why strippers can be bad at business.

14 comments

• BobbyI

  •

  16 years ago

  *yawn* Is there a point to this story?
• DandyDan

  •

  16 years ago

  I have found that that is the dark side to every phone number exchange with strippers. And they seem to think they need you. For every customer who complains about dancers associating only with their regulars, there are dancers who only want to associate with their regulars. It's like they forgot why their regulars are their regulars in the first place. I've had girls who want me to visit them during the middle of the week despite the fact I tell them I can only go on weekends, thanks to my job. Not to be to delicate about it, but if I lost my job, they'd lose my business.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  Sounds like she is bad at business. Of course, I always remember the famous Nazi chef of New York. Meaning: 1. There are niches that don't see apparent. 2. Sometimes the best business strategy although counter-intuitive is one that lets you be you! Anyway, I like to give a couple of pieces of unsolicited advice: A. As you told me about my dancer buddy, she's not worth it. B. Try not to let your distaste for this pest/primma donna make you a lesser person e.g. less fun loving, less helping, less concerned, etc. Do I take my own advice? LOL! :) Experience is imo a cruel teacher that teachers cruel lessons some of which are almost impossible delearn. :( For example, I helped a young pregnant dancer just a little and she seemed to appreciate the help and concern. What if instead she was just a fraud and threw it into my face? In the future, unwittingly or wittingly I might be less helpful. As far as society as a whole, my learned attitude is about as negative as can be. When the children next door were seeking a donation for their public school, my reaction was disgust and anger. The kids were shocked because I'm fairly generous with them, so why not be generous with their public school? The answer is reinforced negative experience. Help stop crime? LOL! :) I'd be afraid to even help in an Amber alert. There was a local case where a father "kidnapped" his daughter to save her from real abuse at the hands of a violent and deranged mom. Thanks to people who didn't know the facts--just trying to do right by alerting authorities to a missing child--he got years in prison. Those who believe in the courts need it shoved up their ass. I could see a so called missing child and sorry, but I have to practically be guaranteed it was a "real" abduction. Even then it is probably better to let God worry about it down the line.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  "Bad Business" or stupid business doesn't just extend to strippers. A real estate investor, a real slick sharpie purchased my neighbor's home. I'd never met the man. On his very first meeting with me he "laid down the law." First, he claimed that I owed him damages because I was using his property. Second, he told me he was going to reclaim his property by moving the fence. He was sooooo generous that he offered me a payment plan---piece of crooked shit. I told him, Yes, he needs to be paying *me* damages because his fence is on *my* property and he is using *my* property. And, we need to move the fence back so his stinking property is much smaller than it was to begin with! Sack o shit starts yapping there is a survey. :) I say yes bright eyes there are in fact 2 surveys---and your stinking fence is on *my* property. He says expect a lawsuit or pay now! I laugh and say please sue. I have absolutely no faith in the stinking filthy court system, but please do sue. He says you haven't heard the last of me. I say expect years of litigation and expect your attorney fees to be thru the roof! I see the asshole a few months later and ask him when he plans on moving his stinking fence and paying me my damages. He says he needs to look at the surveys and talk with his attorney. I say will it help speed things along if I sue you? He says there is no reason to be talking about suing and he was just joking with me. Yeah, right piece of shit. I say you know in this corrupt court system you could very well win. Why don't we play the stupid game you were so eager to play? He says look it was just a bad joke. He says he didn't realize how I had such harsh feelings about the court system. You don't owe me any damages and you're not on my property. Whatever, dirt bag. :( The dirt bag further had the nerve to lie to me about the "improvements" he was going to make to the property. I asked him about that and he says he doesn't have to tell me anything. I say bright eyes you failed to get any permits for all the shit you are doing. Suddenly the asshole gets all silent, till a bright idea pops in his pea brain. He starts whimpering that he is having money trouble and he was in a terrible divorce and. I cut him short and say look save the lies, I don't plan on turning you in but keep up your nastiness and we will be spending years in court. He says that isn't necessary and we can just stay out of each other hairs. I say I don't trust you a bit, but I hope you serious about just keeping a lid on the situation . . . does threatening your neighbors usually work? I say don't answer that let just agree to stay away from each other, deal? He says deal.
• arbeeguy

  •

  16 years ago

  Jablake: off message again. (i doubt that many of us really care about your problems with your neighbor or the courts. Hell we all have problems with SOMEBODY.) Let's hear more about poor STRIPPER business behavior. There is plenty of it out there. Maybe we could even hear a story or two about an astute stripclubber that helped a stripper IMPROVE HER BUSINESS. Strippers that spend w-a-a-a-y too much time (1) with regulars or (2) in the dressing room -- are obviously NOT running their BUSINESS properly. Likewise strippers that promise a customer they "will be back in five minutes" and then never show up. (It is a business, not a job. The waitresses and bouncers and janitors have JOBS.) The strippers need to be running little tiny businesses and need to understand the basics of Business 101. Of course if they are there just to do drugs or hang out with friends, that's another matter entirely. I'm not talking about them gals.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  NO arbeeguy, That is very important if you think about for only a moment. Continually, I hear complaints about strippers. They don't understand business, all they care about is money, blah, blah, blah. Well, I've got news for the complainers. Even "sharp" business people in "legit" businesses do things that don't make any sense business wise or at least at first glance it doesn't make any sense. MY PROBLEM with the neighbor speaks volumes to this issue. Here he starts a fight when first meeting me. Some would say that is just good business to extort some cash if I fall for his BS. After making an enemy he then proceeds to make "improvements" to the property without the permits? Without the licensed contractors? I don't know where you live, but where I live you are opening yourself up to a world of financial hurt playing that game. The fines can be mind blowing and who knows the work may all have to be undone and then redone. Let me get just a tad deeper into this so your eyes might open just a little. A woman owns a popular restaurant nearby and it was always busy and she was just a sharp good business lady. And, she reaped the rewards, which was wonderful. Suddenly the business is closed. :( I'm thinking divorce or death or illness or lawsuit or etc. A little over 3 years go by and I see stop and go "improvements." I think oh, a new owner. I hope the food is half as good as the former owner and I'm EAGER to try it out. Finally, it appears to open!!! :) I'm in there like a shot!!! Who is it? The old business lady and she remember me!!! :) I couldn't believe she had a brain that could remember me, just one of hundreds and hundreds of customers, but hey she is a sharp lady. Of course, you know why it took her a little over 3 years to reopen? You know. :) The stinking government. She told me she never would have tried to improve the restaurant if she knew the corruption was so rampant. I asked why in the hell didn't you just make the payoffs as you are supposed to? She starts whimpering that she was afraid. Gee, you're supposed to be afraid its the government! Then she says she would have liked to see me make the pay offs. :) I told her that I do and obeying the filth of law has nothing to do with needing to payoff or not payoff. It is required. It doesn't always work, but it is always required i.e. 99.99999% on a big or medium project and even sometimes on itty itty itty bitty ones! You're probably not following along, which is fine. The point is the nasty neighbor investor could easily be put through the same living hell as the nice restaurant lady. A complaining neighbor? Gets even better as far as the government going after the violator. If I complained, then there is NO telling how many years the "smart" businessman will be playing with the government. He rolled the dice and won. But that gamble, imo, makes stripper business decisions look brilliant. Not only that the government over here loves to remind people it can go back "countless" years for a past violation. Is that true? I think it can do whatever the hell it so pleases. :)
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  When the local Burger King did its "little" improvement i.e. knocked down the old building and put up a brand new building, guess how long it took? :) Did it take over 3 years? Did it take 2 years? Did it take 1 year? Six months? :) Try 1 month. Now with Tootsies it was a long brutal process. I was talking with one of the contractors (long time customer of The Trap) and asked why the hell Tootsies wasn't making the payoffs? They couldn't be that stupid to just let the project sit for years playing stupid games. The contractor laughed and said from what he could see the people running the project for Tootsies were not only experienced, but very SHARP. He says these aren't dummies and they don't have a shortage of funds. And, they're more than aware that payoffs are required and having been making OVERSIZED payoffs. I'm shaking my heading. Yes, making the payoffs doesn't mean the inspectors will obey the law-------however, it is a damn good start in the right direction. So this is sorta neat. Burger King gets the approvals practically overnight and Tootsies gets put thru the meat grinder. The little business lady went thru more than a meat grinder----more like living hell. I think instead of a stripper being "bad at business" in the OP message it might be just a question doing whatever and seeing if the customer will obey. :) Probably too often the customer will obey the stripper because it is the lesser of evils. And, think how much more valuable an obedient customer may be to a stripper? And, the stripper may have been been exposed to "advanced" business practices in the real world. You know like the nasty investor neighbor. The corrupt courts. The endless corruption with just attempting to open a new business. When the stripper sees all of this why shouldn't she attempt to emulate it? Rip offs? Just being "good at business" like the greater community. Yes, the poor customer may be see it as "bad at business," but that don't make it so. :) Why should I treat customers right? I can be like other professionals and make even more money. So, I lose some repeat business. You think a crooked lawyer worries about that? You think the crooked real estate investor worries about that? Strippers just being Romans in Rome. :) Strippers are not an island unto themselves and the "side" issues I bring may help to understand some stripper thinking or reveal stripper thinking is just normal "screw whoever" thinking that become normal in the larger community. I think generally the strippers are too nice and too honest----even when their crooks and do endless lying. :) When in Rome do as the Romans . . .
• Book Guy

  •

  16 years ago

  Jablake's point is well taken. The attitude of the idiot real-estate dude, in that story about his confrontation with Jablake, is rather parallel to the dumb attitude of some strippers. I think it comes from a lifetime of experience with bullies. They basically don't understand negotiating, because the only people they've ever interacted with, are people who take an extreme line at first and then either get beaten up in order that some other line win; or do the beating up in order that their line win. That's not negotiation, that's war. The diplomacy was abandoned at the outset. Quebec kind of understands how to win at this game. They continually get more and more concessions from Anglophone Canada, by basically entering into "negotiations" from the point of view of making the most extreme demand possible. But they make it POLITELY and IN THE SUPPOSED SPIRIT OF DIPLOMACY. Rather than saying, right at the outset, "I'll sue, you motherfucker," they say, "You have to give us certain things, but we are willing to offer you wine and cheese while you sign the papers." Then, of course, Toronto and Ottawa complain, and Quebec has to back down from their ridiculous demands, back to something rather moderate. And tah-dah they get what they wanted in the first place, by having made a more extreme demand in the full awareness that they'd have to back down from it eventually to something less extreme and more do-able. Well, drunks and wife-beaters ain't Quebec. They don't "get" the idea, that you not just (A.) make demands as a zealous advocate for your own cause but also (B.) make clear that the interaction is about both sides looking for a win-win situation. Quebec's negotiators do a brilliant job of convincing the other side that there's something in it for them (whether or not that perception is TRUE, is utterly beside the point; the Anglophones THINK it's true, by the time the Quebeckers are done with them). The real estate agent and the bad-at-business stripper are trying to do the same thing. But failing. I'm often surprised at how bad strippers are at negotiating. They don't change prices, they won't offer more services, they can't figure out how to mathematically coordinate package deals ("one dance for $30, or three for $100" hunh?). So what? So they're bad at business. They're bad at career-choosing as well. They could be working equivalently hard for more money and more perks in a whole set of un-trained professions, from waitress and hostess and medical secretary and carpet cleaner right on downward to street-corner drug dealer or blowjob merchant. But they don't get to wear frilly outfits and get free drinks ... Bad at one business choice, bad at several.
• jablake

  •

  16 years ago

  I warned my next neighbors about this scam by the real estate investor. His fence was also encroaching on their property; again making his puny lot larger than it should have been. Neither the husband or wife would be capable of battling him in English so I asked if they had an attorney that would help them. Fortunately, they had an attorney who had treated them right in the past and they had a couple of his business cards. I warned them that even if the lawyer was a good man, the courts were nasty and corrupt almost always. And, even a simple case could generate HUGE attorney fees with years of litigation and perhaps they might want to give away more of their property and settle. They asked me where the property line should be----and they were just shaking their heads in disbelief when I showed them. I said it is easy to verify and the previous owner to the real estate investor was very aggressive in making a land grab; their lot was so puny they felt they had the right to take from the neighboring lots. Because of the sad shape of the courts it just wasn't worth a court fight. Sure enough dirtbag real estate investor attempts the same scam with them. Yapping that they owe him damages and that they are using his property. They did what I said which was refuse to argue. Just give him their attorney's business card and tell him lawsuits between neighbors are GOOD. Just keep repeating yourself that he should call the attorney and lawsuits between neighbors are GOOD. You can't offend the dirtbag so don't worry about his feelings. Just be very aware regardless of how strong a case your attorney says you have, you can lose BIG! I *assume* this dirtbag real estate investor's business tactics must have yielded some benefit from frightened property owners in the past. The smart ones knowing the courts are corruption city may have just settled. Heck, I'm sorta surprised the dirtbage didn't at least file suit and serve papers----or maybe he realized that the neighbors were aware of his scam and primed to fight a long costly battle. And, strippers are bad? LOL! Sorry, even the very worst strippers that I've met are Angels compared to these "advanced" business approaches. You get slapped with enough of this disgusting filth and if you have any fighting spirit at all you utilize the old fighting fire with fire morality e.g. the dancer fresh out prison with a chip on her shoulder.
• ozymandias

  •

  16 years ago

  Actually the smartest play a stripper can make is no interactions with customers beyond just dancing for them - no OTC, so VIP hijinks, just do your dances and move on. That, and basic money management. The smartest (businesswise) stripper I've ever known practiced the following: - as above, no interactions with dancers beyond "the job" - she didn't "hang out" with friends, other dancers, etc... she worked. - she actually made an effort to dance, worked out a routine, wore costumes that got her noticed on stage, worked on her stage presence. That is, she was actually a good performer. - she wasn't shy about closing, ie. asking for the dance. She wasn't pushy, but she did go for the sale. - she kept a ledger of her daily income, tracked her expenses, and paid taxes on all her earnings. She operated as a business, or at least as a professional independent contractor. - she didn't socialize with other dancers or other "nightlife" people outside the club. - she had very specific goals, like "save such and such to open a tax managed fund" and "save this much for the down payment on the house". She saved at least half her money, and invested it (maxed out Roth IRA, etc) She was in school, and didn't have a boyfriend (no time, and I don't think she wanted a boyfriend who would be willing to date a dancer, anyway). I have rarely met a more laser-focused *person*, much less a dancer. If she'd been in my field I would have hired her in a heartbeat - dream employee. The key to being a smart *anything* is goals, which she had in spades. Sadly, very, very few dancers have concrete goals... so they don't seem smart or focused. O.
• BobbyI

  •

  16 years ago

  ozy: Seems like a similar MO to a highly successful stripper at my favorite club. Personally I find such types boring as hell, and am not sure exactly how they are able to rake in the money they do, but good for them if that actually works.
• CarolinaWanderer

  •

  16 years ago

  How can Bobbyl claim a favorite club when he has never posted a review. I bet he is an underage lurker!
• FONDL

  •

  16 years ago

  Ozy, I don't think there is one "best" strategy. It depends on the girl and where she works. I've seen very different strategies work really well for different girls. I also think different girls have different objectives, very few are out to maximize their income, just like very few of us are.
• Book Guy

  •

  16 years ago

  Agreed on the goals-making, as an excellent method of being "good" at anything. Great point! I'd say another thing that the model stripper did, as listed, which is a tactic that really has surprisingly beneficial impact: keeping a ledger. We see it in dieting, in money saving, even in long-term educational planning. Write it down; figure out how to chart it; and you'll be more likely to succeed at it. Even just keeping a "food diary" increases your chances of losing weight by about four-fold, on average (so a recent story says). Here's another comment I have about this whole "bad at business" phenomenon. There are just too many times, in modern life, when being (A.) "good at business" means being (B.) a royal cheating lying asshole. I don't like this development. Sure, it's all very well and good that "every man for himself" is the essential premise behind business. But that doesn't build a good society. Not a cohesive one -- everyone's trying to out-screw one another -- and not a coherent national culture. America lately is not a cooperative enterprise any more, and this is manifested quite clearly in our notion of the "free market" in the sense of the "everyone screws everyone else market." Business doesn't have to be this way. We could all be looking for win-win situations. Best price for the car; and best car for the price. But I just don't see that happening very often. I never really "bought" the notion, that the free market contributes to everyone's betterment "automatically" back when they tried to force-feed that notion to us in junior-high free-enterprise and civics classes. I just see right straight through the assumptions. There are so many. And this is just one more ...