Two casualties of the recession: Bankers and Strippers

No man is an island, we are all connected. Sometimes the connections are surprising. As a small example, the dramatic changes in The City of London’s banking community have had an impact on café’s, restaurants, taxi drivers and strippers. Strippers? Yes, esteemed blog followers. The unseen world of the Gentleman’s Club appears to be caught up in the fallout from the disasters of the finance business.

My suspicion is that not many of the shy and retiring readers of HR Case Studies will be familiar with the life of a stripper, so allow your intrepid editor (accompanied by the glamourous Annie*) to enlighten you.

From an HR point of view the first point to note is that the women who work in these clubs are self-employed and not employees. They pay the club a fee ranging from £40 to £100 each night to work so everyone arrives needing to work. At £20 a dance the first dances count for nothing in Annie’s mind. As a motivator to work it’s fairly direct. Pay-to-work also applies to Hairdressers and Day Traders. It’s strange what connects people.

The returns on this investment can be considerable. Even though there are fewer bankers with less cash Annie’s take home pay can range from nothing to £200 on a bad night to as much as £1000 on a "lucky" night. She works two or three nights a week on a flexitime arrangement that would be the envy of many firms.

Wondering what sort of person takes their clothes off for the pleasure of others (oh, and not forgetting the receipt of a not insubstantial sum of money)?

Oh they're all sorts. Some really nice girls and some that I don't like at all. OK, they're prettier than average, but apart from that you have those who left school at 16 and some with university degrees. Some are single mums and some are married. Some are paying for their studies and some are just doing a job. There isn't really a typical dancer.

And how easy is it to make a success in the twilight world?

Let's just say the good girls make good money, and the bad girls don’t last. It can be tough for some if they have the wrong attitude. It also depends on why a girl is working. Some of them are the main earners in the house if their partner is unemployed; a fair number are single mums, and then there are those like me who have other jobs which help to make life a bit more predictable. Motivation is different from girl to girl.

And has there been a noticeable effect caused by the recession?

As the bankers and traders have had a bad time, we've had a bad time too. Not only do we have fewer big money evenings, but sometimes we can have a lot of guys in the club, but not many of them actually spending. They drink, get a bit cheeky and maybe have a dance but then clear off. But there are too many girls now chasing too few guys with too little in the wallet.

Is this your only source of income, or do you have other strings to your bow?

I work part time, three days a week as a PA to a senior manager in a large commercial organisation. The work is fine, regular and routine. It can be frustrating. I can do so much more, but I usually hide the fact that I've got a brain! I’m more than happy to explore, for example, the parallels between Shakespeare's Tempest and John Fowles' The Magus!

If, dear reader of HR Case Studies, you're wondering if you'd recognise Annie if you bumped into her at either the CIPD conference, or a convention on Post-Modernism in Contemporary English Literature; you probably wouldn't:

I don't deny what I do. Ask and I'll tell. But I don't wear a t-shirt at the weekend saying 'Hey, I'm a stripper'. It's what I do, some of the time; it’s not what I am.

* Of course it’s not her real name.