A Dollar in the Jar is Worth Two in the Bush

So, I went down South for a few days this past weekend, and while watching a massive amount of cable TV, I noticed something both appalling in scope and discouraging in banality.

There's a reality show on VH1 called "Saddle Ranch", that takes place in a mechanical bull restaurant in Los Angeles.  The show follows the inherent drama of the restaurant business.  The symbiotic relationship of show business and serving jobs makes that level of inherent drama extraordinarily high and unbelievably nasty.  The "characters" include all the shot girls, bartenders, and servers that are employed at the restaurant.  And let me say right now, I've been in the restaurant business for over 5 years, as a server, bartender and barista, so the show holds a certain amount of bemusement for me.

The episode I saw has a segment about one of the guy's birthday party.  The guy dates a girl who also works at Saddle Ranch.  The guy's friends, in an inspired move, ordered him a stripper for his birthday party.  Pretty standard, right?  Nothing weird there.  So, cut to the party.  His girlfriend isn't there, but her girls are there.  That's strange, but it's reality TV, so, fine, right?  Fine.

Now, the stripper is dancing.  The boyfriend is sitting and receiving a lapdance from the stripper.  The stripper.  As in, her job is to strip.  She's getting paid to strip and dance up on this guy. The closed-captioning articulates the fervent whispers of the apparently already shit-canned bitch posse:  "Throw the beer at her, Cassie, throw the beer at her."  Cassie is a friend of the girlfriend, not even the girlfriend herself, and is getting visibly more and more upset with what's happening, despite the fact that this woman has been hired to do this job, and is not in some random slutty chick at a bar, trying to move in on her friend's man.  The whispering continues, and finally, Cassie throws a whole plastic cup of beer onto the stripper's back.  Check it out:



This is infuriating for a few of reasons:
1.  The woman is essentially doing her job.  The girl, Cassie, who for all intents and purposes, assaulted her, is a shot girl for Saddle Ranch.  A shot girl.  I know shot girls, I've taken drinks off of shot girls.  I know what they do, and I know how they make their tips.  Anyone who's ever been a bartender or a server knows that you get tipped more, more often, the more effort you put into your appearance and how heavily you (appropriately)flirt with your customers.  Nothing the stripper was doing was outside of her job description or in any way inappropriate.
2.  Cassie, the beer-thrower, feels completely justified and proud of what she did.  As if someone's honor was being threatened or as if she performed a service for her friend.  She doesn't see how closely her job and the stripper's are related, nor will she ever understand how her attack on the stripper was fueled by jealousy, not loyalty.
3.  I'm sure that the level of security varies from agency to agency, but generally, when you go to work, you expect a certain level of safety.  Such as, you aren't going to get attacked by jealous, angry women when you show up or have your costume(that you bought out of pocket) ruined by a trashy bitch's "retaliation" for her bruised sensibility.

We are all just trying to make our rent and pay our bills.  Judging a woman for taking control of her sexuality in a way that is lucrative and sustainable is to be in denial of the ways one uses sex as a tool on a regular basis in most food-service jobs across the world.

In short, I hope there's a re-match, at the Saddle Ranch, so that stripper gets to put a hurtin' on that judgmental wannabe biatch while she's trying to do her job.