Out of all of the jobs to have, it’s probably an accurate guess that few places of employment sum up the phrase “never a dull moment” better than strip clubs. Hospitals maybe, but to a far less entertaining degree. This is why someone posed the question to AskReddit: “Strip-club workers of reddit, what is your best/worst story from the job?” And stories, Redditors did have! We’ve rounded up some of our favorites, starting out with the top-voted answer of why you should never order food at a strip club (with bonus illustration from user Frond_Dishlock). As if that wasn’t already reasonable common sense:
walked into the kitchen and saw one of the girls sitting bottomless on a prep counter
never, ever eat at a strip club
Never forget that you’re just a walking dollar bill:
I was a barback for a male strip club for about a week. Female clientele. The shrieking inside that tiny place was unbelievable. I bet if you did a hearing census on male strippers they’d all be half deaf. Anyway, these ladies would be going crazy all over these guys. The dancer I got along with best was named Black Magic. And his main schtick was literally a voodoo doctor coming up on stage to some dark sounding beats and candlelight. You’re probably imagining what a male stripper named Black Magic might look like, and you’re probably right. Anyway, one day I asked him, “Hey, Black Magic, don’t you ever get like crazy blue balls, all these beautiful women rubbing up on you all the time?” And he replied, in his deep voice, “shouldprobablygo, they may be beautiful, but when I look at them? All I see is money.” G as f*ck.
This gentleman almost definitely has a freezer full of sawed-up strippers in it:
I used to bartend at a club in college. One of the dancers, who was fairly new, was trying a new move on the pole where she hooked her leg around it and stretched her body out so she was parallel to the floor. Well, she fell on her face. There was a lot of blood. As the bouncer and I were helping her off the stage, one of the customers dipped his finger in it and tasted it…
Here’s a boner-killing thought! That attractive young lady dancing for you may or may not be covered in a film of vomit:
We had one dancer giving a guy a private dance, he puked all over the front of her. She went to the dressing room and was giving herself a quick cleanup with some baby wipes and planned on going home to shower, but before she could leave, she found out she still had two more hours of V.I.P dances left. She opted to stay and do the dances instead of showering.
Female strip-club clientele does not screw around over in the UK:
My friend Dilshan is a stripper, he makes about £300 ($500), on a good night. Once he was working a hen night, and the girls wanted him to take his pants off, and blindfolded him. They started to put grapes up his bum, he just dealt with it. After three grapes, his bum could take no more, and he farted them out (and took his blindfold off) two went into the bowl of punch nearby, and one drunk woman poured the punch (and one grape) into a cup, and drank it and ate the grape. He made about £450 that night.
I must have missed the ball-stomping fetish episode (it probably had some kind of message about how mankind is the greatest evil):
The craziest thing I was asked to do was stomp on / stand on some old dude’s balls in my stilettos. Same dude wanted me to stab his balls with my heel while bending over (not looking at him) and feeding another girl. Made lots of money, but it was like being in the Twilight Zone.
Why strippers should never write off the weird dude with the fetish:
So I had a regular customer that instead of getting lap dances would just look for lint between my toes. That’s it. Nothing really sexual (except for his fetish), just would look very carefully for lint in between my toes. If a song was over, and he wasn’t done looking, he’d pay for more dances. He was in the club once a week or so, and he was my regular because he really weirded out some of the other girls, but I got to know him and he was a really nice guy, and he tipped very well.
One day, I put some lint in between my toes for him to find. He came. Hard. He tipped me $100 (which I think was just giving me all the money he had left and had planned to spend that night) and left.
I thought I’d end on a life-affirming note, to show that not all stories from the trenches of strip clubs are horribly gross or depressing!
Best: the night I first met one of my favorite regulars. He was sitting alone at the bar and most of the girls who worked at the club avoided him. Now in this industry that must mean he is either disgusting or doesn’t spend $$$. I sat down next to him and he started to talk about his day, what he does, and why he was here. He worked in construction and just spent time to relax and have a beer. He then turned the conversation and started to ask about me, why I was working there, and somehow our conversation turned into talks about literature, chemistry, and philosophy. Even though I was practically half-naked, he complimented my brain before he looked at my body. He spent over ~$150 on me for just talking to him. I never gave him a lap dance and every time he came in after, he would just chat with me, and give me money for his “therapy” sessions. He was my favorite customer because he treated and respected me as a human. That was my best night because I realized I can still be treated the same as everyone else despite of what I do.