Annoying Strip Club Practices ... Part 1: "Wanna Buy the Lady a Drink?â€
Club_Goer_Seattle
Seattle, Washington
Sunday, May 22, 2011 12:37 PM
As much as I enjoy going to strip clubs, there are some things about how they operate that are truly annoying to customers and dancers. I could probably write a book on this subject. Some are management/ownership-imposed practices. Others are simply how the dancers conduct themselves. In a comment to another discussion item, I reminded myself of how much I hate one particular practice: Ladies' drinks.
Mostly in juice bars, waitresses will descend on a customer as soon as they see one sitting with a dancer and then approach the customer with the question, “ Would you like to buy the lady a drink?†(If the waitress knows the dancer's name, then they will substitute the girl's name for “the lady.â€) This practice is done for at least two different reasons that I have observed. If readers know of more, please chime in.
(1) Dancers are often given a quota of drinks that they must get customers to buy for them over the course of their shift. If they don't reach their quota, then the dancers must pay for the unpurchased drinks themselves. It's a way of increasing the dancers house fee.
(2) Another form of the ladies' drink requirement is a little less intimidating on the dancer. No quota is set, but the dancer can offset her house fee by the amount of money paid by the ladies' drinks she's received during her shift. (Perhaps there is a dollar or drink limit to this.)
Either way, customers are besieged throughout their time at the club to spend money on ladies' drinks. One waitress will come by one minute, and three minutes later another waitress may arrive, and if the second waitress doesn't see a ladies' drink on the table she will ask the customer “Wanna buy the lady a drink?†Some clubs offer different sizes of drinks. Here in Seattle, the Déjà Vu clubs offer either a $10. or $20. ladies drink. That can get expensive fast. For crying out loud, $20. is the price of a dance (which I would normally rather spend my money on)! I sometimes think, just charge the customers $5. more admission at the door, then have the waitresses leave the customers alone at their tables.
Furthermore, the part of this practice that really fries my ass, is once a customer has already committed to spending money on a dancer by buying dances, waitresses will still go into whatever dance area you're in, then interrupt your dance with the dancer and ask “Wanna buy the lady a drink?†Once I've agreed to pay $20. or $30. for less than three minutes of fun, I really don't want to be interrupted by a waitress. I really feel that the club management should at least have a practice of not soliciting ladies' drinks in the dance areas.
Depending on the dancer, and my budget, which varies from trip to trip, I do buy some ladies' drinks. In the past two years, when my overall strip club budget has been much less than it used to be, I have actually found a lady's drink to be a good middle ground situation. I'm always conscious of one bit of customer etiquette: Don't take up too much of a dancer's time if you don't intend to spend money on her. I feel that I'm pretty good about observing this. If I want to spend some time chatting with a dancer, but I'm unsure if I want to buy dances (or underfunded), I have begun to use the ladies' drink alternative to buying dances as a means to spending some money on a dancer in exchange for some conversation time with her.
I intend to write subsequent discussion items on other annoying strip club practices. Hence, this one is labeled, "Part 1."
How do you readers feel about “ladies' drinks,†and how do you cope with, tolerate, or even embrace them ???
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