So I'm scheduled to work tomorrow, but I'm thinking of changing clubs. The thing is, I hate that my money is going to the house; I hate it. I'm working my butt off just pay some fat greasy manager and the house mom. Like what the fuck does she do? Give the girls Motrin. Oh great, I can get some at the drugstore. I mean, the DJ, I understand. He plays the songs, but $150 to the house seems ridiculous to me. And I get that the rationale is that you're supposed to make more money in Times Square, but part of it is also the principle behind it. It's like if you were working retail, and the first four hours of your time you didn't get paid. That's really how I feel like, because my first TEN lapdances are going to cover costs.
The club I danced at in NOLA never charged house fees as long as you put yourself on schedule once a week. What this means is that you told the club you were gonna show up one day a week from 7 pm to 2am. You could stay longer, but you HAD to put in your seven hours and not be late. If you stuck to this, then the rest of the week you didn't pay rent. And we didn't have a house mom, so the only tipout you had to give was $15 to the DJ, and he didn't even count it. If it was a slow night, he'd be very understanding and let you make it up to him. And if you got a champagne room, then tipping the host was OPTIONAL. A lot of the girls didn't even tip hospitality. At my club in NYC, you have to tip the host, even if you do a 15 min. room. I mean, I feel like I'm being sucked dry by bloodthirsty piranahs.
So anyways I was talking to this one girl at work. Gorgeous, blonde hair blue eyed Russian. She was hired the same as me and is having the same problem. She can't make money because of tip-out, but she mentioned she used to work at this place in Queens, I think, where tip-out was only $50 and she could walk with $500.
So I went home and researched and there's a bar in Brooklyn called Pumps. It's actually a divey biker bar; apparently motorcycles hang from the ceiling. This actually seems cool to me. As clean cut as I seem (and I actually am pretty clean but) I love dive bars and wouldn't mind at all working in a biker bar. In my experience, people at dive bars are super friendly. So I called there and they don't have any house fees, which is awesome AND you don't have to wear the stupid long gowns that make you look like a slutty prom queen. So basically I can wear whatever I want and no house fees. This means I get to keep all my money. Awesome! And this is funny: apparently they have just one "champagne room" that says you can buy your lady her favorite bottle of champagne for $20. Hahahaha TWENTY BUCKS. Must be some pretty awful champagne. But anyway, I digress. It seems like a pretty chill place and I bet the money's not bad.
See, before I started waitressing in New Orleans, I used to waitress at this really divey titty bar/restaurant in Virginia. I made good money there, AND it was easy. Like I didn't have to hustle and I didn't get pressure from the managers to "upsell" or anything. Guys would just tip me lots of money, and I was just a lowly waitress. My first night working I made around $200 without a clue as to what I was doing.
Then when I started working in New Orleans, I worked for a big corporate club with big corporate rules. It took about a month for me to make any sort of money, and I had to hustle my ass off to make it. Plus, there was always a lot of pressure from management to upsell and sell bottles, etc.
Basically my point is that I don't care how classy a club is or how fancy the "gowns" have to be, if they're hell-bent on sucking my money out of me, I might as work at the unclassy biker bar, ya know?
I might try it tomorrow and see how it goes.