Bar Owner - Reflections

[khwaimaisabai]

Hi guys,

A while ago GF became a shareholder in a Beer Bar. She also took up full time employment there as manager and cashier. It's a small place with six or seven girls on the payroll and a couple of katoey freelancers who hang around and irritate the customers. I thought some of you would be interested to know what I have observed from a different perspective. I am a natural people watcher and remember many happy Saturday afternoons spent in the old Bill's Coffee Shop in Clinton Plaza watching the sometimes bizarre parade along Sukhumvit Road I used to go to the outside bars in Soi Cowboy and Big Dogs and Pharaohs in NEP, just to watch the world go by. Now I sit in this place with GF mostly occupied with her various duties, so I just sit and watch.

Before going on, I know I have broken a "Golden Rule" here. The common opinion is that if you become involved with a bargirl and provide her with financial support to stop "working", then you should make sure she terminates all contact with that world. In practice this is more difficult than it may seem. They retain connections with former colleagues and still retain memories of the "Sanuk" side of the business. To cut a long story short, I had always promised her freedom to do what she wanted and this was what she wanted to do. I had no choice but to agree in the end. I was very opposed to the idea when she first suggested it, but the fact is that she enjoys it, she is working very hard and is making a success of it. She has a focus and sense of purpose. Everybody's story is different, but the fact is that this is her world, the world where we met, and the only world in her working life that she knows. She is not the studying type, and other business ventures she has tried have failed, and never were going to produce much anyway. She used to work as a hooker out of Nana Plaza - reality check time.

We have two rules - she will accept drinks only from me, not from customers (in practice this amounts to one bottle of Heineken a night - if I turn up) and she will stay on the staff side of the bar, not sit on the customer side. She does talk to the customers and she has had more than a few offers to "pay bar" but she is the prettiest girl in the place and there is no room in this situation for teenage jealousies. Some contact with the customers is unavoidable and she sees it as part of the job to generate sales.

Inevitably, there was a minor crisis after a few weeks where not only was there a guy calling round every other day in "hot pursuit" but also a visit by a loutish drunk who became very over-attentive. I found this a bit much to take and it led to an argument between us about how she should manage situations like these. The outcome was that she will try harder, but I know she will find it hard. The truth is, no harm was done and I am certain that she will not be "paying bar" for anyone.

Her dress sense was always in the past a bit doubtful. When she was "working" she dressed like a bargirl. When she stopped, she got rid of all that style of stuff and mostly looked slightly scruffy in T-shirt and shorts - like most young Thais you see around. But now she is "The Boss", and loves it and dresses the part. She sometimes looks extremely smart and attractive, and usually older than her years. The style I would say is smart and sexy, but she definitely does not look like a typical bargirl.

On the business side, the profits from this venture are amazingly high - although now somewhat reduced due to low season customer shortages. In the beginning, there were a lot of customers during the course of one night's operations and her share of the profits each month averaged 12.5% of the original investment. This places no value on her time - she does not take a salary. We have all seen Beer Bars with no customers, but this place (I don't know why) seems able to pull them in.

The customers are a mix of farangs and Asians. It is sometimes difficult to be sure, but my assessment is that very few are residents. Maybe half the customers are Asian - a few Thais but I have met Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese more often. I spend a lot of time there, by the way, and sometimes get into chatting with the customers - to the extent possible over the appallingly loud music. Late in the night the drunks start rolling in, but the girls just treat them with amusement. I feel sorry for the Thai girl they usually have tagging along, who has got to feel embarrassed in front of the other girls - "look what she ended up with tonight!" Or, maybe not if he is a paying customer. Another observation on the customers is that the Brits who turn up after 11.00, if not truly drunk, usually have obviously had quite a bit already. Drinking patterns from home are imprinted in their brains, it seems.

I have not observed anybody I would call a regular customer, although some visitors have been known to come three or four nights in succession - and bar fine the same girl every time.

The girls, again predictably, are not stunners by a long way. Four of them now have made "advances" towards me knowing that I am the boss's boyfriend - do they have no shame? The number of "offs" is surprisingly high. When touring the bars in the past, I would often see girls going out with customers. Going to the same place night after night and seeing the same girls going off with different men (almost) every time somehow has more impact in showing just how many guys these girls get through. One of the girls is very popular with Asians and is "off" maybe 15 times a month. Another one is probably the most unattractive bargirl I have ever encountered - one of Fiery Jack's old conquests, I suspect. Unbelievably, she has had a few bar fines paid and one time was off with one customer for three consecutive days.

The girls are always late to work, for which they are duly fined. As we know, they don't care about this because they make their real money outside the bar.

There are the usual mind numbingly boring games - "How Long Does it Take for a Pile of Wooden Blocks to Fall Over", and "The Incomprehensible Dice and Flaps in a Box Game", and of course that all time favourite, "Four in a Row". Actually the bar is equipped with half a dozen sets of FIAR to cope with emergency, excessive demand situations.

The most common drink order is beer, and I always assume that those on Singha or Chang must be tourists. For the hard stuff, at first GF didn't use a measure which brought several approving comments from customers. But she soon found that she was getting through the stocks amazingly quickly so started to use one. Supplies are normally delivered, but quick trips to 7-11 are common and also pre-work runs to Tesco or Carrefour. It's wonderful to reflect on just how extended is the food chain living off the sex tourist industry. The sheer volume of sales I found astonishing. Restacking the fridge happens several times during the course of a night as yet more crates of Heineken, Singha and Chang are dragged out from the under the bar.

Final thoughts - no, I still don't like it. A lot of the customers are there for the sole purpose of finding a girl for sex and I don't like them chatting up my girl. I don't like her spending eight hours a day in the company of a bunch of hookers and drunks. I don't like her look of satisfaction when one of them gets a bar fine - like a hunter who has just made a kill. I don't like her reversion to bargirl English mixed with Thai when we talk together. When she stopped working she said the thing she wanted most dearly was her freedom and I try to give her that. This is what she wanted to do.

And the future? With the experience here, I guess it is on to bigger and better things. I would like to get her a "straight" bar and restaurant, but anything that was going to be successful would be on the expensive side. We will see.

Khwai

[Fiery Jack]

One of the most interesting pieces I've read on this board for a long time ? candid, witty and very well written. Thanks for sharing. Your sig line is most appropriate (and I mean that positively, as a compliment).

 

I've noticed that probably all the women with whom I've had long-term relationships have, usually fairly early on in the game, at first slyly and subtly, but later in a more brash and overt way, attempted to change me into something other than the man I was when first they met me (which was presumably the man they were attracted to in the first place ), whether in the area of clothes, habits, hairstyle, conduct or deeper basic personality.

 

I've always found this uninvited intrusion into my head (it can be something as simple as her saying, 'You shouldn't wear green' or something as complicated as her telling you your lifelong best friend's a worthless tosser you ought to ditch) pesky, unsettling and stressful and, more than once, it has led me to show the red card to a bird whom otherwise I was glad to be with.

 

Your post has me thinking, however, that it's more than likely that I do exactly the same thing (albeit subconsciously, or by making clever excuses to myself that I'm not doing it) to the woman I'm currently with i.e. attempt to influence her outlook and behaviour so that she becomes other than that she was when first I encountered her. Attempt to make her more 'mine' (in all senses of the word), perhaps? Is that what it is? ::

 

Hmmn. Tricky Customer, Johnny Selfishness.

 

I do think, however, that birds tend to do it (the partner-manipulation sketch) more obviously, loudly, persistently, and annoyingly than we male counterparts. Or maybe it's just that there's clearly more about me that needs fixing and putting right than needs changing in any woman I've loved?

 

I'm rambling, but your post got me musing. Let us know how the situation plays out, boss. Well for you, and her, I hope.

 

jack

[khwaimaisabai]

Hi jack,

hank you for your kind words - and the wisdom you express. Many problems are caused by false expectations, but many of us fall into that trap.

Khwai

[AhTeckLim]

great insight. Thanks for sharing

[BelgianBoy]

khwai,

 

Thanks for the good read, you have a way with words

 

BB

[MaiLuk]

KMS:

 

>>Final thoughts - no, I still don't like it.<<

 

Seems that it is out of your hands now since she will not like it if you try to reverse course. Hope you can weather the drawbacks to what you have started. Just my opinion here: the bar business is not for everyone, some farang would thrive in that enviro others not. Sounds like "not" for you, and so the situation is even more difficult.

 

If she gives you your freedom then maybe the scales will balance