Friday, November 4, 2011

How do men calculate gratuity?

I'm near the end of my annual trip to Phoenix playing in the Men's Senior Baseball League World Series. Now that I'm fifty, the Senior part is ringing truer. It's fun to run around spring training fields like children at play, as long as there are hot tubs and painkillers available.

Post-game festivities are often more fun than the games. Guess what the festivities include. Give up? I'll give you a hint: They also begin with B. Come on. Four hundred teams of men who refuse to grow up, take their scabby knees, sore elbows, and sunburned necks to bars with beer and boobs.

Every woman reading this saw that coming and some wrinkled their noses at the sad predictability of it. I say to you with stink-face: I like boobs. Why is it if I like your boobs, I'm a good lover, but if I like others, I'm pork-in-cleats?

Yesterday's post-game debrief was held at a bar that features brass poles. The servers and bartenders each cycle through shifts on the pole between delivering the medicine that loosens wallets. After two baseball games, old men are ripe and generally repulsive. Still, as one of my more savage teammates approached the poor lass on the pole with his crumbled ones, I couldn't help mind-reading.

Animal: Damn, this chick is cute and talented, hanging from that pole.
Girl: Oh, Jesus. Couldn't these guys shower after the game before coming in here?
Animal: I'm going to stand here at the base of the pole and make her work it for me. Maybe she'll let me touch her leg when I put the dollar in her garter.
Girl: Great he's carrying two one-dollar bills. I'll smile at him, turn around, shake my butt, and hope he drops the money and leaves.
Animal: She smiled at me. She wants me. I'm going to ask for her number. She'll meet me after work and let me take her deep.
Girl: Fine, here, put the dollar in my garter. Yes, thank you so much. Thanks to you I can afford a can of soda. You should keep it and buy some soap.
Animal: She really digs me. I love it here. I'm going to play hard-to-get now and head back to the fellas. I'll brag to them about how tight she is and how much she wants me.
Girl: I just need to keep telling myself, "College tuition, college tuition."

Sadly, most men don't see tips given to attractive workers as shows of appreciation for jobs well done, as tips are intended. If the recipient is attractive, men see the tip as a subtle bribe. The tip shows the man's high social status, career success, provider potential, and generosity. If the recipient is unattractive, the tip is a robotic gesture. The recipient knows the intent behind the gratuity and most tippers realize this. Still, men suspend reality and imagine the crumpled one could work the wonders of a wizard's wand when it comes to wooing women.

3 comments:

  1. Being a woman and a non-stripper, I never really thought about the tips from the strippers point of view. I only saw it as my former husband wasting money on a stripper at a place he paid 2x as much for a beer. After reading this I am forced to view the other side of the transaction. I think $1 bills would piss me off!

    I must remember to tell future boyfriends to drink water and tip the girls better. That's got to be a hard job.

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  2. I would hope more men read this post! Most of the girls in these titty bars are there to make money, not to look for some hard up, lonely guy to do the deed with. You hit it right on the nail though as to what's going through the girl's mind. It's her job to flirt. She's not stupid, she knows how to get the tips.

    No, I never worked in a stripper bar (my friend did though) but it's just common sense.

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  3. Totally. Strikes me as kind of the same logic that makes a guy think I ought to sleep with him cause he's bought me a five-dollar drink. If I were a prostitute, I'd charge a lot more than that.

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