<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" What&amp;#039;s your typical day on the job? Well I go in, in the early evening, and I&amp;#039;m there until the early morning the next day. This sounds kind of cheesy, but I&amp;#039;m kind of like a Jack of all trades. Sometimes I&amp;#039;m a cheerleader, sometimes I&amp;#039;m a psychologist, a comedian, maybe a motivational speaker at times. I&amp;#039;m there to help the girls out. They come up and get ready. I have to try and make sure that what they&amp;#039;re wearing fits our dress code. You never really know what you&amp;#039;re going to get because different girls come in on different nights, so you never really know what the night will bring. What is the dress code?  We basically ask entertainers to wear a dress \u2014 it can be a short dress or a long dress \u2014 but we prefer a one-piece dress. We try to avoid bikinis, lingerie, or stripper outfits. We want to think of girls as entertainers. We&amp;#039;re upscale. Do you get new girls a lot? Yeah. Even just last night three girls came and auditioned and all three got hired. Two of them actually started last night and the other one is going to come in tonight. About how many girls are you managing at any one time?  Well it really depends on the night. I think our highest girl count is before Christmas, that&amp;#039;s usually when it&amp;#039;s the busiest. I&amp;#039;d say our highest is like 110? In one night?  Yeah, but that is at Christmas time though. At Christmas time we tend to get very busy. But last night, I had almost 75 girls. Once you get in, what are your duties?  It kind of depends on the night. For the most part, the girls come in, clock in (with a fingerprint so there is no faking who&amp;#039;s here), they start getting ready. We have the female entertainers ready to go at 6. I have a bunch of toiletries and things there in case they need a tampon, they need some snacks, or crackers. Sometimes somebody might be having a bad day so I&amp;#039;m pretty good at giving positive affirmation I guess. I just try to cheer the girls up, if there&amp;#039;s a problem at home or whatever. You know, boyfriend problems, or one of the girls was kind of stressed out for school. So we might talk about that or I might try to cheer them up and make them laugh and get them ready to go back out on the floor again. So you&amp;#039;re pretty close to everyone you work with? With some of the girls I am very, very close. But sometimes it gets so busy I can&amp;#039;t totally connect with everybody. But I try to be pleasant and thankful that they&amp;#039;re there, because we don&amp;#039;t have a job if they&amp;#039;re not there. Sometimes I miss out on stuff. Like our hair stylist might be like, &amp;quot;Hey! So-and-so got accepted!&amp;quot; or whatever and I try to catch up that way. We always try to look out for each other. How did you become a house mom?  Years ago I came out here to go to college, to go to NYU, and then I needed a job, and my friend got me a job as a cigarette girl, back in the day when you could smoke in [strip] clubs. [I&amp;#039;d pass out] cigars, cigarettes. I did a variety of jobs and at one point I was a bathroom attendant \u2014 female, not the men&amp;#039;s bathroom. I think the current house mom at that time needed a fill-in house mom. So I just started doing that. What did you like about the job when you first started?  It was a world I didn&amp;#039;t really know. When I was first a cigarette girl working on the floor, that&amp;#039;s one kind of scene. And then the dressing room is it&amp;#039;s own special thing [laughs.] Because of the nudity?  Honestly, it&amp;#039;s the conversations. We have a lot of big characters. If there was ever a way to make this dressing room a reality show, we would be such a hit. The commentary is hilarious. What&amp;#039;s your least favorite part?  It can be very stressful. You have a lot of girls and a lot of things going on. Dealing with people who are a little tipsy can be difficult. Guests or entertainers?  Oh, entertainers. I don&amp;#039;t really deal with customers at all. It doesn&amp;#039;t happen a lot, but you know. When you&amp;#039;re trying to ask somebody, &amp;quot;Where do you live, what&amp;#039;s your address, do you have your keys? Please eat some crackers.&amp;quot; Do you ever have to fire entertainers?  I have, yeah, but it wouldn&amp;#039;t come from me, it would come from our management. I mean, I would probably be the one delivering the news. What kind of things are fireable offenses?  If someone has an issue of getting repeatedly wasted. Just yesterday, one of our girls is under 21, and I was told that she was sneaking drinks. So our manager had me text her right away and say, &amp;quot;Your contract has expired.&amp;quot; Anything that is outrageous and unacceptable behavior. Can you recognize the difficult customers?  Sometimes women come to the strip club and they think it&amp;#039;s OK to touch the girls because they&amp;#039;re a woman. We had a party the other day and there was a female customer who was getting a little too rough with the girls. It was crowded so security didn&amp;#039;t really see it, so I had to call them in and be like, &amp;quot;Listen, you need to watch this lady because she grabbed this girl and she tried to bite her nipple.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s surprising that women are often the rougher ones.  Yeah it&amp;#039;s funny. I think some women are quiet and timid, but some of them are just like, &amp;quot;Yee-haw!&amp;quot; They go nuts. Are there tricks of the trade that you share with new girls?  Don&amp;#039;t drink because you&amp;#039;re bored, because you might have one too many and then when it&amp;#039;s time to make money, you&amp;#039;re not on top of your game. The main one would be, if you are sitting with a customer for like 10 minutes, so like three songs, and if in that 10 minutes he hasn&amp;#039;t bought you a drink, or gotten a dance from you, he&amp;#039;s probably not interested in you and is too nice to say so. So then just move on to someone else?  Just move on. Because you might be a brunette and he likes blondes. You&amp;#039;re a black girl and he likes Asian chicks. It&amp;#039;s funny because sometimes the customer, they don&amp;#039;t want to hurt a girl&amp;#039;s feelings, but it&amp;#039;s like, just tell them. You can say it in a nice way, like, &amp;quot;Listen honey I hope you have a great time and make some money\u2026&amp;quot; Girls have said to me, &amp;quot;He didn&amp;#039;t like me, but he was nice about it and he was cool.&amp;quot; So basically the same as how you would break up with someone after a couple dates. Yes! He should be upfront about it and nice about it. But if they like blondes and you&amp;#039;re a brunette, well you&amp;#039;re out of luck. Big boobs? Little boobs? You can&amp;#039;t really legislate that. Did you ever dance yourself?  I never did \u2014 it&amp;#039;s not judgment. For about a week I thought, &amp;quot;Well maybe I could do this.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m just kind of lazy. If I&amp;#039;ve got a manicure, I don&amp;#039;t have a pedicure. And if I&amp;#039;ve got a mani/pedi, I&amp;#039;m probably not waxed. Look like a million bucks and maybe you&amp;#039;ll make a million bucks. I still can&amp;#039;t really get it together like that. Are the girls responsible for having all of that done on their own time?  Some girls will come in done, or pretty much finished, and then they&amp;#039;ll put on a little makeup there. But like I said, we have hairstylists and makeup artists and a lot of girls will use them and pay for their services. What are the most common mishaps that can happen when a dancer is entertaining?  A big fear is if you&amp;#039;re on stage and you have your period and your tampon string is showing. It happens. Or last night, one of the girl&amp;#039;s ex-boyfriend&amp;#039;s friends came in and she was just mortified. What do you do in that situation?  Well it kind of depends. She came back and hung out in the dressing room for a while. After awhile she said she didn&amp;#039;t care. But for other girls, I might have them give me a description and I will look and see if they&amp;#039;re still there. The most common thing though is that we just let them go home. For a good number of girls, their family doesn&amp;#039;t know what they&amp;#039;re doing. So if a family member comes in, you let them go?  Yeah. One of the girls, her uncle walked in. She was like, &amp;quot;Listen. I won&amp;#039;t tell on you if you don&amp;#039;t tell on me.&amp;quot; Would you say most of the girls you work with have other jobs as well?  Some do, definitely. One of the girls, she is a clothing designer. Some girls are in school. Some girls are doing real estate. One girl left because she started bartending and she just came back. She&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Mom, the money just isn&amp;#039;t as good.&amp;quot; Do you think the girls have fun doing it?  I think there can be a lot of fun times, for sure. One girl put it to me this way \u2014 and I thought this was really smart \u2014 she said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s fast money, but it&amp;#039;s not always easy money.&amp;quot; Sometimes guys are just like, &amp;quot;Your tits aren&amp;#039;t big enough.&amp;quot; And that gets you, you know? But there can be great fun. Like last night some big football player came in, a retired guy, I don&amp;#039;t really follow football, but girls were going nuts. I was like, &amp;#039;&amp;quot;Ok here&amp;#039;s some paper, get an autograph.&amp;quot; You mentioned you&amp;#039;re sort of like a therapist for the girls. Has there ever been a situation you haven&amp;#039;t felt equipped to deal with? We have a lot of entertainers from around the world, so some girls are really going through some stuff. One of the dancers a couple years ago, her husband died in a horrible accident at work. English was not her first language and it wasn&amp;#039;t all that great either, to be honest with you. I just tried to listen as best I could and then I went online and found a therapist that could speak Spanish. So you really go out of your way to help someone if you don&amp;#039;t feel like you can?  I mean, I just Googled. But yeah, I really felt for her. Another entertainer was here from Brazil, and she just had a lot of stuff going on with her green card and her relationship and all of that. She was still pretty new here and she didn&amp;#039;t know a lot of people. So I just Googled a Portuguese-speaking therapist and I printed up some names for her. I&amp;#039;m not sure if she went, this was like a year or so ago, and she is still like, &amp;quot;That was the nicest thing.&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m a cancer, so we&amp;#039;re always very motherly, whether people want it or not. How do the auditions work?  They come and see me and I ask them a couple questions and they get dressed. While she&amp;#039;s getting dressed I&amp;#039;m looking to see how she behaves. Is she nice in the dressing room? Or, is she being a jerk, being a diva. When she&amp;#039;s ready I just ask her how old she is, where she&amp;#039;s danced at, how long she&amp;#039;s been doing it, etc. Then we go out to do the audition and I repeat all of that to the manager. They have to move well. They don&amp;#039;t have to do pole tricks or anything like that. We love it if they do, but during the audition we don&amp;#039;t really ask for that. We don&amp;#039;t want drama, but we also don&amp;#039;t want deadwood. You can&amp;#039;t just stand there and look like a zombie and dance. It&amp;#039;s his call who he choses to hire, but he asks my opinion. If somebody was just rude and nasty, I&amp;#039;m 100 percent confident that even if she was gorgeous I could tell the manager that and he&amp;#039;d be like, &amp;quot;See ya.&amp;quot; Do you ever have to stand up for the girls with your own management?  Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the buffer between what the club wants and what the girls want. I&amp;#039;ve stood up and been like, &amp;quot;You need to give this girl a break. She had this going on at home, let&amp;#039;s just give her a warning.&amp;quot; Over the holidays we were open and we tried to give girls incentives for working on the holidays, so they offered like two free house fees. I was like, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s Christmas Eve. Can we give them three?&amp;quot; They totally did. Is there house mom gossip? Honestly sometimes I think house moms are great and sometimes you hear horror stories about not-nice house moms. Another club I worked at the house mom was kind of like, she wanted to be one of the boys and she was always kind of looking down on the dancers. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Honey, we don&amp;#039;t have a job unless these girls come in here, so be respectful. The customers are not walking through the door to see the house moms.&amp;quot; Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5553/strip-club-house-mom/?src=rss>