Socially Responsible Strip Club Operation

9/1/2010 12:12:47 AM

<div style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 0pt">Lately there has been a lot of interest in socially responsible commerce, for example fair trade coffee. So what would be the criteria for the Socially Responsible Strip Club Owner? While that might seem like an oxymoron wouldn’t it be that a business where it is so possible to be socially harmful that there is the most to be gained? And wouldn’t it help your enjoyment of the entertainment if you know that they weren’t being exploited behind the scenes?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 0pt">So what would the criteria be? Here are my first suggestions:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"> </div>
The compensation structure, even if the dancers are independent contractors, should not require up-front fees and should not entail a risk that the dancer will go home at the end of the shift in the red. 
  
Security should screen all patrons for weapons or other dangerous or illegal items. 
  
Dancers should not be required to tip security. This creates an environment where dancers can feel extorted for protection. 
  
Security should be adequate. There should be one person with security responsibilities for ever four dancers engaged with customers at a time. This can include persons with other duties, like bartender, but who are expected to aid in the event of a disturbance. 
  
Security includes, if desired, helping the dancer to get safely to their car at the end of the shift. Dancers should not be expected to have to carry large amounts of cash with them at the end of the shift. 
  
Dancers in private or semi-private areas should have a way of alerting security for assistance without risking reprisal from the unruly customer. Typically this will involve one or more hidden panic buttons. 
  
Unless assistance has been requested it is generally to be presumed that private dance areas are private for the dancer as well and that management will not be ‘looking in’ to get a show of their own. 
  
Despite the general nature of the business workplace sexual harassment between coworkers or between workers and management is taken seriously. 
  
If dancers are employees all state employment laws are followed. Full time employees after an initial waiting period should be offered health benefits. 
  
Because of the stressful nature of the job counseling referral services should be available to performers 
  
There should be adequate and clean toilet facilities separate from customers. Dressing rooms can be shared but should be private from non-performer employees. 
  
Other illegal activities, in particular drug dealing, will not be permitted either in public or private areas of the club. 
  
If dancers are independent contractors they should have sufficient independence so as to not genuinely qualify for that status. 
  
Compensation rules and other conduct rules shall be clear and published.

6 comments

Latest

Dudester

•

14 years ago

You have some good ideas, and some pie in the sky ideas. 
 
Dancers should not be required to tip security. I frequent St. James, which has an armed guard on duty from 11 a.m. to 7 a.m. the next morning (they close at 2, but he place was burned down once). Anyway, tip out covers everything from locker fee to security. Tip out increasesas per time of day-for instance if you come in at 9 p.m. or later, the tip out is 90 bucks, so you really got to shake your ass. If you come in at opening, tip out is 35 and you can leave anytime after 4 p.m. 
 
Security should be adequate.This goes without saying. There should be at least one armed guard and cameras on vital areas (i.e., front door, parking lot, lobby, main floor). 
 
panic buttons-unworkable. It will create a Peter and the Wolf situation. 
 
private dance areas are private-nice dream, but managers/bouncers are required by the fuzz to monitor dancers. Male employees get an eyeful everyday anyway-from cooks to busboys to bouncers. 
 
sexual harassment-thing is, unless a dancer is smart enough to somehow record a conversation, a jury won't buy a harassment claim. 
 
Full time employees-My degree is in Constitutional Law, with a specialty in criminal law. Civil law is another animal, but this seems to work against what makes a club worth going to. 
 
job counseling referral services- It would be nice if every job had this. Purely pie in the sky. 
 
drug dealing-A number of strippers are addicts, and they work in a place whose primary source of income is to sell a controlled addictive substance (alcohol). How do you fix that ? 
 
Compensation rules-are made to strippers when they start with a club. 
 
Many of your ideas are pie in the sky and make me think that you are either twelve years old, or you are an adult who thinks like a 12 year old.

inno123

•

14 years ago

@Dudester:  Certainly the security has to be paid, but there is no reason why the compensation structure has to be such that the security is paid directly by the dancer.  It simply creates an envoronment ripe for extortion, which by its nature is intimidating even if no outright extortion occurs. 
 
I am not sure what you mean by a Peter and the Wolf Situation.  Did you actually mean Boy Who Cried Wolf situation?  I doubt that it would.  And I suspect that a lot more clubs have panic buttons or their equivalent than you think.  One of the things that dancers fear most is a customer who gets threatening.  And once they get threatening calling out for security could be dangerous. 
 
Of course the club manager has to meet the requirements of law enforcement, but everybody from cooks to busboys peeking in is exactly why having them generally be regarded as private is fair to the dancers. 
 
As to sexual harrassment, my point was that management takes problems of sexual harrassment seriously, not the courts.  Sexual Harassment cases only wind up in court because the management hasn't taken action. 
 
I didn't say that dancers had to be employees or full times employees, but some states, like California, do require dancers to be treated as employees rather than independent contractors.  And the last I saw the clubs were going just fine anyhow. 
 
I said other illegal activities which would not include alcohol, which is legal.  What on earth could be considered responsible about looking the other way while your employees are dealing cocaine? 
 
Referral services cost almost nothing.  The only fear is that it would cause the dancers to realize that they should be doing something else. 
 
But overall you seem to miss the whole idea of the article.  It wasn't about what a typical club is like or 'that's just the way it works', but rather what a responsible operation would be like.  Of course that is a little pie-in-the-sky from the standpoint of how things have allways been done.  But they said the same thing when dolphin-free tuna standards were proposed too.

Dudester

•

14 years ago

inno, all I can say is wow !! 
 
Where do I begin, except that what you don't know is amazing. I guess, in LA dancers have to tip everyone, but then, the year I lived in LA, and the four years I was stationed in LA, I learned that people in California fuck each other over for nickels. I actually stayed away from cub scouts that year in LA because the den master wanted me to pay him to come over to his house for den meetings. Then, there's pay toilets everywhere, enforced paid parking, etc. etc. 
 
As for Peter and the Wolf, google the symphony and book by the Brothers Grimm. 
 
The busboys and cooks don't have to peek. In a Strip Club, there are naked women everywhere, in case you didn't notice. They're on stage, giving guys lappers on the main floor, and walking around wearing only a grin to attract customers. 
 
In case you haven't studied up on addicts, addicts don't stick to just one substance. Often, when cops do blood pulls from DWI crashes, they find a myriad of substances in drunk drivers. Just because a stripper does pot, or cocaine, or even opium, in a club where they serve alcohol, the stripper will also drink. Yes, most clubs will fire a stripper they find with coke,or pot (or whatever), but the thing is, a number of strippers are addicts. A strip club that serves alcohol isn't a place to put an addict, or recovering addict. 
 
As for harassment claims, I live in the south. Juries here regard strippers poorly, even strippers that have been obviously attacked. It's a sad world where a victim can't get justice, but in the few cases I've seen out here, strippers fare poorly, at best. I've even seen a jury call for an investigation of a stripper in a rape case where DNA proved she was attacked. 
 
Referral services ? Let me ask you, do you know any employers that tell their employees that they should quit where they are and consider something else ? 
 
Pie in the sky doesn't cover it with you. Can I offer you some good advice ? Please travel outside of California, but not for just a few days. Spend some time in Chicago, then bean town, then philly, then Florida, and finally Texas. Spend some time with people. Find out how the world really works. You sound like nephew in San Diego. The school system failed him too. He thinks 24 hours a week is full time employment and that the family should pay for his cable bill and child support that his new wife has to pay because she walked out on her two kids.

inno123

•

14 years ago

@Dudester, you still miss the entire point of the article.  Yes I have been around the country and even around the world.  I know how things do work.  I even know about the story and symphony, (I just didn't see what it had to do with having a panic button in a VIP room.)  But let me assure you I DO know how things work in the real world. 
 
But the point of the article isn't how things DO work, it is about how things SHOULD work IF you reconsidered things around the idea of making it a better working environment for the dancers (while still being a strip club of course).  
 
So the busboys get plenty of looks all the time, but that is no reason why they should also be peeking into the private VIP rooms too!  Not if the club management is trying to do the right thing. 
 
And if a stripper can't get help from the courts, does that mean that they also shouldn't get help from the club management if the club mamagement is trying to do the right thing? 
 
And counseling referral services are part of the benefits package as most progressive companies.  Yes there is a chance that they will tell the accountant that they should stop being an accountant, but it is just as likely that they will resolve the problems that are keeping the accountant from being a productive accountant.  Sure the counseling service might convince someone to leave the job, but if so it will likely be no great loss to the club of a dancer who really didn't belong there.  And replacing such a dancer is not hard. 
 
Again, this is not an article about what would be the normal thing to do.  It is about what would be the right thing to do.  We changed the entire way in which we fish for tuna out of consideration of what would be best for some dolphins.  Yet it is inconcievable to consider improvements in how to treat the women performers who we profess to enjoy so much?

MisterGuy

•

14 years ago

"The compensation structure, even if the dancers are independent contractors, should not require up-front fees and should not entail a risk that the dancer will go home at the end of the shift in the red. 
  
Security should screen all patrons for weapons or other dangerous or illegal items. 
 
Dancers should not be required to tip security. This creates an environment where dancers can feel extorted for protection." 
 
Agreed. 
 
 "Security includes, if desired, helping the dancer to get safely to their car at the end of the shift." 
 
Agreed. 
  
"Dancers in private or semi-private areas should have a way of alerting security for assistance without risking reprisal from the unruly customer. Typically this will involve one or more hidden panic buttons. 
  
Unless assistance has been requested it is generally to be presumed that private dance areas are private for the dancer as well and that management will not be ‘looking in’ to get a show of their own. 
  
Despite the general nature of the business workplace sexual harassment between coworkers or between workers and management is taken seriously. 
  
If dancers are employees all state employment laws are followed. Full time employees after an initial waiting period should be offered health benefits." 
 
Agreed. 
  
"There should be adequate and clean toilet facilities separate from customers. Dressing rooms can be shared but should be private from non-performer employees. 
  
Other illegal activities, in particular drug dealing, will not be permitted either in public or private areas of the club." 
 
Agreed. 
 
"Compensation rules and other conduct rules shall be clear and published." 
 
Agreed. 
 
This topic came up a long while back.  I'll have to see if I can dig out my response to it, but you've got a lot of good ideas IMHO.

MisterGuy

•

14 years ago

"Anyway, tip out covers everything from locker fee to security" 
 
...which are the club's expenses, not the dancers! 
 
"panic buttons-unworkable. It will create a Peter and the Wolf situation." 
 
LOL...nonsense, if the rules for when they are to be used are explained to everyone in advance, then there should be no problem whatsoever. 
 
"private dance areas are private-nice dream, but managers/bouncers are required by the fuzz to monitor dancers." 
 
Says who?? 
 
"sexual harassment-thing is, unless a dancer is smart enough to somehow record a conversation, a jury won't buy a harassment claim." 
 
So, let's have a free-for-all on the dancers then??  I don't think so...   <img src="/editor/images/smiley/msn/angry_smile.gif" alt="" /> 
 
"Full time employees-My degree is in Constitutional Law, with a specialty in criminal law." 
 
No, it really isn't Dudster.  Having dancers as pseudo-independent contractors is merely a tax dodge by all involved.  It's a practice that needs to end IMHO in order to make things fair. 
 
"drug dealing-A number of strippers are addicts, and they work in a place whose primary source of income is to sell a controlled addictive substance (alcohol). How do you fix that ?" 
 
By enforcing the law.  Drinking alcohol isn't illegal, doing drugs is, moron. 
 
"Compensation rules-are made to strippers when they start with a club" 
 
...and they should be made clear to all at all times. 
 
 
"Where do I begin, except that what you don't know is amazing." 
 
This from the King of Ignorance here on TUSCL...ugh... 
 
"I guess, in LA dancers have to tip everyone" 
 
He never said that, moron. 
 
"In case you haven't studied up on addicts, addicts don't stick to just one substance." 
 
So, who says that a club has to push drinks onto its staff??  Oh yea, it was no one...ugh... 
 
"Yes, most clubs will fire a stripper they find with coke,or pot (or whatever), but the thing is, a number of strippers are addicts" 
 
...and a number of them aren't, and it would be the club's advantage to keep the drug addicts & dealers out of their club...for a whole range of reasons that even a moron like you should be able to grasp. 
 
"As for harassment claims, I live in the south. Juries here regard strippers poorly, even strippers that have been obviously attacked." 
 
So, once again, because the court system in the South is busted (what a "news flash"...not...), strip club owners should just look the other way when illegal behavior is going on in their clubs??  Again, I don't think so... 
 
"Please travel outside of California, but not for just a few days. Spend some time in Chicago, then bean town, then philly" 
 
...which are all states that allow their employees to unionize.  You know...the majority of the USA! 
------------------------------------- 
 
"Yet it is inconcievable to consider improvements in how to treat the women performers who we profess to enjoy so much?" 
 
For Dudster, that's a big YES unfortunately...ugh...

You must be a member to leave a comment.Join Now

Want 4 weeks free VIP to tuscl?

Write an article