Expense Account

yes, in the 1990s and 2000s for sure you could go to Baltimore and have a meeting with a company in the afternoon and afterwards they would take you to dinner and a club, their treat. If it was a blue collar company the trip might have been to get a sandwich on corned beef alley and then a dayshift visit, or a trip to Chaps Pit Beef and then Gold Club depending on which part of the city you were in.

Back in the early 1990’s I went to the Colorado Club in Houston with a rookie salesman and his boss. We were there 4-5 hours and must have run up a tab of over $1k just on drinks and $20 lap dances. The salesman put it all on his card. The boss then told the salesman to stop in his office the next day so the boss could show him how to handle it on the expense account. In retrospect, I should have eavesdropped on that meeting but I didn’t.

(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!

About 20 years ago I went to the Vegas Rhino with my brother (Ceo) and his work buddy (Cfo). The tab was around $10,000.00. Their tab so I had no concern, but I guess once a company is worth hundreds of millions such expenses could be hidden easily, especially when the people who should care ran them up.

A friend of mine was in charge of deciding which law firm would handle his company’s cases. It was a lot of work. The lawyers took him to a club, told him to pick a girl who they then paid to spend the entire visit with him, plus drinks, food, etc. This was maybe 15-20 years ago.

Before my company ethics watchdog put a stop to it, our contractors, consultants and outside counsel would take us to ballgames and restaurants all the time - it was great - but never a strip club - probably because we have a lot of women working with us.
It was great for team building, but I get why it could be ethically comprising.

I had a hunch you guys would have good stories. Sounds like the 1990s were the peak times for corporate funded clubbing.

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.

While visiting Detroit in 1988 for a conference, I was furthering a new business relationship with an attorney who was the Assistant General Counsel for Ford Motor Company.

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.

In the 1990s my boss took me strip clubbing as a reward for doing a trial he had fucked up and having to look like the stupid asshole, instead of him. No biggie, he paid me and gave me a cash bonus as he was a generous guy, but the strip club trip was unique since he put everything on a card.
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.

I wouldn't say it never happens anymore, but it happens a lot less.

Brigitte Nielsen. Fuck me, she was hot back in the Red Sonja / Beverly Hills Cop days. But I could also see a trophy wife lookalike being a complete nightmare.

Of the last four business-related strip club visits I've been on, one was pay your own way 100% (Bourbon St, no extras). The second was cover and drinks expensed, but buy your own dances (Phoenix, no extras). The last two were both in Houston on the same trip, two different nights. The first, my employer at the time, was not expensed because accounting was led by a lady who was close to the other executives' wives. They weren't chancing that. The second was paid for by a vendor who could and did expense it. Thousands of dollars which probably included extras for those who knew about them. This was pre-TUSCL for me, so I didn't think there was such a thing.

in the 80s and 90s i drove for a major national freight trucking company... lots of pep talks at restaurants... and sometimes the stories were told by the sales dept of entertaining the clients...
jus takin care of buziness...

Why do you think many clubs have different names for their receipts? For this exact reason, so it can be expensed - on the receipt it says “XXXXXX Restaurant” instead of “Bada Bings,” which is the real name of the club for the exact reason of disguising the name of the club.

Back in the 80's, it was standard practice for a major company in Ohio to provide the out of state accounting auditors with free tickets for "entertainment." The tickets would just appear by the coffee machine next to their work area. Just take what you want, no questions asked. You could have a great evening for free. Today, I think taking a free cup of coffee can get you fired.

I'm too young for the golden age of taking clients to strip clubs, but every charge is audited to the penny, often with help from AI.

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?

@skibum609 lawyer stuff here ...

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.

Back in the 90s it was common. It was still not uncommon in 2001, when I received my first corporate Amex card and had shared responsibilities for entertaining clients and prospects. That card took a beating in clubs in DC and NYC - I'll just leave it at that.

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.

BOOK - The old days were very different although in Massachusetts, until recently, strip club money just meant a waste of time lol. I used to cover for my boss who had a habit of just making shit up. He was too Catholic for strip club money but getting to use his house on Marco Island and his Boston Whaler on vacation made up for it.
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.

My first OTC experience happened in Colombia, courtesy of a company with whom I had given a multi million $ contract to. I had flown down to make a plant visit, to check on the status of my order. The company picked me up at the airport, and put me up in the nicest hotel in the city. Later that night, there was a knock at my hotel door, and the most gorgeous Colombiana, dressed to the nines was standing there with a bottle of champagne. She says “are you Mr. XXXXX?” I replied, “yes” (while totally checking her out and taking in her beauty). She says “Mr. YYYYY thought you might like some company tonight” Needless to say, I didn’t turn her away. I never mentioned it to my Colombian business associate, nor did he ever bring it up. But ever since that night in 2011 I’ve had an affinity for sexy Colombian women.

On a slightly related note, the company that I was working for issued corporate AMEX cards which we were supposed to use for corporate travel (through AMEX's travel group), meals and incidental expenses.

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.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/startup-f…

@ATACdawg: I recall a similar event with AmEx and a strip club with $10s of 1,000 charged and it involved a 1990s tech company in NH called Cabletron. I just can't find the story now. Maybe someone here remembers.

I still use my card on the road when I hit the clubs. The charge on my card always reads like it’s coming from some sort of “entertainment” company, and since I’m in show business it appears as if I’m doing business for a legitimate write off. The only problem is I need to be careful since my wife does our books much of the time, but since our kids are so busy with activities that has been outsourced to others so she can attend to family affairs. Word to the wise, ask the server how the charge will read on your card. If it says “Tootsies” or “Desires” then pay in cash to avoid raising any suspicions, but most (or all) have a separate business llc name they run payments under. Easy peasy, until Uncle Sam inquires. Just make sure you don’t overdo it.

Bacon!!

i was in the wrong business. shudda been in sales. or been a purchasing agent.

I was in sales in the '80s and frequently traveled with the owners son. He liked to go to the clubs so he would take engineers and other key people from large companies out for entertainment. He would always say "I hate these places, I hardly ever go here, but they wanted to". We would walk in and several dancers would call him by his name and a few even knew his AE number by heart. Ah, but those days are pretty much gone.
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..

Professionally, I exist in a pincer movement of social and economic forces that preclude this. One the one hand, the prospects that can potentially steer business my way are all functionaries in publicly traded and/or highly regulated businesses. Putting aside that around half are women, all operate under published Codes of Conduct that broadly prohibit accepting gratuities. That won’t stop them from accepting discrete offers of ballgame tix (especially for the Best Team in Baseball ™) or a lavish “business” meal at a posh steakhouse, but they would be scared shitless that a co-worker would find out they got comped for a trip to the SC.

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.