Expense Account
Dan3635
Gulf Coast. I’m not your boss.
Wednesday, July 10, 2024 3:06 PM
I vaguely recall a movie or TV show where a businessman takes a client to a strip club for a good time. He pays for everything because he can expense it.
Clearly, this doesn’t happen any more, right?
What type of job allowed this client entertainment? Military sales?
Has anyone either provide or received this type of exchange? How did it go? Do the deal get made? What year did this happen? When did it stop happening?
So many questions. Thanks in advance for sharing any good stories.
Clearly, this doesn’t happen any more, right?
What type of job allowed this client entertainment? Military sales?
Has anyone either provide or received this type of exchange? How did it go? Do the deal get made? What year did this happen? When did it stop happening?
So many questions. Thanks in advance for sharing any good stories.
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26 comments
(That was also the same evening that a waitress spilled a beer on my suit pants. She took me to the dressing room where she had me remove my pants so that she could use a hair dryer to dry them.)
Such behavior stopped cold in my company about a year later when another salesman divorced his pregnant wife, who also worked for the company, so that he could marry a stripper who was also pregnant with his twins. (To that second salesman who I haven’t seen or heard from in over 30 years: Sorry for outing you, buddy, to the denizens of this board, but you’re likely not the only one to have done this.)
Ah, the memories. I wish I had pics and vids!
It was great for team building, but I get why it could be ethically comprising.
These are crazy. It’s like a peek into a hidden world of bribery that’s hidden within a galaxy of strippers. Crazy. Thanks for confirming.
He took me and my second-in-command (a woman) out to dinner. Don't ask me how or why, but seemingly out of nowhere, the subject of table dancing came up. The next thing we knew, he paid the bill and drove us across the river to a club in Windsor, Ontario.
The place was packed with customers and dozens of beautiful women who for $5.00 would perform dances at your table, totally nude. As far as I could tell, this was all that this club was about -- no stage, no lap dance room, and no VIP. There was no contact with these dances, but the visuals were both delightful and absolutely as explicit as you can imagine as girl after girl stopped and performed at our table. Ford Motor Company paid for everything.
Mad props to my female coworker, who had never seen anything like this and took the whole thing in stride. For me, after this outing the slogan "Ford Has a Better Idea" took on a whole new meaning.
The only downer was when the dancer he went to the CR with, came back alone. She sat down and said "I think your fried is having a heart attack: Raced into the CR and he was having an attack, a panic attack. Covered in sweat, rapid heartbeat, scared shitless. Apparently, while she was straddle fucking him, as a joke, she said: "Is that your wife". His wife was a Brigitte Nielson (Rocky IV blonde), look alike, just taller and a million times angrier. His response was to freak out and have a panic attack.
When I got him calmed down he said: Thank you, handed me his Amex card and said enjoy the rest of the day, spend what you want, just don't mention the rest until I am dead. 67 years old diagnosed with brain cancer 2/23 - special audience with the Pope 4-23 - funeral 5-23. Thanks Pope.
jus takin care of buziness...
What they can't track, though, is time. I've left conferences early, skipped coworker dinners to go clubbing. Gotten flown to great locales and put up in nice hotels, and used work time to club (i never skipped anything essential, just stupid shit). Hey what are they going to do, check my toilet to see if I really had the scoots?
I had a similar experience, when I hid the mistake for a senior attorney who had screwed up a criminal defense. Got club funny money.
The details. We were mostly a small insurance and tort litigation firm but in this case we were defending an already-established client against a minor criminal charge. Senior attorney failed to serve prosecutors with a Motion for Discovery, yet then (having received no reply) asserted before the wrong judge (a.k.a. "in the wrong section") that we had received no answer to our motion for discovery from prosecutors. (Contributing to his mistake was, probably, the fact that Orleans Parish Louisiana has two entirely different courthouse buildings, with two entirely different sets of judges, Criminal District Court and Civil District Court. Easy to assume that things from the other building would have happened in the one you're familiar with.) Amazing part was, after he figured it out and re-presented the objection in the proper section, the proper judge for our case accepted his objection that prosecution had failed to respond, without looking for whether or not we had actually filed the motion that they supposedly hadn't responded to. (Second mistake played successful smoke-screen to hide first mistake.) Prosecutors couldn't figure it out, they had bigger fish to fry, they were new kids and pretty quickly just offered "doh, our bad, probably, don't know what happened" type averrals, so judge dismissed entire case with prejudice, ostensibly to make a point (e.g. "you prosecutors! don't fail to reply to discovery motions!") (IIRC it was first possession MJ so nobody violent was getting loose). Despite the fact that I knew this was subterfuge (presenting falsehoods to the court, an ethical violation), nevertheless because I was less than five years into my law license I would not have been liable for it, as only the supervising senior would be. So I could have piped up, alerted judge to initial mistake, thus condemning my superior attorney while not prejudicing my client and thereby keeping my own ethical fingers squeaky cleaner than they would be if I remained silent. Off the cuff I figured it out and, thinking on my feet, I didn't raise a peep. Senior attorney instantly knew it. He said on record something like, "Mister XXXbook-guyXXX has only three years on his license, judge, let's leave it at that," and our side and probably the judge all knew what the fuck was going on but their side didn't. I remember turning my head hard to the side to avoid eye contact because I didn't think I could have kept a straight face. Anyway, apropos the topic, as "thank you" the firm (or was it directly from the senior atty?) gave me a funny-money debit card (IIRC it was just $400?) for a Bourbon Street club (had the club logo, not good anywhere else) and I was told to (paraphrasing) "solicit potential criminal defense clients and report back if anything looks promising." I'm sure this kind of back-scratching between old screw-ups and the judges who were their classmates goes on all the time, especially if the ultimate outcome of a case (non-violent silly charges get dismissed, f.e.) is reasonable anyway. I'm not sure how regularly that firm used Bourbon Street funny-money cards as incentives for younger male associates. I would have appreciated more of them.
But when the 2001-2002 recession hit, everything changed, at least in my industry. Large companies started clamping down on both the dollars and the types of entertainment that could be expensed and that definitely included strip clubs. When the economy recovered, those companies largely kept those policies in place. I'm sure that the increasing number of women in professional roles in these workplaces also had something to do with it.
Heck, as an aside, around the same time a lot of companies also put in place prohibitions on employee reimbursements for alcohol purchased during meals when traveling for work. Unless of course it was part of client entertainment or some other hosting event.
Changing times.
The good old days were good. Maybe not for everybody, but damn I miss the total lack of responsibility lol. Wtf that's a condom? Always thought people really did use balloons.
We were responsible for paying our bills after we had gotten our expense checks from the company (a gov't contactor).
One newly minted engineer used his card in a strip club several nights, running up a HUGE bill that was well beyond his ability to pay in one billing cycle and which, of course, he couldn't file an expense report. Of course, he was seriously past due and AMEX reported him to the company which sponsored the card and was therefore ultimately responsible.
The kid got called to a "come to Jesus" meeting with the head of our division, in which he received a severe warning and was put on a repayment plan.
Bacon!!
The only recent experience was on a jobsite where the supervisor took a co-worker and me to a SC and started a tab on his company card. He would only cover drinks though, which was a rip-off because I don't drink alcohol so all I hit him for was a couple of Red Bulls and bottled waters, the supervisor and my co-worker got pretty wasted. Since we were working on a $400K+ project I am sure he could easily hide/justify what was probably less than $1,000..
On the other side, I couldn’t push that expense through because my firm. Like our competitors, operates under a HR regime in which client development opportunities must be available to all professional staff, including entry level women in their mid-20s. Otherwise, it is discrimination. And any hint that a women should entertain a prospective client at a SC screams “hostile work environment”.
I know many on this site would call this “woke BS”, but it is what it is. My firm has paid out plenty in settlement of discrimination and hostile work environment claims, as have our industry peers. It’s like men who weren’t even born when the Kennedys were shot watched Mad Men and assumed it was a muti-part training video.