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Going out in the city means that you’ll usually run into the typical selection of nightlife personalities that will help shape your night.
There’s the brolic bouncer glaring at your guy friend for having the audacity to show up in tennis shoes, the promoter who promised he’d get you in for free but for some reason has you and your girlfriends waiting in line outside the club for an hour, the DJ who thought no one would notice that he played “Bodak Yellow” three times during his set and of course, the bottle girl: the girl in the slinky black dress who carries a sparkler across the club.
As a bottle girl, I know there’s a lot of mystery surrounding our position. Are we waitresses or glorified strippers? How much money do we really make? How do you even get into the industry? Contrary to popular belief, no, we are not escorts, but we also aren’t your run-of-the-mill Applebee’s waitresses.
1. You drink… a lot.
When you’re pouring liquor for patrons, you’ll receive a shit ton of offers to join their table for a drink, and it’s hard to pass them up. It’s even harder to survive an eight-hour shift stone-cold sober when you’re surrounded by pulsating lights, loud ass music and drunk people everywhere you turn. You will rarely encounter a club worker who is completely sober.
2. Yes, you meet celebrities.
If you’re working in an especially high-profile club in the city, you’ll encounter pretty big names on a regular basis, but don’t get ahead of yourself. Most of the time, bottle girls don’t even get tips from these clients because the club gives their tables free bottles.
3. Spoiler: Drunk people are RUDE.
You encounter many highly intoxicated, annoying, entitled drunk douchebags who think that because they’re in a club setting it’s ok to hawk at you for another round of cranberry chasers. Would you yell at your waitress to bring you a glass of sparkling water? No, but for some reason, because it’s nightlife, people think that it’s ok to treat us with the utmost disrespect.
4. The pay is good but inconsistent.
Money in nightlife is fast. I make anywhere between $150 to $600 a night. It really depends on how many reservations the club already has, as well as how many tables I can personally sell. At the really high-profile clubs in Vegas, you can make thousands in just one night.
5. It can be stressful.
I’ve had nights where I’ve had to manage more than five tables at one time, and it can get pretty stressful having to run around processing orders, setting up tables and checking up on them throughout the night and making sure they’re having a good time.
6. The hours are rough.
I’ve worked at clubs that are open until 8:00 A.M. Yes, 8:00 A.M. Working in nightlife means not only having to sacrifice my weekends, but also my free time the day after, which is usually spent sleeping in and trying to recover from the sh*tshow that was the night before.
7. Your clothes might dictate your earnings.
Obviously, sex appeal sells. Our purpose as bottle girls is to encourage customers to buy as many bottles of Hennessy as their frail bodies can handle, and that usually means dressing in a revealing way that will attract male clients. The uniform depends on the club. It can range from black cocktail dresses with thigh highs and stilettos to corsets to even attire that dancers in strip clubs would wear. If you don’t own many articles of thotwear yourself, it can come as a shock, but you quickly get used to it.
8. It’s not that easy to find a job.
Unless you know a promoter or the manager at the club, it’s extremely difficult to get a job at a high-profile club as a bottle girl. Clubs are overstaffed and there isn’t a high turnover rate because the pay is so good.
9. You’ll meet gross men.
We. Are. Not. Escorts. I repeat, we are not escorts. I constantly meet clients that for some reason like to equate carrying a sparkler across the club to being down to perform sexual favors. At the end of the day, we’re waitresses that handle bottle reservations and NOTHING MORE.
10. You’re pretty much getting paid to party.
It can be incredibly exhausting and draining having to deal with drunk party-goers every weekend, but we’re also encouraged to join the party if that means that our clients will have a good time. We can drink, dance and socialize, just as long as we’re keeping tabs on our tables. So yeah, it can be tempting to complain about the drunk a*sholes that we deal with on a regular basis, but at the end of the day, we’re really just getting paid to party so there’s not too much to complain about.
