July 2007

One of the things that most of the guys used to have to learn to do if they wanted to get promoted to Division manager or higher with my company is to get a set of golf clubs and learn how to play golf. I always thought it was kind of silly. Not playing golf because that actually sounds like fun to me, but just the fact that if you weren’t part of that buddy buddy clique it was really hard to join the upper ranks.

Thankfully that has changed over the last few years and the focus has gone off of the people that just survived and hung out together to people that can actually execute a good plan and make money for us. That’s one of the reasons I finally decided to start trying to move back up. Now that it is seniority and performance based, I am more than happy to participate.

This post got me to reminiscing about how much time I spent in those places when I was younger. I started going to strip clubs when I was 18 or so. I don’t know how I managed to get into so many and not be thrown out as I was such a baby face that even when I was 30 people would guess that I was 17 or 18. Unfortunately those days are long gone and although I may not look 40 most days, I don’t get that “There’s no way you are XX age!” anymore.

Anyhow, My roommate Eddie (the guy with the burning VW bug) and I would go out and hit the clubs almost every night if we weren’t dating people and then just on the free nights when we were dating (other people). I even dated a couple of the girls for awhile. A couple of my friends worked in the business, one as a DJ and another as head of security (bouncer) for a couple of the clubs in Atlanta so we never had any problems. That may be one of the reasons I never got carded, that and the fact that Eddie looked older than he was.

I was single and had nothing better to do with my money anyway and I normally had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. At that point in time I was waiting tables for a living and generally kept about half the cash out.

Anyway, when I was younger it never bothered why they were dancing, but as I get older I understand. Some of them feel like they are trapped and it’s all they can do, while others are into some serious drugs and it’s their way to get it. There are still more that have to dance because they made the mistake of having children they can’t afford and have to feed the damn things. It takes a ton of money and classes to be able to adopt a child, yet everyone in the country is given free license and reign to pop out as many as they want without any kind of background check. That’s messed up.

I dated and was briefly engaged to a girl that ended up dancing at the Cheetah III a couple of years after we broke up, and for her I think it was an attention thing, at least at first. After awhile she got involved in too much drinking and drugging and the clubs she danced at went downhill to evolve into places like the 24 and the Hot Spot. I don’t even know if those dives are still open or not but that is exactly what they were.

Most of the time I was pretty welcome in the clubs. Unlike Nitemare I always tipped well, even if they were nasty old dogs that deserved a quarter. I have wanted to stick one on their forehead myself, but always abstained from going too far. Having friends in the business taught me to behave and after awhile the nudity was a non-issue. I went to enjoy the beer and believe it or not, just hanging out and talking with the girls and the bouncers. The couple of places I went to became just neighborhood hangouts, however freaky.

When I was drinking heavily in my mid-twenties and managing my last restaurant in Atlanta before we moved out here to go to school and clean up our lives there were titty bars within 50 yards distance in two directions. One of them was Ponytails on Northside drive. I think that one is gone now as well. A couple of my waitresses danced there during the evening as well, which was extremely weird. 2 PM would come around and I would spend most of the afternoon sitting in there drinking and watching people until it was time to drag myself home to the wife and my baby boy. It was not exactly a pretty time in our lives but it is what it is and we all learn from it.

Funny how something fun and no big deal as a teenager turns into something ugly and causes problems when you become an “adult”. It was hard for me to learn that responsible adult thing, and I guess it was after our separation that I really “got it”.

It’s also funny how you start something like this post intending one thing and it becomes another. This was supposed to be a semi-humorous post about hanging out in strip joints but just isn’t quite making it…

I am home from work now. A bit tired to say the least, but happy that I shouldn’t have to worry too much about having to go back in until at least Tuesday. I’m not actually off today but since I worked last night that lets me out of working this morning. I am currently waiting on the coffee to finish making so that I can wake the wife and girls up and start getting ready to go.

…is something I seem to be having a harder time doing as I get older. The wife had an acquaintance of ours over yesterday evening so that the kids could play together and they got into a religious discussion. The wife asked her the question “what do you think about Pope Benedict saying that the Catholic Church is the only true religion” or something like that. What a loaded fucking question.

Of course our acquaintance is baptist or something like that, so they started talking about women in religion and the other lady believes that what some churches say about men having to be the leaders in charge and women doing what the fuck they are told is OK. Then she stated that Mary is unimportant and some shit about Jesus this or Jesus that. I don’t remember. When people start talking about religion it’s like when the wife starts talking about Math, I get this dull roaring buzz in my head and want to go to sleep.

Now there is nothing wrong with wimmen doing what they are told (let me hold on to something while the backlash hits) but I was sitting there surfing the net and all I could think was, if the flying spaghetti monster or maybe Beelzebub flew up your ass, THEN is the time to start thinking about Jesus.

Fuck all that noise.

I managed to get about five hours of sleep last night. More like yesterday since it is “last night” right now. I figured I would get a few posts up while I had the chance and try to wake up a bit. The last thing I want to do right now is go in to work, but we have really been on our manager’s asses about saving money and being productive while they are in their restaurants so I am trying to make sure I cook or wait tables at least five shifts a week. It means close to an extra $900 a month for me to hit my profit goal, so a little extra work damn sure won’t kill me.

By going in in the next hour I am also able to say that I worked my six or seven hours saving money that I would normally pay a cook, and still take most of the day off work, and Monday is my normal day off. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone for breakfast in Dunwoody, so this works out very well for me. Now as long as everyone shows up for the day shift in my three stores I will be out of there by eightish.

I am getting ready to hit the sack. There are some folks getting together for breakfast tomorrow morning and I want to be there so I am going in to work around 3AM. For me that means getting up around midnight. Time for a couple of benadryl and a beer. That shit ought to knock me out for the next eight hours. I will probably have a bit of time to post “in the morning” when I get back up.

If you think you did hit the big 200k, let me know, otherwise I will just have some kind of contest for the shirt.

Apparently this girls was sending text messages while driving right before she ran her SUV into a truck killing her and four other friends. Now I have been known to use the cell phone while driving, but text messages? I guess you either have to be 18, retarded, or both to do some stupid shit like that.