Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The porn store owner opens a strip club…


The wonderful thing about the sex industry is that, providing you’re not a drug addict or an idiot, it’s a pretty easy area to make money in. The markup on porn is insane (the numbers I’ve seen suggest anywhere between 100% and 1,000% depending on the product) and if you’re able to move into strip clubs, you may as well add another zero to the end of your earnings for the year. Based on my diligent internet research, a well-run club can earn between one and four million dollars a year, which is almost enough to make it worth dealing with strippers as employees. 

Almost.

The store I work at is one in a chain of four spaced out in small towns in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The owner earns a lot of money in these stores and decided that his next big investment project was to construct a strip club outside of Saint Cloud. This was actually his third attempt at building a strip club. Twice before, small-town city councils had gotten wind of his plans to turn his newly constructed pole barns on the edge of town into dens of filth and debauchery, and quickly passed ordinances that outlawed strip clubs in their city. Either Saint Cloud was too big to notice or simply didn’t care, because his first strip club just opened there last month.

I had expected someone who owned multiple porn stores to be savvier about strip clubs, but I've learned a lot about strip club management and operation through his mistakes. First, he didn’t understand that most clubs charge dancers a fee to perform at their club for the evening and then allow the dancers to keep what they get from customers. His original idea was to offer dancers a 50-50 split of their earnings and soon found that no one wanted to strip at his club. Not only are the logistics of this plan insane (can you imagine trying to settle up with a dancer at the end of the night?), he shouldn’t have let his ego get in the way of researching industry trends. He finally agreed to charging dancers a standard fee for performing at his club for the evening.

Secondly, he wanted to sell booze. Unless you’re in Vegas or Florida, most laws completely forbid the consumption of alcohol in the same location as a strip club. The only reason St. Paul’s Lamplighter club allows alcohol is because they’re technically at two different addresses and there’s a sheet of glass between the drinkers and nude dancers. I understand that the owner is a flag-waving, give-me-all-my-rights capitalist, but even he should have known this plan was going to fail. So now they’re a juice bar strip club.

Lastly, he has no idea how to control employees, let alone strippers. At a porn store, you can pretty much bully your employees into doing whatever you want. Most of them are students and don’t care enough to do anything other than quit if they get pissed and there’s a steady stream of people who apply to be glorified cashiers. The worst thing you have to worry about at a porn store is employee theft (and I’ve already written about the extensive efforts he’s employed toprevent that from happening.) But employing strippers opens up a whole new level of problems like prostitution, drug rings and sexual harassment. Within days of opening, half the strippers were fired for either getting caught snorting coke or giving blowjobs in the private dance rooms.

Worst of all, at least for me, is that he’s talked one of the strippers into coming down and covering open shifts at our Mankato store.

Stephanie is a stripper through and through. She thinks she can talk her way out of anything with an arm rub, soft voice and bedroom eyes. This technique works great in a strip club, but it’s a huge pain in the ass when this person is your coworker. She agrees to everything when it’s discussed, but as soon as it’s time to sweep the floor or take the garbage out to the dumpster, she suddenly lays down behind the counter, rubs her feet and complains about how much her legs hurt from working at the club the previous night.

Observing her is like watching a drug dealer. If she works int he store the day after dancing, she appears with a new outfit, bags of stuff from the mall, a new cell phone and a ton of newly purchased crap she doesn’t need. She brought in a huge box full of candy (which put Bill in her back pocket) and has started getting really friendly with one of the morning clerks. I’ve told him to be careful with her since he’s such a nice guy, but now that she’s started spending the night at his place, I’m just waiting for the impending disaster. I just hope he doesn’t get her pregnant.

I know what’s going to happen. She’ll call in one too many times (you can only use the, “I’m too tired from working at the club,” excuse so many times) and the owner will cut her lose. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just take note of her stripping stories and post anything worth mentioning here.

If you want to go see the club, it’s just north of Saint Cloud near the intersection of 45 and 35. I have no idea how long it will remain in existence, but I’m sure it will make the owner a bundle of cash.

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