Dancers paying tip outs.

There are a few clubs here in South Florida that make the dancers pay their fees upfront, however it has been my experience that these clubs have the skankiest drug addicted girls working, and I generally avoid these clubs.

The only clubs I've seen where house fees are paid upfront are ones with really high fees like $200+.

During dayshift it's usually whenever throughout their shift. At night it's when their shift ends.

I'm also seeing clubs doing away with house moms.

Paying house up front is standard for most areas of the country. When a particular place doesn’t do that, it’s a surprise. Not that I really care, since if it has to get paid regardless, the timing doesn’t matter to me. If that’s not standard in Atlanta, then who knows. My guess is that because Oasis shut down, they are doing that just because they can.

As far as I know, there's not too many clubs around here that require the girls to pre-pay the house fee. Many of them just take it out of the first drink they sell, the others collect it when they leave.

In most places where I've clubbed the girls had the opportunity to earn their house fees over the course of their shifts. IME where it's most common to collect them upfront is in tourist trap clubs that charge high house fees, like those in NYC.

so if other people are going to collect the house fees other than the housemom, is that a warning shot that the housemom is being phased out by the club? i always had the impression that the housemom's role is similar to the men's bathroom attendant, with a slight exception that the housemom provides more amenities. am i totally wrong to assume this?

^^^ Simple answer, it depends.

All clubs are different. Some clubs may not need a housemom and some definitely do. Varies by type of club, volume working the club, culture of the club, etc.

I tend to think of housemom as the frontline supervisor. You can cut that position, but then any issues that come up, the girl goes straight to the manager. Some managers don't want to be involved in the execution or handling people issues. So you can have housemom do dirty work.

Most of the clubs I go to don't collect the house fee up front to my knowledge. It seems like most of them get it bit by bit from the dancer drinks and vips sold by the dancer throughout the night by taking what would normally be the girl's cut to apply it to the fee.

If the girl has a bad shift and doesn't cover the house fee through sales they have to pay it at the end of the shift. Of course the smaller Midwestern clubs I frequent tend to have smaller house fees and fewer girls to keep track of so I can understand why clubs in bigger cities would want to get their fees upfront.

Apart from house fee, some clubs collect Fees for coming late, or No show fee etc. Craziest insane fee policy.

I don't know of any clubs here where girls pay the house fee to the house mom. They pay the house fees to the house, usually a shift manager. No local stripper has ever cried poor and asked me for money to pay the house mom. The house, the DJ, security, etc, yes. Mostly its towards the end of the day but in cases where the girl has no money at the end of the day they obviously can't lock her in, so they'll let them go and often require payment of past days fees before the next day starts. I've absolutely gotten calls from girls asking to do OTC because they can't go back to work until they can cover their house fee from the last time they worked, but I suspect with most of them it's more about the fact that the last day they worked was so bad they actually left debt instead of profit and know that won't happen with OTC.

I don't know of any clubs where girls have to pay the house mom, they seem to operate on tips and the girls pay her for various services, hair/makeup/nails, outfits, sanitary products, perfume, maybe locker rental, that kind of shit. That's their purpose, kinda like a bathroom attendant with more shit. As least as far as I can tell.

Agreed Champ, but I also think that there are far fewer clubs doing that stuff now than even 5 years ago. In another 5 years I suspect that a lot of those punitive fees will go the way of the Dodo bird. Rigid schedules, dress code requirements and punishment fees are all being used against clubs as evidence of behavioral control in employee misclassification lawsuits and I don't see that stopping.

If a club wants to demonstrate that it doesn't have control over their behaviors, it has to be willing to cede some control, lol. The downside over the past 5 years is that more clubs are struggling to fill slow weekday shifts, but it is what it is. They will just need to become more creative in sweetening the pot for the girls.

One thing I've seen a lot of clubs switch to is a system of escalating house fees as the night goes on. It incentivizes dancers who want to pay less to come in early while those who wish to only work premium hours (10-2) can pay more for the privilege and show up when they want. Brilliant - win win - the lazy girls essentially subsidize the industrious ones. The girls who show up late also run the risk of being turned away if the club already has too many girls on shift, so they have to factor that into the calculus on busy weekend nights.

That's just one example of clubs getting more creative. Over time the clubs that are still pulling stunts like punishment fees and mandated schedules will have to conform. The industry will continue to evolve and other innovative practices in motivating girls to fill slower shifts will become commonplace.

Rick, agreed the dancers being controlled by the clubs. I know a club where if the dancer is late by 10 mins for the night shift, then she has to pay 25 $ late fee or she can go back to home. They have no exceptions. On top of it the girls has to report to house mom with fully done makeup and in the stripper costume by the time night shift starts, not the time they walk into the club. Funny people.

Another, nonsense I heard is DJs asking tips to put on the stage or off the stage by skipping turn to entertain a whale etc. DJs also has to be taken care apart from house moms if they don’t want trouble. One club DJ I heard from a dancer even he expects free OTC favors dancers after hours.

Finally managers. Most clubs has well behaved managers surprisingly. Only thing that they push the girls to party with people or OTC to boost their business interests. Working as dancer in a club not only comes with cash but also with free add on troubles. Every other week I end paying couple girls their late fees, house fees etc. it is ok to be nice to these girls as long as they treat me good.

I could write a list of all the clubs I’ve been at, and whether the house fee was paid up front, or whether it was more common to do that later. But it seems like some people in this thread already have made up their minds of how clubs work on all that and what an actual dancer who has worked in 10 different states says is irrelevant. So I probably won’t bother. In most clubs I’ve been at, dancers somehow manage to *gasp* cough up the $20-$100 to work a shift at a club. (Sometimes less or more than that, but these are *average* ranges) and have managed to refrain from spending all their money on shoes or whatever before walking in the door.

This isn’t 100% the case, but now that I’m thinking about it, a club is less likely to push dancers to pay their house when immediately walking in the door if they collect cuts for all level of dances, including the lowest priced single song dance option offered. Or that weird dancer drink sale system some places have. They are more likely to want house up front if they don’t collect any cuts from single lap dances and only take money out of VIPs. But there are plenty of exceptions of course. And even if collecting up front is standard, I’m sure lots of staff members will let things slide and collect later at their own discretion but that would be between the dancer and the staff member. My Denver club will allow dancers to not pay up front, but if they do that then they have to pay an extra $10 on top of what it would be. Not that any of that affects me, because I usually show up early enough to not have to pay any house fee 😁

Also, the role of house moms vary from place to place. Plenty of clubs have none. Some have house moms that only come in during the weekend. Some house moms have a more active role with enforcing club rules like chasing dancers out of restroom stalls if they are walking in together, or making sure whatever is worn is either legal for the area or just follows the club’s standards. Others are not enforcing anything and just simply sell things to dancers and are also de facto therapists for them. Some clubs make it mandatory to tip house moms and some don’t. A lot of house moms seemed to stay away during the height of Covid but now it seems at the places that already had house moms, they have returned.

And wome clubs let girls pay off house fees by filling drink sales and vip sales quotas

Nice, nobody is disputing your own experiences, but merely saying that some of ours are different. Of course I've also been to very few clubs that didn't take a standard cut off the LDs, so there it is fwiw.

Maybe some clubs treated traveling dancers, who are a higher payment risk, differently than house dancers? Maybe there are regional differences in approaches? Again IDK.

You gotta speak grump to understand Spice. She identifies that way.

This varies all wildly by region. I've seen girls make $2k on a great night and in one state they take home $1900 in another they are hoping they take home $1500.

As a I remember, at many of the clubs I've been to, you pay a smaller house fee if you pay earlier (and are thus there earlier). One club I go to has a cut-off time of 11pm to pay the house fee. At most clubs, the dancers don't talk about needing to pay the house fee, so I assume they pay it before hitting the floor.

"But it seems like some people in this thread already have made up their minds of how clubs work on all that and what an actual dancer who has worked in 10 different states says is irrelevant."

That's called a warning shot lol

Most places I work you do not pay up front.

I hate clubs with house moms. They are useless. I bring all my own stuff, I’m an adult, I don’t need help, and it’s just another person expecting to be tipped out, or another person the club requires me to tip out.

House moms are people who do a job for the club but don’t get paid by the club and therefore the dancers have to pay for them to be there.

They are also usually bitches.

The house moms at Vivide, Atlanta are paid $400 a shift by the club.

Most clubs in the Detroit area make us pay either at the end of the night or within the last hour. We can pay sooner than that if we want to, of course. However, the clubs that have celebrity events and whatnot usually make the freelance dancers pay up front at the door on the day of those events.