Lara Croft was not a Whore!

Managing a bar is awesome. Every young person should do it at least for a while. Best not to do it as you get older and are less able to get by on a few hours sleep and you start to lose your days. Becoming nocturnal does nothing for the other aspects of your life and the bags under your eyes will severely affect your tips! If you are young however the perks are endless:

• Generally your work force will be a mix of young people, frequently students and often attractive if you pick the right bar, therefore you have a ready group of 'mates' to have a laugh at work with and people to go out with when you finish at 1am who aren't already hours into their night.
• The cash tips come in very handy for taxis home, drinks and generally meaning you don't have to eat into your wages day to day. People who buy you drinks help to get your night started.
• If you are lucky to be located in a city centre most clubs will let you in for free on showing a payslip.
• You don't have to start early in the morning.
• If the bar serves food you generally get dinner for free.
• Finally, from a management point of view your workforce are probably enthusiastic due to the afore mentioned perks.

However there are two words from my time in the licenced trade that still make me cringe 'shot girl'. They sound innocent enough and on a night out I love the shots being poured at my table. Is this a role I would ever have put myself forward for or imagined that as the manager I would ever find myself forced to do, definately not. That didn't change the fact that one Thursday evening as a huge corporate themed night out loomed I found myself a 'shot girl' down due to illness. The party booker had specified that the attendees wanted Lara Croft dressed 'shot girls' to mingle and get the party started. I happily agreed as often private functions had special requirements or wanted a theme and as it wouldn't affect me and our usual girls were game for a bit of dressing up it seemed reasonable.

So the night comes around and a 'shot girl' down I began trying to ask/bribe/manipulate employees into the costume, but as luck would have it my 20year old thighs and butt were the perfect fit :-(. I love a bit of dressing up, Halloween, parties with friends and so on but having to dress up and sell myself-I mean sell shots- lay slightly less comfortably. To put you in the picture the costume consisted of Daisy Duke length hotpants, a belly flashing vest, aviators (helped conceal the rolling of my eyes) and ammunition belts! All topped off with the neccessary belts to carry the bottles and plastic shot glasses. Not my finest outfit. On it went though and the evening began.

After a fairly tame start, sober 'suits' disecting their days and making half hearted attempts at networking and little interest from anyone other than the youngest employees in throwing back shots, gave way fairly quickly to carnage. The pints swilled in empty guts and the chardonnay went to tired heads. All of a sudden it got busy, bottles were replenished we pretended to throw back the shots they bought us and the money belts brimmed. As one of the organisers suggested we up the ante a bit it was clear where these men thought the evening would head. Most were fairly harmless so we flirted a little, poured freely and threw in a bit of 'cocktail' style dramatics. As evening turned to drunken night these men took on personalities few people who knew them would recognise and propositioned. Boy did they have some ideas, many of them I took to be fairly ambitious given the inebriated states they were in and I doubt many of them could have delivered what they slurred. To them it was another drunken night out where they could revert to being boys, to me just another farcical night in my working life, not so differnt to each other really! As some took offence to being knocked back they shouted, "but you are lara croft" and there it was. Lara Croft was not a whore! Even the Angelina Jolie version wasn't, a home wrecker maybe but never a whore!