is willing to carry insurance. At what point do you need to intervene with legislation? Do salons have such a grip on the industry that they can extort the insurance cost out of the stylist? I really don’t know. One thing that prevents any real change to the dancer industry is the seemly inexhaustible supply of girls who will dance.
This is not like a company store at a coal mine where it was they only employer in town. In those days you worked at the mine or you starved. If the cost is too high to be a dancer is it time to get another job? It’s a hard question, is the current tip out business model completely unfair? From a dancers point of view who is watching 30% or more of her nightly income disappear in tips its probably yes. For somebody flipping burgers at McDonalds who’s take after eight hours is still less than a dancer who works six hours it's probably no.
In my opinion instituting a minimum wage for dancers would alter the industry completely and probably not for the better. The cost to a club to pay dancers minimum wage would force a lot of clubs out of business. I was able to figure out the number of employee man hours a club would have to pay in wages. I went to the Sassy’s web site since they both post the number of dancers working a shift for a week and the length of each shift. Dancers work 502 hours a week. At the Oregon minimum wage a club would have to pay an additional $4216.80 every week. There is 52 weeks in a year so that would be a additional cost of $219,273.60 year in payroll expense. I don’t think clubs operate at that level of profit that they could absorb that much expense. If a minimum wage was implemented the major result would be a bunch of unemployed dancers. To control expenses clubs would vastly restrict the number of dancers per shift. They simply couldn’t afford to pay shifts with large number of dancers. They would become much more militant about attendance since the pool of dancers (who would basically have to be employees) would be reduced.
Using the Sassy’s schedule as a typical model there are 12 dancers working daily on weekdays and 15 dancers working on weekends. Assuming the minimum tip out of $20 per dancer that’s $1800 a week in tip outs the DJ and Bouncers get. That’s $93,000 additional payroll cost yearly for a club if they were to wave the tip out fees and pay the DJ and bouncers an equivalent amount.
The biggest difference is that the tip out cost is distributed over many dancers over a single entity (the club). Should the club have to shoulder 100% of all the operating costs if a major percentage of the revenue that walks in the front door goes to the dancers? One thing the club owner has assumed that the dancer has not is risk. If nobody comes in the owner is stuck with a bunch of liquor and furniture he can sell at a loss. While he may have a bunch of booze to drown his sorrows in he is faced with a failed business. Financially the dancer risks a nights work, if the club fails she can move on to another location. While this isn’t a trivial thing it’s not like closing down a business.
The stripping industry is built around the concept that dancers will make enough in tips to support the rest of the workers in tip out. Once the tip money falls away the compensation structure fails. From a libertarian point of view, if a girl doesn’t can't enough money dancing, she shouldn't dance. Its harsh point of view but most industries face these same questions. I used to be a design engineer, but all those jobs were getting sent off shore. About ten years ago I was faced with either becoming unemployed or switching careers. At age 40 I went into sales and marketing. That was a seriously scary point in my life.
I think what needs to be prevented is dancers getting gouged because they don’t know any better. I think a standardized pay scale for fees should be set. Another thing I think would be fair is a tip out vs number of dancers per shift adjustment. If the club allows thirty girls on a shift then the amount they tip out should be less. The club doesn’t bring in more bouncers and DJs if there are more dancers, they just collect more tip fees. This isn’t fair. If their are more girls to defer the cost of the staff, they should have to pay less. The clubs operating cost does not go up with the number of dancers. More dancers means more competition for the dollar that are available. Girls get less time on stage and have to compete with more dancers for specialty dances. I don’t know how to enforce this but this is definitely on area dancers get taken advantage of.
I think the dancers can do is to setup a system where they can compare costs, earnings, and treatment. If the top dancers start switching to clubs where they get treated better it might force a change. Dancers are simply not making as much as what they used to, the smart clubs will acknowlege this and work with the dancer to help them out. After re-reading this post all I can really conclude is this is a complex problem I don't have any good answers to.
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