It's like dog years

A perfectly valid unit of time in a strip club is a song. It’s pretty common to hear things like “there’s time. I don’t go up for six songs” or “gotta hurry, I’ve only got two songs”. Typically a song is between three and four minutes long. The length of the song is set by the DJ who usually ends the song at the appropriate time. I’ve measured the average length of the songs occasionally, using the handy lap counter feature on my iPod nano. During the day the songs run will run from 4 to 5 minutes, at night the songs are 3 minutes. You actually get more time for your money if you go into a club during the day. For this post I’ll assume the song length is three minutes.

I’ll forever be frustrated by dancers who take off into the dressing room for a couple songs and leave me waiting for what feels like an eternity. I think dancers lose track of the fact two songs for her and two songs for me are two different things. Two songs equal six minutes of time. If a dancer works a six hour shift (360 minutes) those two songs will represent roughly 1.67% of the total time she spends in the club. If I spend one hour in the club (60 minutes) those two songs will represent 10% of the total time I will spend there. It’s kind of like dog years. Those two songs will feel six times longer to me than her.

If I wait four songs the numbers get worse. That’s 3.34% for her and 20% of my time. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a strip club that could survive without the live entertainment. The drinks are horribly overpriced, the music is too loud and not what I like. The furniture is miserable and lighting is bad. Once you hang out at a club the novelty fades quickly. The novelty at some club’s fades the second you walk in the door. It can really miserable waiting for a dancer in a club.

Actually making customers wait is a passive aggressive way some dancers deal with customers. They are happy at the thought the customer is stuck waiting for them. When your job requires you to interact with customers on a personal level this will happen. You wouldn’t be a human if the dick heads didn’t get you down. But don’t take it out on the good customers. If you drive away the good customers you’ll be stuck with the dick heads.

Sometimes it hurts to read the ads

I’m setting my snark mode to eleven. I admit up front on this post I’m being heavy handed. Ultimately I am a customer, so everything I do is from that point of view. I feel like I'm mostly fair, except for one topic. There is one thing about the strip club world that is just so stupid I can’t look at it with doing a face palm every time. What is this black hole of cultural despair? The monthly magazine strip club advertisement. Every time I look at these ads my IQ drop slightly. I’ve decided to create a secret decoder ring for those folks who can’t believe the ads are really as bad as actually are. The following blog post is completely unfair. I don’t care. They are idiots.

Here are the most common points made on virtually every Strip club ad and what they really mean.

Strip club ad claim #1: We have ice cold beer.

What does this really mean? We have a functional refrigeration system. Nothing more. When I walk into a club with naked woman on stage do I care if the beer is ice cold? No. I’d be happy if they just had a bigger selection of beer than the local 7-11. Most strip clubs don’t. They have a couple taps of horrible, water down, over priced, least offensive product they can sell to the largest demographic. Its miserable stuff only made tolerable only because of its proximity to boobs.

Strip club ad claim #2: We have the friendliest wait staff in town.

No you don’t. The ads make is sound like their wait staff is the only friendly one in town and all the other waitresses are just axe wielding homicidal maniacs. They are all axe wielding homicidal maniacs. Especially when you tip the 25 cents on an $18 dollar drink order. Actually the wait staff is your best friend at the club. Take care of you waitress every chance you get. She can make your life so much better when you run into a psycho stripper. Most waitresses are all the same. If you treat them right they will treat you right.

Strip club ad claim #3: We have comfortable chairs and cozy VIP booths.

No you don’t. You have furniture that most humans would throw away after a nuclear apocalypse. Let’s be realistic, you’ve got beat up furniture and couches you couldn’t give away at Goodwill. Periodically, I feel the need to burn all my clothes I wear to a strip club. I recently had a chance to see the couches from a strip club outside in the light of day. It was disturbing. I understand that a strip club is hard on the assets. But it’s nothing to brag about.

Strip club ad claim #:4 Come see our special event, it’s so special.

Except for the flyer taped the door that you don’t read anyway, you wouldn’t know anything special is going on except the DJ is a little more incoherent than usual. I have walked out of the club a couple times not realizing that there was a “major event” going on until I saw the sign on the door when I left. Stapling decorations from the Dollar tree on to a couple walls does not create an epic event. The only thing I found consistent about special events is that they screws up the drink service. The waitresses just spend their time tripping over crappy decorations trying to get to the bar.

Strip club claim #5: We have the hottest dancers.

Of course you do, all the other clubs just herd cattle on to the stage. The reality is that most of your dancers worked at other clubs and will bolt to new clubs as soon as you jack up the stage fees or do something else completely stupid. I know you have to say you have the best dancers in the ad. But try and figure out some sort of other angle. Like maybe you have really hot dancers that can carry on a conversation longer than “Wanna dance?” That’d be awesome.

Strip club claim #6: We have an address.

The club’s address is usually tucked away unobtrusively on the bottom of the ad or next to the logo. Most of the time you’d wouldn’t notice it, The reality is THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FUCKING ITEM ON YOUR AD! Unless the customer can find your club everything else on the ad is pointless. Seriously, most of the people reading your ad probably don’t know where you are. Who cares if you have friendly wait staff and the hottest dancers with classiest furniture if you are lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Your ad looks just like all the other ads in the magazine. If there is one thing you want your customer to know is where to find you. Make sure that when they see the ad they come away with that information.

OK, blood pressure lowering, bile depleted. Now I’m can go to bed knowing I just made the world a little bit better for truth, justice and the strip club way.

Character Counts

I follow a lot of dancers on twitter. It’s interesting to see real time reactions to situations then hear or read about them later. If funny at times to see dancers and customer complain about the same basic thing but from complete different points of view. One of these complaining points recently is about false promises. A dancer unleashed a rather vehement series of tweets about some jerk customer who flashed a bunch of cash, but didn’t spend in penny on her. This reminded me of a few customer rants where they complained about dancers who promised a lot more than they delivered.

There is certain expectations when you go into a strip club. The first is that the entertainers will take their clothes off and customers will tip them. From there the options continue, there will probably be tables dances, lap dances, etc etc. Dancer or anybody else selling something you approach each customer trying to figure out how much can you make versus how much its going to cost you. How much for how much. In my work world it’s usually time and travel. There are customers in any business that are so difficult to deal with. They require so much attention and buy so little they aren’t worth the time.

If you think there is going to be a big payoff you are much more likely to hang in there longer. It’s the sales paradox, how much time and money are you willing to spend in order to make the sale? This makes the dancer vulnerable to manipulation. If some guy is flashing money and looks like he going to spend it she'll invest her time on him. From the customer side if the dancer acts like she'll do more he just spends more is pretty much the same deal. A false promise of a big payout to get a short term take away.

Some times it just a power trip on the customers part. They just like manipulating the dancer. It's actually pretty pathetic. If you think waving a bunch of money so you can slam some dancer, telling her too bad she's not worth it, the you should probably be spending your money on therapy, not strippers. Dancer’s who promise customers anything just to get their money isn’t any better. It’s deception in both cases.

It’s all to easy to forget that there is a person on the other side of the transaction. I’m not a walking wallet. Treat me like one and go somewhere else. Recently a dancer I’ve never met before sat down with me. With ten minutes she told me that we were going to be “best friends” and we should make plans for dinner. Yeah, right. You’ve known me for 600 seconds, I’m old enough to be your father, and you want to got out to dinner together. I’m not really buying this and I’m really not buying any dances from you.

Naming Names (not really)

I have a confession. Despite my best efforts I do have one slightly creepy habit. I keep a small spread sheet that contains there stage name and their actual first name. No other information. No last names or anything else. Just first name and stage name. I know a lot of dancers get irritated with guy’s fixation with knowing their real name. I understand why they have a stage and even make light of it. But it’s something that is unique to strip club industry. No where else in my life do people keep their identity to me. I know actors, musicians and authors use assumed names but I don’t talk with them on a regular basis.

I never ask a dancer her name. Most of the time they will either tell me their name or let it slip by accident. I really doesn’t matter if I know or not. Having a stage name is an everyday thing for dancers so I think it loses a lot of its impact on them. But seriously, if a repair man showed at your door announced he was the Mighty Thor and was going to fix your refrigerator wouldn’t you find that a bit odd?

I have accumulated close to 150 names in my list so here are some interesting facts (Hopefully). The most common dancer Name: Taylor. Far and away this is most common name. I’m not sure why. Maybe dancers named Taylor have a high turn over rate. There were three times more Taylor’s than the next most popular name.

Dancer’s names tend to fall into seven categories: Names, Famous Names, Things, Emotions, Mythological Names, Locations, and WTF. 56% of the dancers simply picked another name. Nothing was nothing really unique about the name just another feminine name. 11% picked names of famous people. Usually the name was a TV, movie, or music celebrity but there were a couple of literary characters as well. 11% of the dancers picked a name that were things. These ranged from cars to gems to weapons. There was one optical illusion as well.

9% were named after a mythological character. Almost all from the Greek pantheon, except two from Celtic mythology. I actually thought there would be more in this category. But I like Mythology so I was probably just notice them more. 9% of the dancers were name after locations. Cities were the most common location. A couple of US States and one continent were also represented. I think I’d pick a city if I was a dancer. Just call me Fresno. I think I made the right career move going into engineering.

2% picked emotions. Honestly, when I read them on the computer they seem really odd, but in the club they make sense. 2% are just simply What The Fuck. I have no idea whether they are proper names, places, drugs, or from the periodic table. Googling the name only yielded spell corrections. My best guess they are just mash-ups of other names.

The most surprising thing was that 5% of the dancers used the real name as their stage name. That is a lot higher number than I would have expected. I suppose it doesn’t matter. As long as you think the name is fake, it accomplishes the same thing.

A new look for Todd

There are few dancer accoutrements that are so universally reviled at glitter. You can tell by the aliases glitter, “Slut Dust”, “Clitty Litter”, and “Divorce Dust”. The basic problem with glitter is when one dancer wears glitter, all the dancers wear glitter. And occasionally some of the customers.. The stuff goes every where, including the customers. I’ve never been married so I never had to deal the “divorce dust” issue, but it has lead to a couple of embarrassing moments.

I try not to categorize people just because of their profession, but strip club owners can be some of the cheapest bastards on the face of the earth. They tend to cut corners on things like drink napkins, light bulbs, or furniture. I know when the club was having a good month because they would have a new bungee cord to pull the men’s room door closed. During bad months the door would just kind of hang there. If you want more privacy you need to buy more drinks.

Another favorite method of saving money owner’s employ is not turning on the heat. I’ve seen owners standing in jeans, sweat shirt, and coat thinking the heat is fine while the dancer dressed in a g-string and little else is freezing to death. I stopped by the club during the spring time. It was nice and warm during the days but the nights still got cold very quickly. It was one of those freezing nights in the club. I wore my black vest the entire time I was there.

The following morning I threw the same black vest on again and headed off to work. We were doing some testing on a display that was going to be installed in an ATM machine. If you visited a Bank of America ATM recently you were using the LCD module we we’re testing that day. On displays used outdoors we do a day light readability test. Basically you blast the display with light and make sure you can still read it. By blasting light I mean 100,000 lux. Most homes are lit at 150 lux. We’re talking a bank aircraft landing lights all pointed at small spot. Part of my job is to make sure the electronics works. Because of the heat generated by the lights we keep the optical lab as cool as possible between tests so I was keeping my vest on.

During the test I had stepped in front of the lights to check something when I heard laughter break out behind me. Then I heard “Holy shit Todd, that’s a new look for you”. I turned around confuse. “Dude, it’s your vest. You look like Liberace”. The back of my best was covered in glitter. In the test lights I twinkled like a planetarium exhibit. Apparently I had sat down in chair slathered in clitty litter. “Why didn’t you invited any of us along” one of the others guy quipped. One advantage of working in a sales and marketing group is you don’t have worry about people knowing you hang out in strip clubs. More than likely they are spending more time there than you are. I took off the vest.

Dancer FA

One of the colloquialisms at my work is 'FA'. FA is the acronym for failure analysis. This is where a customer will send in their dead unit and we’ll try to determine why it failed. I do most of these except for the high profile and really obscure problems. In the spirit of looking for simple things blog about i'll apply my meager skills to why dancers fail to get dances, more specifically why the dancer failed to get dances from me. I probably don’t represent the typical customer but I probably have pretty typical reactions to a dancers sales pitch.

Ask for the Dance

The number one reason why I did not buy dances from a girl is she never asked me. Ask for the dance, ask for the dance, and ask for the dance. When you wait for the customer to ask you are putting your fate in his hands. If I’m on the fence about whether to buy dances I’ll probably stay there. I’m not trying to be difficult but it’s my money you want me to spend. I’d rather get dances from somebody interested in selling them. The longer she waits the more likely I’m not going to buy dances. Occupy Wall Street, not my bar tab. Walking away absolutely guarantees that you won’t get dances. It doesn’t matter if he asked you to sit with him or you ask to sit. It doesn’t matter what you are selling dances, mutual funds or diamonds always ask for the dance. Ask for the sale.

It's about me

There are some subjects that will instantly shut down any desire for a dance. The most abhorrent to me is listening about how attractive somebody else is. I’m an unremarkable man with an unremarkable job that drives an unremarkable car to an unremarkable home. There are 168 hours in a week. I’m reminded constantly for the other 166 hours that I’m not an object of desire. I don’t want to hear it when I’m in a strip club and I sure as hell don’t want to pay for the privilege. I’m not asking to hear false platitudes about how handsome I am. Like asking for the sale, this isn’t something particular to stripping. If I were to go into one of my accounts and tell them how cool their competitor’s product was I wouldn’t live to see the end of the week. You are always tap dancing around the customer’s ego in sales. It might feel good to whack some guy’s ego but it’s not going to make you any money.

The customer is not your enemy

The last thing is don’t hate your customer. It always surprises me how often a dancer will plop down next to me with a thinly veiled expression of malice on her face. She’ll plow through a couple minutes of small talk through clinched teeth. Then snarl out some sort of snarky remark when I don’t buy dances from her. I didn’t force you to sit with me. If you’ve already resigned yourself to failing then nothing is going to stop you. Anybody who has sold anything has wanted to strangle their customer. There probably isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t want to beat some idiot engineer to death was his iPhone 4S. Siri, please contact the coroner I’m going to kill this idiot. I like to think myself as a relatively low maintenance customer but I know a few of my dancer friends have wanted to break a chair over my head.

Don't push yourself to far

One of those signs you’ve been hanging around at a strip club too long is when you’re asked to help educate new dancers. There is a piece of advice I always give out but I doubt ever gets followed. As soon as they can they should save two months of living expenses. I know this is a lot easier said than done, but dancing is very taxing both physically and mentally. Having a cushion to take a break can make all the difference. The pressure to make money can be overwhelming when your back is against the wall. This invariably leads to bad decisions.

Sh*t dancers say to customers

I’ve been trying to write more. Once I stop posting to my blog it feels almost impossible to get started again. So I’m going to start cheating to make my life easier. Rather than coming up with original ideas, like Dr Seuss stripper poems, I’m just going to steal other people ideas. So let’s go after some low hanging fruit.

Here are some of the more crazy things dancers have said to me over this last decade. I suspect that most of these phrases are fueled by double digit blood alcohol levels or assorted other controlled substances that have been accumulated to less than prudent levels.

Why do dancers dance? Money. And they have a multitude of reasons why. Like health issues.

I really need to make money tonight because:

1) I have to get my appendix removed. (I wasn’t aware appendectomies were elective surgery)

2) I have a brain tumor

3) I have oberian (sic) cancer

4) I have a cataract

5) I have to make money for a colon cleanse (I didn’t get any dances from her)

6) I have to replace to replace my real nails with fake nails.

7) I can’t feel my face

Sometimes it’s their pet’s health at risk.

I really need to make money tonight because:

1) My dog has a brain tumor.

2) My cat has breast cancer (apparently strip clubs are the leading cause of cancer in strippers and their pets)

3) My cat needs a hip replacement

4) My dog needs therapy, he’s afraid of his shadow

5) My cat is possessed (I guess exorcisms aren’t covered by home owners policies)

Sometimes it's automotive issues

I really need to make money tonight because:

1) I need to get my car out of impound

2) I need to get my boyfriend’s car out of impound before he knows its gone

3) I need to get insurance so I can get my car out of impound

4) To replace the headlight I broke when I ran over my boyfriend*

5) I need to take a cab and find my car

*Curiously there was no concern regarding her boyfriends health

Sometimes it’s a creative reason to sit down next to you

Can sit with you because:

1) I’m so fucked up I can’t walk

2) I need to hide from my parole officer

3) I need to hide from that dancer staring at me

4) I can’t find the stage I’m on

5) I don’t know who you are

6) You look like my boyfriend

Sometimes it's just randomly weird things

1) I fucking hate strip clubs

2) I fucking hate customers (not an effective way to sell dances)

3) I hate this place

4) I think went to school with you (I’m old enough to be her father)

5) Have you seen my car? (she was so drunk her sweat smelled like vodka)

6) Just give me a hundred dollars now and I’ll leave (She is still waiting for the money)

7) Why are you here?