Working in club scene has rewards, challenges
A decade ago, I had a female neighbor who cocktailed. One day, she drove up in her new SUV after buying it with cash.
She dialed A-list baseball players in her cellphone. They called her when they were in town.
I still wonder about this former neighbor occasionally. Was her experience typical as a cocktailer? Where is she now that she’s in her 30s?
I was thinking about her fate last Sunday while I was at the new Lily Bar & Lounge at Bellagio, in the space where Caramel used to be. (Saturday will be its official grand opening.)
At Lily, Localites.TV was honoring "the most influential" women in Vegas nightlife with a plaque, a bottle table, and a room at Bellagio — free things the women are accustomed to already, due to their juice.
The influential women were pretty, well put-together, easy conversationalists — women in public relations, media, marketing and bar supplies.
Cocktailers at Lily were pretty and smiling while serving $20 drinks in a room so elegant that if it existed in most American cities, it would be exclusive to rich people. In Vegas, it’s the way things are.
Beauty, beauty, everywhere, and everyone works their asses off.
And then one of the honoree women told me nonchalantly that few women strive or reach the upper echelons of nightclub management.
This was not a shocking statement. We all know this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman in the club business complain about glass ceilings. Instead, the following are the kinds of fairly obvious things women in the club business tell me:
Females in their 20s take advantage of their beauty and work ethic by making large cash as cocktailers and bartenders while they can.
Many enjoy the lifestyle and privileges — not just the partying, but the meeting, greeting and romancing of VIPs, and using connections to get into concerts and other clubs for free.
They have the social skills to be friendly while looking hot in little dresses. They’re outgoing. They have the ability to shrug off a significant amount of strangers hitting on them, and they have the strength of will to call security when male customers get out of hand.
But when women consider moving up into management, they must consider taking on more hours — 50 or more a week — for possibly less money.
And women who are moms appear to emotionally struggle with balancing parenting and club management more than men do.
Don’t get the wrong idea. There are women in assistant manager positions and certainly in accounting and human resources offices, public relations, marketing and retail.
I just don’t know one woman who is a general manager in a club. On the other hand, I don’t know everyone.
I’m not about to go "60 Minutes" on this topic today, because, correct me if I’m wrong, but there seems to be an easy peace in the club scene on the Strip. From the outside, looking in, it seems to be thus:
Women take high-paying service jobs and various midlevel white-collar posts. They dominate relatively low-paying PR and go-go dancing gigs. They’re making inroads as DJs.
However, men can’t even apply at "auditions" to be cocktailers. More clubs now are gravitating toward hiring female bartenders over men. So men clean tables, maybe bartend, go into security or VIP hosting, or aim for management.
In either case, nightclubbing is a hard industry for men or women to pursue careers in, especially if they’re parents. The hours suck. Dating is a minefield.
Meanwhile, many male managers treat female workers as if they do respect their hard work — with notable exceptions of some men who grab underlings and just start making out with them.
To be honest, I’m not sure which sex has more opportunities in the club business. But it feels like women do? By a lot? As long as they can handle unwanted male aggression? Those are questions, not statements.
I was told recently that a guy who failed to get a bartending job at a club went to work for a cab company, instead.
You can bet your house he didn’t even think about trying to be a go-go dancer or a publicist while buying an SUV with cash and phoning a major league baseball player out of the blue.
But he also didn’t have to deal with some strange male customer sticking his hand up his skirt.
These are things to contemplate. Let me know what you know.
Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@ reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
