Shakers Studies: Kitana

I don't know why Kitana worked at Shakers. She work dark lipstick and a backwards baseball hat. She barely sold any dances. She came in just to wiggle around on the main floor, as though she were at a rave and on drugs. She would flail her arms around toward other people in near-miss smacks. I often wondered if she paid a house fee like everyone else, or if Shakers let her do that for free. Her lesbian lover, Jessica Ayers, dances at Shakers and makes good money. Kitana went on stage and kept her things in the dressing room like all of the other strippers, and yet, it was as though she was not there to work.

When I started at Shakers, Kitana began complaining that her body and my body looked a lot alike. It bothered her that we listened to similar music on stage. She was concerned that there was going to be some sort of competition. Of course, there was no competition. I am feminine, affectionate and know how to hustle, whereas she is boyish, bizarre and dedicated most of her working hours to socializing with other strippers.

Kitana has the kind of internalized misogyny that criticizes traditional femininity as something weak and undesirable. It is common to find this kind of dancer in a strip club. They usually don't make much money, yet they are there taking up space.

Kitana didn't want any part of standing up for the labor rights of strippers.

Shakers Studies: London

London is a successful porn star who lives in Las Vegas.

I don't want to advertise her work, so I won't share her porno moniker. She is from Nebraska and started dancing at Shakers over a decade ago, back when she was a Sociology major and aspiring teacher. Her whole family is in Nebraska and she is not ashamed of her life choices.

I only worked with London for one shift, I and genuinely enjoyed her company. She is strikingly beautiful, wicked smart and very kind to animals as well as humans. London and I have a lot in common, like being proud sex workers who don't like it when misogynists judge what we do with our bodies. We sat together and conversed in the back of the club when there weren't any customers to hustle. She is one of the most pleasantly memorable strippers who I have ever known.

Unfortunately, London does not understand what the economic realities test is, and when our conversation turned to the differences between employees and independent contractors, there was an awkward rift. I didn't want to continue the conversation with her after that. Fortunately, some customers started coming in and I was able to avoid her for the rest of the night. I think she suggested we get drinks, but I slithered away for the rest of the night and then kept away from Shakers until I knew she left town.

London is friends with the Robinsons and a lot of the Shakers veterans, including people who were absolutely horrible to me. She was back in Vegas by the time shit hit the fans with me there, but she made a tweet that said,

“I'm never upset paying house fees as a dancer. Clubs can reasonably put specific rules in lease agreements to protect the image of their business. But it's too easy for owners and dancers to forget who's paying who. Owners are people we do business with. They are not bosses”

This tweet is no good, because it doesn't acknowledge what the Economic Realities test is, why it is important, or why her friend Dan Robinson lost a lawsuit after he enforced rules that legally classified dancers as employees but did not recognize their rights. London misses a lot of stuff having to do with oppression, because she is very privileged in ways that a lot of people are not. I don't hate her for it, but I also don't want to hang out with her and get drinks.

Shakers uses photos of London for their facebook. Even though she only works there a few days out of the year when she visits Nebraska, she fits many mainstream beauty standards that other Shakers dancers do not fit. Using her image probably attracts more patrons and financially benefits all who work at Shakers. Men may come into the club in hopes of seeing women who look like her, even though they probably won't. I think that’s hilarious.

Shakers Studies: Narica Herrington

Narica Herrington has great bone structure, but no brains or self-esteem to match.

Narica spent a lot of time at Shakers discussing her unpleasant personal life and all of the dramatics that go along with being sexually attracted to men who are deadbeat losers. She is not a very nice person and was often willing to bully anyone who caused the emotion of jealousy to stir within her. One thing that really upset Narica in terms of body image was not inheriting the gene for a large rear-end. Unfortunately, misogynist songs and elements of popular culture have made Narica feel sad about not getting a big ass from certain branches of her lineage, which she regularly complains about. Narica generally prefers to avoid people who are smarter or more attractive than she is.

Here are some of her facebook posts:

“WHEN WILL YALL REALIZE THAT THESE STREETS DONT FUCKING LOVE YOU”

“Baby daddy tryna save me but he musta forgot he the one who made me.”

“I ain’t got no hope in us baby, it don’t make no sense tryna hold on”

That stuff goes on and on, and it's also the kind of stuff that streamed out of her mouth at work. When I started exercising my rights and distributing fliers about worker rights, it was completely over Narica's head. The Robinsons liked that. Most of the stuff inside of Narica's head are things about reproduction, failed relationships and surviving daily life on the mean streets of rural Nebraska.

Since Narica was mean to me even before I was outed, she was a willing participant in the harassment that I experienced after becoming vocal about worker rights. Though she is a low-IQ person and not very threatening, her voice did add to a chorus of others in a way that was not fun for me to experience. One night, I wore blue body paint like an ancient Pict. This upset and confused Narica, causing her to clap her hands in my face. I could have probably beat the shit out of her if I wanted to, but I was greatly outnumbered.

I put Narica on the site to provide an sample for future labor activists to understand the type of person you may encounter-- dumb, cruel, occupied with basic functioning and willing to lash out at anything that confuses them.

Narica's children will most likely repeat the cycle by producing their own offspring who they cannot support intellectually, financially or emotionally. They will probably become scabs too.

Shakers Studies: Gabrielle Es

Sometimes when unattractive people want to feel better about themselves, they drape their bodies with the skins of animals who suffered in cages before dying of vaginal and anal electrocution. Unattractive people feel sexy and sultry when they do that. Case in point-- Mz. Gabrielle Es:

It is difficult to find a photo of Gabrielle Es where she is not concealing her abnormally weak chin. Shakers is a place with a lot of inbred looking weak chins, but Gabrielle's was the most extreme.

Gabrielle Es went by Kristina at Shakers. I don't know if Gabrielle Es is her real name, but that is her facebook name. She is facebook friends with the Robinson family and is a TOTAL scab who cucks for the boss. She doesn't care for Stripper Labor Rights at all.

Shakers wanted all dances to take place in their designated rooms, but they couldn’t legally enforce that. When I started doing them out on the floor, Gabrielle Es went over to tell Dillon about it, in hopes of getting me in trouble. Dillon knew my legal rights, whereas Gabrielle Es is oblivious to many things in life. She was having a hard time comprehending why Dillon wasn’t able to reprimand me, and it upset her that I was so free.

Gabrielle Es is from the dorky state of New Jersey. I have no idea how she ended up in Nebraska. She never really talked to me, but would do weird things like fling water on me in the bathroom after washing her hands, and toss books on the floor that I put on the free shelf.

Near my end at Shakers, I was being harassed so badly by other dancers that I didn't feel comfortable putting my belongings in the dressing room. Even though there are cameras in the dressing room, Dillon Maynard, Steve Loe and the Robinsons were unwilling to protect me. So, I would store them in the shelves of the lap dance room, where I could keep a better eye on them. Gabrielle Es did not like me doing that and raised a stink about it.

Shakers Studies: Bianca Leigh Conway

Bianca Leigh Conway and her siblings had to be delivered by cesarean section, because their Conway heads were too large to fit through their mother’s modest birth canal.

Bianca went by Milan at Shakers while I worked there. I am a really good hustler, so dancers with self esteem issues and not so good hustling skills have had a range of negative reactions to watching me. Bianca was more or less catty in the beginning. However, she is still more attractive than most of the dancers at Shakers, so she sold OK for herself and eventually came around. We chatted at work sometimes.

I adopted a German Shepherd while I was at Shakers and felt really guilty about putting her in a crate to potty train her. I told Bianca about it, because she has a Rottweiler mix who she was also “training.” However, when she began to describe her “training,” she informed me that she likes put her dog in his crate for most of the time that she is home sometimes, and laughs at him crying in there for hours while she is going about her day. She giggled maniacally while telling me about it. She is a sadistic torturer of her Rottweiler mix. After that conversation, I decided to stop crate training my dog.

Bianca didn’t know much about stripper labor rights until the night that DJ Steve Loe was harassing me so badly that I stopped going on stage. I told him I knew my rights, then he freaked out and talked to Dillon Maynard privately. I explained to Bianca what was going on and why Steve and his followers were behaving so oddly. I explained to her all of her rights. She seemed pleasantly surprised that she had those rights, but she never exercised them, because she is a coward. At first she didn’t get involved, but eventually she began treating me like shit. I have no idea who said what to her in a way that would inspire her decision, but my austere aloof work persona probably didn’t warm her feelings.

I am not a big drinker and for quite a while in my 20’s, I identified as “straight-edge.” However, because I don’t like fielding questions from drunken strippers, sometimes I just say that I am in recovery and can’t drink. It cuts down on their bothering me to drink, while also making them empathize with me enough to leave me alone. That is what I did at Shakers. After Bianca decided to treat me poorly, she kept saying things to me at work, such as,

“This is so stressful it would make an alcoholic want to just bust open a case of beer and guzzle!”

You see, Bianca thought that I was stressed out enough to relapse into a state of alcoholism that she thought I suffered from. She was being sadistic in saying that, just like she sadistically tortures her dog.

Shakers Studies: Kayla Huss

This deer murderer was named Kayla Huss while I worked at Shakers, but she has since taken her husband’s name.

Kayla fancies herself a country gal. She danced to country music on stage. One will find the random stripper with a country gal aesthetic every so often in strip clubs. I liked working with Kayla because she didn’t try to be someone she wasn’t in order to keep up with left wing liberal pop culture. I don’t try to keep up with left wing liberal pop culture myself, so sometimes the country gals like Kayla and I get along really well— until they realize that I am not like them.

I wear a lot of cammo. While working at Shakers, I had part-time residency at a corn and soybean farm in rural Southern Minnesota, which was a few hours away from the club. Therefore, I had Minnesota license plates. There are certainly aspects of my behavior and aura that are country, and I have certainly spent many moons in farmland. Kayla noticed my country ways and struck up a conversation with me one night in the dressing room. She began telling me about all of the different animals that her boyfriend has killed, and enthusiastically described how a gal can get a boyfriend to take her out hunting. One particular anecdote that she was entertained with telling me was about the time her boyfriend trapped a skunk that released a potent odor. They didn’t go to the trap for several days, while the skunk suffered and died. I didn’t mention to Kayla that I am a vegan, or that I love hunting accidents. I felt really sorry for that skunk while she was sharing that anecdote with me in the dressing room that day, and I knew some day I would put it on this blog. I didn’t say anything or argue with her about it, because a bunch of other people at Shakers already hated me, and I needed that country gal as an ally!

From our conversations about cammo and the countryside, Kayla began to think that there was something weird about me and drifted away socially, although it was a relief to not hear more about colonialist male domination and unnecessary animal murder.

I just wear cammo because the patterns are beautiful. I have never fired a gun in my life.

Kayla never harassed, assaulted or threatened me during the turbulent times at Shakers. She was pretty much out of the loop and didn’t know what was going on during that time. It’s because she usually doesn’t engage with all of the stupid, petty people who work there. Kayla eventually did learn about the site after I left, and made comments on a facebook post that was negatively discussing StripperLaborRights.com. Kayla said that the site made her feel “aggro” and that “Lucky shes using code names so tht bitch dont get sued.” Kayla commented that she wants to know if any of the Shakers people end up on the site.

This one goes out to the skunks.

Shakers Studies: DJ Steve Loe

In the time of chimpanzees he was a monkey, butane in his veins so he's out to cut the junkie, with the plastic eyeballs, spray pain the vegetables, dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose. Kill the headlights and put it in neutral, stock car flamin' with a loser in the cruise control. Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D, got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat. Someone keeps sayin' he's insane to complain about a shotgun wedding and a stain on his shirt. Don't believe everything that you read, you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve, so shave your face with some mace in the dark, savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park.

Yo...

Cut it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, next up on Shakers Studies I'd like to present to you.... STEVEN MICHAEL LOE, douchebag DJ extraordinaire, let's give him a hand! Living his best life as a strip club DJ, Loe is clinically obese, in his late forties, resides in a Nebraska trailer park, and is a recovering alcoholic!

DJ Steve Loe's voice sounds like a cross between Tom Hanks in Cast Away and a whiny Neal Young song. He gets to dominate the club through his microphone. Loe is the mad hatter in the wonderland of Shakers, and he wants an Alice to drink tea with and humor his insanity. He has come up in a few Shakers Studies posts already. Loe, like many DJs with nothing else going for them, likes to be a puppeteer in a strip club theater, pulling strings and queuing laugh tracks. Loe may be big and violent, offing strippers one by one like King Henry VIII did to wives, but on the inside Loe is a very small person.

In strip clubs when DJs want to fuck with a particular dancer, there is a standard protocol that they follow. Long ago, I dubbed this a Song War. A Song War is where a DJ will select songs based on the things that a target may be wearing, saying or doing. For example, a dancer might be wearing the color yellow, so a DJ will put on songs with the word yellow in the lyrics. If a dancer's name is Sunshine, a DJ may put on songs with the word “sunshine” in the lyrics. If a DJ is trying to get a dancer to think that he likes her, he may play love songs with lyrics that may relate to what she looks like. If a dancer then asks if the songs are being played for her, DJs may try to make the dancer think she is crazy, by denying any intention of playing those songs on purpose. Eventually the dancer will become so obsessed with listening to and analyzing song lyrics, that she will find meanings in songs that aren't there, in completely arbitrary songs that have nothing to do with her. At this point, a DJ may play songs like “Somebody's Watching Me” by Rockwell, or “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger, in an effort to try to drive her off the edge. I have witnessed this many times in many strip clubs all over the country. The DJ snickers away in his booth, in his sad little life, at the torment that he inflicted on a young woman half his age. That is what DJs like Steve Loe are into-- frantically googling song lyrics with one hand, dick in the other hand, thinking— “Yeah, this song’ll really get her!” Most of these fucking yokels can't play any musical instruments themselves.

I noticed that Loe did Song Wars as soon as I started working at Shakers. Unlike other DJs who do Song Wars, Loe would say things into the microphone like, “Subliminal songs” really fast, and make other remarks about putting subliminal messages in his song selections, as though he thought he was being sneaky or original. He wasn't, of course. Song Wars breathe life into the otherwise miserable waking hours of DJs like Loe. When Loe first started directing annoying songs toward me, it was as though he thought I would be freaked out by it, as though he was unaware that I have experienced a Song War before. He found the online photo of me holding one of my rabbits, so he started playing songs about rabbits. He began playing songs about going “crazy,” and songs about lawsuits. He would spend lots of time staring me down through the many mirrors at Shakers. I don’t know if I have ever encountered a male coworker more obsessed with bothering me in my life. The best thing for a dancer to do in a Song War is to ignore the sad ugly dweeb in the booth who is starving for your attention. Steve was genuinely confused that I wouldn't give his Song Wars attention. I didn't flinch when he started it, because by that time I had nerves of steel when it came to ignoring DJs, as that was not my first rodeo.

My first glimpse of Steve Loe was of his long, thin, oily, dirty-blonde pony tail. The back of his head is balding. He would later see me braiding my hair and inform me that he tried to do that before, but couldn't. Loe towers over most people and has piercing Nordic blue eyes. He has a weak chin and a tiny mouth, so he grows facial hair decoration to hide it.

From afar, he looked a lot like Joel Wheelock. From the way that he walked, I knew he was the DJ before anyone told me. Loe introduced himself to me and told me that I would get along with him. He insisted it, as though he has suffered in the schisms of strip club DJ and stripper rivalry. To me this was a signal that Loe is a really terrible person who needs to notify people ahead of time to not be fearful of him, because he has had so many negative experiences. If a DJ is truly decent and gets along with the dancers, he doesn't need to stop them as soon as possible and notify them that he is a good person. But, I told him that I didn’t think he was a douche, in order to get him to leave me alone. For all of the sweetness and charm that the club had at times, Loe was like a big fat worm munching his way through the apple that is Shakers, rotting everything with his volcanic anger. Loe was a big fat elephant on the microphone, omnipresent in every room of the club, through the speaker system.

I don't know how Dan Robinson enforced club rules prior to getting sued, but I worked at Shakers after he lost the lawsuit. What I experienced was a heavy dependence on Steve Loe to enforce the rules that broke labor laws. For example, I wrote this article without naming him, while working at Shakers. Loe is the DJ who tried to bully me into not reading. He told dancers rules that Dan and Dillon didn't want to say, for fear of being sued. At times, he told me to talk to customers who had no intention of giving me money, including regulars who had previously assaulted me. Loe is also a bouncer at the club, although I never saw him kick out and predators who had sexually assaulted women or took photographs. While his songs were playing, he would walk around and tell dancers certain rules. It is a lot easier for strip clubs to win lawsuits if they can blame the DJ for enforcing rules. Clubs can just say that the DJ is not a manager and that his commands were mere “suggestions.” Loe does the dirty work, as is standard in a lot of clubs that try to weasel around labor laws. It is unlikely that any of Loe's behavior was substantial enough for me to sue the club, even as it walked a fine line, and was at times abusive on a personal level.

Loe makes statements over his microphone about a disdain for “negative people.” He makes public proclamations about being a fan of peace and love, and is an enthusiast of Rastafarian culture. Like many people who proclaim to be dedicated to Peace, Loe spends his time making the lives of vulnerable people hellish, harassing labor activists, paling around with customers who sexually assault dancers, and protecting exploitative business owners like Dan Robinson. His behavior is similar to the way that crazy Christians get excited about their church, but then secretly abuse vulnerable people who they have access to within their organizations. What's important for dancers to remember is that might doesn't equal right. Loe is a company man, who uses his physical intimidation and harassment to get rid of whoever the club wants gone, or to do things that he wants them to do. When he thought I was seizure-prone, he flashed strobe lights in my eyes. Somehow he found out where I was staying in the Lincoln area, so he would make comments about that over the microphone too. While in Nebraska, I was donating and visiting a local women's support network. They know all about Steve Loe, the strip club DJ who harasses women. If you are reading this and have experienced Steve's abuse, feel free to privately contact me and I will direct you to services that can empathize with you. For most of my time at Shakers, Loe was focused on getting me to crack psychologically, so Dan Robinson would have a reason to get rid of me. He did not succeed on his own.

At times, Loe has a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to interacting with women. As a result of that, as is the case in most strip clubs, there are dancers who are loyal to the club or who are otherwise angry/envious/insane. People like that do not like people like me working in their clubs. When Steve recognized this type of advantage, he used it to harm me and my livelihood.

I was posting The Seville Series while I was working at Shakers. Thin-skinned Steve was freaking out about it, talking loudly regarding my posts and comparing himself to the individuals who I posted about from Seville. He and a couple of other dancers orchestrated a pincer effect, with both he and they coming at me from different angles. He spent time shouting things about me over the microphone, playing music to motivate violence, and encouraging people to harass me. He would bounce up and down and rock back and forth in his seat, giggling and making deep, warlock cackles into the microphone. He would state, over the microphone, that bothering me makes him feel like he is “high.” He would scream into the microphone about how he loved to “push buttons” and then play songs about “pushing buttons.” As a recovering alcoholic, Steve has participated in therapeutic support programs. However, during the time I was working there and he was harassing me, he stated over the microphone that bothering me was his “therapy.” Steve would state over the microphone that I was past my prime because I was in my 30's. He read on The Seville Series that some of the Seville workers were bothering me about their perception that I needed to work out more, so Loe started saying the same types of things over the microphone. It was strange to be fat-shamed by an obese man when I am healthy and fit. I said I wanted him to stop doing those kinds of things, but he just gas lit. He is a weakling, a flimsy person, barely floating above survival and sobriety. It was no surprise to find someone like this in a nowheresville Nebraska strip club, but still traumatizing when experiencing it. I didn’t deserve it.

I wrote a letter to Dan Robinson near the end of my time at Shakers, describing some of Loe's abuse and asking that it stop. Dan denied everything in a response letter that he gave to me. When Dan delivered this letter to me, Dillon smirked and swiveled about, following Dan every which way like an abandoned puppy. I don't know if he was supposed to be acting like a witness or what the fuck.

Loe never stopped harassing me, even until my very last night at Shakers, attempting to get under my skin with his demented blood lust. I intentionally avoided him and his stupid songs. As stated, his type of abuse and harassment did not necessarily pertain to labor laws, so I chose not to sue Shakers. While I did have the option to report him to police, I chose not to do that, because I dislike police and didn't think it would do any good. If I stayed at Shakers, he probably would have motivated someone to kill me. His frenzied emotional state was beyond bizarre.

A Norwegian-American from North Dakota, Loe is the offspring of a Vietnam vet, who had PTSD. Loe has a daughter with mental disorders and suicidal tendencies. Her name is Madison. She is a stripper, though not at Shakers. DJ Steve wasn't able to be a sober parent for most of her life. She has stated on facebook that she suffers from “abandonment issues.” That might stem from Loe's multiple DWI arrests over the past few decades and his struggles with functioning as an adult. Not only does Loe try to destroy the lives of dancers, but he is also selfish enough to drive drunk, get multiple DWI charges and potentially murder innocent people on the roads.

The following entries on Shakers Studies will examine the dancers with whom Loe and the Robinson family shared a mutual disdain for me. As a final bit of advice on Loe, for future dancers who may experience his harassment or intimidation— just imagine Loe stumbling, bending over, spreading his butt cheeks apart for jail police after his drunk driving arrests, putting on his jump suit and crying himself to sleep on a cement slab while his wife and daughter went hungry. That is who he is. When Loe is doing everything in his meager power to break you open and cause harm, just think about that blowhard in those moments.

Shakers Studies: DillWeed666

DillWeed666 is a handlebar that Shakers manager Dillon Maynard made in is younger days. His accounts with this handlebar were mostly deleted from the internet, coincidentally around the time that Dillon became acquainted with StripperLaborRights.com. Luckily I was able to save this photo of DillWeed666 before it disappeared:

Dillon's voice sounds exactly like James Hetfield's from Metallica. He usually speaks in monotone. Occasionally, his words come out Southern. When I first went to Shakers, it was Dillon who had me sign the first lease agreement. He's come up in a few Shakers Studies posts already. Dillon is a balding twenty-something who is the main manager at Shakers. Even Dan Robinson's kids aren't as in charge around that place as Dillon is. He is mild-mannered and attached to the Robinson family as though they are his own family. He gives off an orphan vibe and lacks a certain confidence, as though he was neglected early on. Dillon spends most of his waking hours working at Shakers and has spent his birthday and vacations with the Robinsons.

Dillon doesn't get excited a lot. When he does, such as when he is watching a sportsball game, he walks with a bounce in his step and moves about like a jumping bean. At times there is a goonish white boy swagger to him, like if a hip hop song comes on that he enjoys. Dillon's musical tastes aren't limited to just one genre; he also likes Nickleback and The Black Keys.

Dillon has roots in the American Southeast and has slightly inbred facial features. Researching Dillon’s genealogy on ancestry.com is on my long-term to-do list, to see where he and I link up. I just had this instinctual feeling while working at Shakers that we are distant cousins. I would be willing to put money on it being in the 6th-14th range.

I dislike Dillon because he is a complicit participant in the misclassification and violence in Shakers. In the beginning, he did a good job of reciting everything he was supposed to recite. He probably had a lot of training and instruction from Dan Robinson and/or Dan Robinson’s attorney. Dillon doesn’t actually care about labor rights though. Last year after I made the post about a Seville manager talking quietly and nodding his head to avoid being audio recorded, Dillon started doing it. Last year after I told the harassing DJ Steven Loe that I didn’t want to go on stage and knew my rights, Dillon avoided me for the rest of the night. It is better for managers to avoid dancers who assert their rights, so they can pretend like they don’t know anything in case the club gets sued later. Fortunately I was assertive enough with Dillon to trap him and clearly record myself speaking with him about my rights and clearly record him acknowledging that he knew what happened. He was reluctant to participate in that conversation, but because he is a passive turd, I got him to anyway. I never saw Dillon throw out a customer for taking pictures or putting their hands on dancers, so I really hate him for allowing predators to feel comfortable. During my last handful of shifts, he would ask me why I was working there at all or suggest that I not work there, in an attempt to get me to leave. Dillon was aware that my vehicle and my body were being threatened with vandalism, violence and death. He didn't care enough to do anything about it. He mocked me by talking about “rights” and said that I should call the cops if it was so bad. Dillon knows that I wouldn't call the cops, and he kind of just stood around while his friends did horrible things. He’s just kind of this apathetic lump of poo floating along in the river of life, doing his job and loving the Robinsons. Complicit people and apathy have always been historically important for maintaining oppressive systems.

Dillon’s eyelids are often half-closed. Whenever we were outside together and a train was going by, he would gaze out at it in the darkness of the night until it rushed away. Dillon is a submissive worker and never sexually harassed any of the dancers that I was aware of. His romantic history with full figured women suggests that he is a chubby chaser. Last year after I left Shakers, his most recent girlfriend sent me a facebook friend request. When I asked her why, she said it was an accident. When I asked her why she was looking at my page, she did not answer me. Dillon blocked me after that, even though I never messaged him about it.

Shakers Studies: Dan Robinson

Dan Robinson is the patriarch of a petite bourgeois family in Eastern Nebraska. He didn't want to have a boss, so he decided to be self-employed. Some self-employed men own gas stations. Some sell insurance. Some make apps. Dan Robinson was compelled to open a strip club, where he could treat dancers as though they are employees, but lie to them by telling them that they are independent contractors or lease holders. That way, he didn't have to give them benefits, a basic wage, pay taxes on them or be held responsible for employee liabilities, such as title VII violations. He still needed to keep his club running and attractive to patrons, so he enforced a bunch of rules that he knew aren't supposed to exist for non-employees-- such as making dancers show their genitals to people, participate in a stage rotation and charge certain amounts of money for their lap dances.

After Dan lost a misclassification lawsuit, he took a bunch of rules away. He kept some of them and just had other people enforce them, such as the DJ. He needs to have his bully DJ friend, Steven Loe, enforce the rules, to make it seem like he had nothing to do with it himself. That way, he can deny anything in court if he gets sued later. He mostly gets away with it, because strippers are usually stupid, vulnerable and cannibalistic. Sometimes a smart brave one comes along to sue the club or pass out Know Your Rights fliers, but it's still been pretty easy for Dan to get away with exploiting women workers. He didn’t enforce the same rules on me, because he found out about my notoriety and didn’t want me to sue him. Then, he decided to just switch over to employee status, but do it in a way that would make me look really bad so that gullible dumbass strippers would get mad.

In September 2017, somebody named Jen Roth left an internet review of Shakers that states:

“Management is trash. Pure trash. This place is a joke. The owner never pays up and/or is always drunk and playing grab ass.”

I never encountered Dan drunk or violating people’s physical boundaries, but if you are Jen Roth or have encountered that behavior, please contact me through the tab at the top of this page. I’d like to know more about that comment.

Dan tried to open a second Shakers in Central Nebraska a few years ago, but that business venture failed.

On one of my last nights at Shakers, a young woman named Ashley Dawn came in to work. I had never met her before, but I was telling her how Dan Robinson lost a lawsuit earlier that year and recently decided to switch over to employee status recognition since I came along. It was a frenzied night when Ashley was in, because many dancers knew about my website at that point and were using violent tactics to try to scare me away, such as ramming an arm into my throat and discussing the shooting of guns. Ashley Dawn told me that some of the dancers who had remained at the club despite the suit “love their owner” very much and didn't want the club to change. She informed me that she had worked at Shakers sporadically over the course of about a decade. What has stuck with me throughout this past year is fact that Ashley Dawn referred to Dan as the “owner” of strippers, who they love. It reminded me of slaves who loved their owners and stayed with the families after emancipation. Dan Robinson has cultivated a quaint little stable of loyal sex workers for himself, who are willing to throw down for him if need be. That night with Ashley Dawn, and some of my remaining shifts in late December 2017, were like that scene in Twister with Helen Hunt, when she tied herself to metal piping in the middle of a tornado as it lifted her body into the air and rapidly spun all around her. Dan knew about all of the physical danger that I was in at Shakers, but just didn't do anything about it. He didn't like it very much that I was asserting my rights so strongly at that point and passing out Know Your Rights fliers.

Dan Robinson does this shtick where he pretends to be a person who cares a lot about social justice and progressive change. Central to his shtick is an obsession with hating Donald Trump and being a Democrat. His facebook has a lot of cartoon memes and news articles about his hatred of Donald Trump. It is similar to the way so many liberals loved to hate George Bush for eight years but didn't care about Barack Obama's drone war. One would think that a man like Dan, who enjoys violating so many labor rights, would be in favor of Donald Trump as president, who recently made it pretty much illegal to picket union strikes. Trump-hating ShitLibs are often misdirected and confused people, though, so there is no rhyme or reason to what they proclaim to be their guidelines. Dan is an outspoken advocate of animal welfare if it is pertaining to dogs, but he enjoys eating meat and exploiting a lot of other species. Dan implemented a recycling system in Shakers, for all of the plastic cups and disposable items that he sells. Dan made it a rule that Shakers podium staff have to watch TV or look away instead of staring at the dancers (which is awesome), but Dan is a-OK with allowing the DJ to harass dancers over the microphone whenever he wants to. Dan doesn’t express opposition to America’s imperialistic involvement in Occupied Palestine, and from the looks of his facebook friends list, probably never will.

When I came to work at Shakers in the Summer of 2017, I inherited the fruits of Elizabeth Mays and Kathleen Neary's labor. I have thanked them for it multiple times, and here I will again: Thank you, Kathleen, for being a great attorney. Thank you, Elizabeth, for having the courage to sue Dan Robinson. Thank you for suing this awful man for worker misclassification. I am glad I didn't have to clean the bathroom, be told to “act like a lady,” be directed on when I am allowed to go into the dressing room, or follow any of the other stupid club rules that Dan took away after he lost. I am thankful that I didn't have to follow rules as strictly as past dancers did, and that when he learned about my internet celebrity status, I didn't have to follow any rules at all. It was cool that he entertained the idea of switching to employee status, but ultimately that was just another one of Dan’s schticks. It is unfortunate that Dan appealed the lawsuit and doesn’t have to pay Elizabeth Mays money that is rightly hers, even though he knows that he violated labor rights.

Dan has a speech impediment, as though his tongue is too large to fit inside of his mouth. He struggles with clearly pronouncing words without sounding muffled and lisping. In the beginning of my time at Shakers, Dan and I didn't chat much. He didn't talk to a lot of the dancers aside from his handful of loyal ones who love him. Once the Robinsons discovered who I am, he just kind of spent time wearily watching me from afar and instructing his staff to give me monologues about how I am free to do what I want. After a while, he began talking to me ALL THE TIME, as though he wanted to be pals.

It was really annoying, so I pretended to be really into sports. During slow times when I wasn’t reading or doing math, I kept my eyes on the big screen TV, while basketball or football were on. I gained the reputation around Shakers of being a real sports nut. A little secret about me that I kept from the Robinsons is that I FUCKIN HATE SPORTS. I do not understand anything about sportsball and don’t ever want to. The points, teams, moves and strategies of the games were not something that I paid attention to at all. I was just pretending to be really into the games. I just stared at the pixels on the screen and zoned out into a zen meditation, hoping nobody brought up something about the game that I would have to converse about, because then my secret would be discovered. It was a great way to avoid talking to Dan Robinson, but sometimes he still got me to chat. I adopted a German Shepherd while I was in Nebraska, so a lot of our conversation revolved around my German Shepherd, shelter animals and related subjects.

During my last couple of weeks working at Shakers, after I decided to assert my rights and not go on stage, Dan Robinson returned to not talking to me at all. Dillon Maynard said to me, “He's got nothing to say to you” in a very hostile tone. Dan would still nod his head and make facial expressions if he was standing next to me talking to Dillon, but he didn’t make any noises that my audio recorder could pick up. Around this time, I thought it would be funny to bring in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and just lounge around reading it in front of him. This little act of resistance was mildly antagonistic to Shakers, but nothing to what I experienced in terms of physical assault, threats and intimidation from their allies.

Despite my problems with the Robinsons, I still want them to stay in business. Conservative Republicans and Christians in the state of Nebraska are currently trying to shut down the few clubs that exist. Before last week’s midterms, conservatives released a commercial with a talking fat silohette, who claims to have worked in the clubs. She describes behaviors and practices in the clubs that are labor violations, but does not use the term “labor violations” or discuss labor rights whatsoever. The goal of the commercial is to restrict club operations. Depriving strippers of their income is no way to reform or encourage their labor rights. Not surprisingly, Republican candidates won big in the state of Nebraska last week. Because of all of this, I cannot help but think that people like Dan Robinson and I are on the same team sometimes. That makes me cringe a little bit. For me, strip clubs are a trap door away from the rest of society, a wind fall, a resting point, an escape. I know they will always be there for me if times get rough. For that, I am appreciative of proprietors who open and operate them. I was googling the Robinsons while I worked at Shakers, and saw that Dan was participating in Waverly community government meetings. His name was on their minutes records. While working there, I often wondered how Shakers stayed in business without being shut down. It makes me wonder how much time he has spent having to communicate with local conservatives who try to crush the business. In activism, there is the phrase that says you have no real friends and no real enemies. Sometimes I feel that way about the Robinsons.

Shakers Studies: Here's to You, Tyler Robinson

Dreamy, isn’t he? Regard the saintly tilted eyebrows. I called him Ty. If you look closely at this pic, you can see he is wearing a stylish pair of American flag shorts.

Tyler is Dan Robinson’s youngest heir to the Shakers throne, and most aesthetically gifted in the genetics department. With dimples and bone structure like that, Tyler needn’t hide his face with hair. He’s about six feet tall. I think there are other Robinson siblings besides Dustin and Tyler, but they were the two who worked at Shakers while I was there. I always thought Tyler looked like Draco Malfoy, but his demeanor was the complete opposite of Malfoy’s. It makes me sad that someone as sweet and darling as Tyler is associated with all of the horrible fucking people from Shakers. He turned 21 around the time that I was there. I hope he breaks away from that place and does wonderful things with his life, but I’m not sure if he will.

When I first started working at Shakers, he kind of just stood in the cash register area, observing the other staff work, occasionally helping out. He smiled a lot, bashfully, as though he hadn’t a lot of experience seeing naked women. He did managerial tasks on slower nights, such as coming upstairs to the dressing room while I was disrobed, to have me sign a new contract. He did not make me feel uncomfortable or sexually harass dancers in any way that I was aware.

There are so many workplace supervisors in the world who will sexually harass their female subservients through sexual innuendo and euphamism, body shaming, obsessively staring at their body parts and discussing them with other men in the workplace, hitting on temps. There are angry little men with Napoleon syndrome and tiny hands in the world, who blame their life problems on Affirmative Action and welfare recipients. The world has supervisors like that in the world, for sure. Tyler was the opposite of that kind of a supervisor.

I genuinely enjoyed working with Tyler and never wanted him to think that he would end up on the site with a bad post. Near the end of my time at Shakers when the staff was trying to strategize on how to get rid of me, Tyler stopped pleasantly saying hello. It was a real bummer, but even then he still couldn’t help but be kind.

If any of my readers are willing, I’d like to know who the mother of these Robinsons are. I’ve looked online and cannot find anything. Dan Robinson is single, and occasionally posts memes on his facebook about how his ex dislikes him. Who is this woman who gave her offspring cutesy 90’s pop names like Dustin and Tyler? I hope Tyler strays from the family business and doesn’t become hardened and mean like Michael Corleone did in The Godfather.

Shakers Studies: Joyce Schuster and Dustin Robinson

Joyce Schuster is in a long-term romantic relationship with Dustin Robinson, who is the son of Shakers owner Dan Robinson. They did a lot of paperwork and cashier stuff at Shakers while I worked there. Joyce used to dance at Shakers, where Dan had the opportunity to see her strip. That has to be a strange subject at family gatherings. If any of my readers have knowledge of that subject ever coming up at Robinson family gatherings, please let me know through the contact tab at the top of this page.

Joyce Schuster was the first person at Shakers to tip me off that my website had been discovered. Before the monologues, DJ harassment or dancer gossip had ever started, Joyce displayed certain facial expressions and body language that people do after they've googled me. She didn't have to say anything; I just knew. It was only a couple of weeks into working at Shakers, and I was surprised that I had been discovered so quickly.

Joyce told me that she stopped dancing at Shakers when the rule was removed about customers touching dancers. I informed her that I usually didn't allow customers to touch me, and that it is still possible to operate like that in the club. Joyce told me that she didn't like having to argue about it with customers, who would bring up the other dancers who did allow them to touch. Sometimes I’d punch dudes for trying to touch me, and the Robinsons were fine with it. Shakers never made me give customers a refund if they left the VIP room early.

Joyce and Dustin were somewhat normal people in this strange and skeezy environment. In a lot of clubs I have worked, the owner will have a slimy son with some plastic surgery addict girlfriend tagging along to party with him. Joyce and Bearded Dustin were humble and modest. They appeared to be a young and kindly liberal couple one might see shopping at a co-op. Joyce and Dustin both expressed liberal opinions about things like immigrant rights, politics and animal welfare. Sometimes, I felt ambivalent about them. Sometimes, their auras felt good to be around.

Dustin's facebook has some posts over the years that are offensive to women. He slut shames, as well as expresses certain ideas that are consistent with the ideas of Men's Rights Activists. Dustin's beard is cool looking, but underneath it all, he is the weak-chinned son of a strip club owner. Joyce is probably the best he can get. Mutual to that, Joyce probably couldn't do much better than someone like Dustin.

Joyce and Dustin saw the frenzied nutcase dancers harassing me, heard the kooky DJ attempting to break me down, knew about drunk Rick. They were there with Shakers through the lawsuit of Elizabeth Mays. They know that Dan Robinson breaks, or borderline breaks, labor laws and manipulated dancers with his temporary switch to a type of employment that would be undesirable. When I began explaining worker rights to new dancers after they asked me why I wasn't going on stage, Joyce looked worried and told the Robinsons about it while pointing at me. As with many ShitLibs in many situations around the world, I just don't understand the hypocrisy.

Shakers Studies: Devon

Do any of my readers have the surname of a Shakers staff member who went by Devon? He was the very skinny young man who served soft drinks and expressed sentiments of disgust whenever rambunctious customers were degrading the dancers. I didn’t like it when Devon watched me on stage, because I knew he was judgmental about dancers.

Sometimes Devon complained about feeling tired, because of his multiple wage slave jobs that were draining him of energy.

When it came out that I am a labor activist who has sued some strip clubs, Devon became even more rude to me than he was before. One night I almost missed my house fee and thought I would be terminated. Devon said “Haha” during a conversation between Dillon and I. It struck me as strange that a scrawny, fatigued victim of capitalist greed like Devon would not be in favor of my type of activism, but then again, what’s the matter with Kansas?

What’s the matter with Devon in Nebraska? Will someone please send me his surname so I can research him on Google? I know almost nothing about him, other than his strange face that is shaped like male genitalia.

Shakers Studies: Creepy Customers

I wish I had all of their names to post on the site, but unfortunately I don’t. I must resort to including them all, mostly nameless, in one post. If you have any of their names, please contact me through the contact tab at the top of this page.

I’ve made a previous post in response to a Nebraska political figure who was running on the platform that clubs like Shakers are sources of “trafficking” that need to be more regulated. While I wouldn’t describe what goes on at Shakers as “trafficking,” the club is undeniably a brothel.

In so many instances, I heard and saw brothel activities at Shakers. While I didn’t participate in full service myself, which often angered the customer base, it is my firm believe that the full service sex workers who provide for clients in Shakers are the reason it stays in business, despite the club’s lack of advertising. Sometimes at the beginning of my shifts when I would watch customers bumble into the club from their farms or factories or wherever else in the rural breadbasket of America’s underbelly, it reminded me of watching an episode of “To Catch a Predator” with Chris Hansen.

In the wasteland of grotesqueries that was the Shakers client base, one geriatric, hefty man named Gary really stands out to me. Gary was the type of customer mainstream America was afraid of, the type of customer one might see in a John Waters film or Texas Chainsaw massacre. His face looked like it was melting off, or like he had skinned another person’s face and was wearing it as a loose mask over his own face. His eyeballs drooped like a frying egg yolk in the hot sun. He sat in his truck in the parking lot long before Shakers opened in the evening, and often had baked goods that he prepared for everybody. Some of his recipes included cream cheese pinwheels and pork bread. One time I asked him if he ever ejaculated into the batter. He wouldn’t answer a yes or no, and instead just laughed. Gary would sit on the stools in front of the stage and tip one dollar per dancer, per set. However, because I usually did not get fully nude, Gary would often withhold a dollar from me. He would inform me that he was punishing me for not getting fully nude, and complain about it to the DJ. Sometimes if I was getting a lot of money from other customers and got fully nude for them, Gary would hold a dollar up after I got off stage and wave it around, in an attempt to get me to walk over to him. He wanted to reward me with one dollar, for getting fully nude. I usually did whatever I could to avoid him seeing me. He didn’t want to get up off of his stool to hand me the dollar, so he would just make high-pitched noises, like one might make to a small mammal in order to make it come over. I didn’t go by him though, because I didn’t care about his stank dollar. This made him more angry and confused, which caused him to complain more. Gary’s favorite dancer was a trollish little recovering addict named Sash, who wore a diaper and dressed as a toddler. She would often sit on his lap and receive massages from him, while staring defiantly at me, as though she had one over on me for doing that.

Gary would sometimes bring his relatives into the club, several of whom worked at the Hormel pork factory. Some of Gary’s relatives get by in life by stabbing and murdering pigs for a living. They would share tales of things like neck stabbing rates per day, or pigs escaping from where they were delivered in the factory, and group efforts to try to find them hiding in other departments of the factory. One of Gary’s pig murdering relatives, with a name that escapes me, had a problem with me reading in the club and doing mathematics. Although he didn’t spend money, he didn’t like it that I wasn’t acknowledging his presence while he was in the club, so he would ask me if I was in school, or do dumb impressions of me reading, like an old fashioned schoolyard bully. He was a dumb guy with nothing going for him, so it confused him why someone would want to read a book or learn.

Because Shakers was paranoid that I was going to sue them, the owner and DJ used to have their friends come to the club and pretend to be normal customers. The DJ would have various perverts and biker friends of his ask me questions about my job and my thoughts on him. Because I am not stupid, have been in the industry for a long time and understand human behavior, it wasn’t really a secret to me that they were attempting to be clandestine spies. One man who stands out was named Rick. He owned a roofing company and employed scabs to do his manual labor. Rick would get drunk before coming to Shakers and quote my blog to me while we were talking, but then not admit to knowing anything. When things became really tense at Shakers near the end, he threatened to spray battery acid in my face mafia-style, in order to get rid of me.

A tisket, a tasket— a basket of deplorables. Even when the club was slow, it was pretty easy for me to make money off of other people in this basket of deplorables, because they were not used to speaking with articulate dancers who were willing to talk dirty. Being in Waverly was like going in a time machine to like 1940, and whoa Nellie, did they get excited easily. There’s not much else going on out there for them. Unfortunately for dumb people in Nebraska, many of them were unable to discern the difference between talking dirty and being an actual prostitute. That made a lot of people really pissed off. While I am really good at fighting men and asserting myself, I do sometimes wonder what the less assertive, younger, newer dancers did when they started at Shakers, surrounded by so many prostitutes and dedicated customers. Most of the VIP rooms don’t have cameras.

The National Sexual Assault Hotline for RAINN is 1-800-656-4673.

Shakers Studies: The Stinky State

When I went into Shakers to ask for an audition, manager Dillon Maynard informed me that dancers do not have to audition. I simply had to show my ID and fill out some paperwork. No prior work experience was necessary to dance at Shakers, which is important to note, because it is a factor that is in favor of the argument that dancers are employees.

Shakers manager Dillon Maynard very clearly explained to all new hires that they are lease holders. Contracts were freely distributed to anyone who asked. Because Shakers wanted to treat dancers as lease holders, they had rental slots for every night, which were filled on a first come, first serve basis. I was almost always the first dancer to come to Shakers on shifts that I worked, so I was never turned down to work. Sometimes I worked for a couple of hours before leaving, and they didn’t care. I don’t know that I ever worked a full shift while there. Sometimes if all of the slots were filled for the night and a dancer came in later, she was told to leave. Shakers made exceptions for a long-time dancer of theirs named Karma. During my time at Shakers, I recall two dancers who were angry that Karma got to come in even though all of the slots were filled, while they were turned away. Other than that incident, Shakers complied with their slot rental space system that was supposed to be a first come, first serve basis with no exceptions.

One thing that made Shakers stand out to me, is that the interiors were extremely cute and well maintained. There were black and white photos on the walls of people like Johnny Cash, which added to the club’s quaint, Americana hipster vibe. There is handcrafted masonry work in a few different parts of the club, sculptures of naked people, clean facilities and soft pink lighting. These things make a difference. Sometimes in clubs that allow dancers more freedoms, there tends to be disgusting interiors and unpleasant spaces with regards to things like sanitation, plumbing, masonry, lighting, flooring and carpentry. Shakers wasn’t like that.

Once in a while, I got sexually harassed by a customer or had my photo taken while I was on stage. Shakers was cool with me doing things like jumping off of the stage completely naked and picking a fight with customers who had violated my boundaries. Rather than being told that I had to rely on the employed staff of Shakers to tend to such issues, I was able to act as my own bouncer, in a way that a non-employee is able to do. I considered it an aspect of hiring my own helpers, or helping myself, that was part of my self-employment.

There are other economic realities tests that are more detailed than the seven-factor test that I used for this first portion of Shakers Studies. Google is a great resource for finding and determining all of the factors. With my experience suing strip clubs, though, I knew that suing Shakers probably would not have worked out for me. Labor lawyers agreed with me, including attorney Kathleen Neary, who beat Shakers earlier that year. Other lawyers suggested that while they would consider taking clients who danced at Shakers and didn't know their rights, my distribution of Know Your Rights fliers and the monologues that Shakers staff delivered to me were demonstrating that Shakers allowed me to assert my rights.

Shakers had no stupid t-shirt sales, no hourly gathering where all of the dancers are required to walk across stage, no mandatory minimum amount of hours worked, no requirement to do anything specific on stage, no dress code, no pressure to sell bottles of booze. For all intents and purposes, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted there. But, just because Shakers complied with labor laws for me doesn’t mean that they complied with them for everybody. In fact, they probably would not be in business if all of the dancers knew their rights and exercised them like I did. That is probably another reason why they made the temporary switch to employee status.

As stated that in the beginning of this series, Shakers will always be gambling when they refuse to categorize dancers as employees, but run the operation and invest in their building. Their temporary decision to change over to employee status is fascinating to me, because it demonstrated what is possible with persistence.

Just because Shakers didn’t want to get sued again and let me do whatever I wanted, doesn’t mean they don’t still suck. There was a good handful of horrible people who made it damn near impossible for me to make a living there, and they are to be outed on StripperLaborRights.com. They are to be dissected, described and never forgotten so long as the internet exists. If there’s one rule in life that I follow, it is to fear stupid people in numbers. When they get together, they can make the Earth shake.

When I was a child, I described Nebraska as “the stinky state.” It was an eight-hour gap of feces-and-urine-filled air, during road trips from Chicagoland to Colorado every Summer. It was a place to plug one’s nose. Nebraska is a vast emptiness that separates beautiful places from one another, but with it’s grotesque stench and quiet nothingness, there is beauty in the absurd. So, let’s unplug our noses, unroll the windows and take a whiff, as we barrel along the highway, into the second portion of Shakers Studies.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #7

The seventh factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

“The degree of independent business organization and operation.”

I was able to organize and operate my business in any way that I wanted to at Shakers, without owners or management telling me otherwise. While they eventually encouraged other dancers to harass me, and could have possibly caused a constructive discharge case, this factor is arguably still in Shakers favor. I didn’t feel like putting forth the effort to argue otherwise.

As you can see, factors 5, 6 and 7 are vague and can overlap. For other clubs I have sued or am suing, the argument can be made that the constant badgering from staff and owners, about what to do and when, indicates that a dancer is unable to operate and organize her own business.

The next post will wrap up the factors portion of Shakers Studies, discuss the factors I didn’t mention in this small list of seven, and segue into the personality profiles of the people who I encountered while working there.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #6

The sixth factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

“The amount of initiative, judgement, or foresight in open market competition with others required for the success of the claimed independent contractor.”

This factor is referring my hustle— my hustle that Shakers manager Dillon Maynard attempted to audio record me talking about near the end when he began asking me about my thoughts on hustling. In legal proceedings, I am often battered by the defendant, who usually attempts to make me seem poor, dumb and unattractive. Many people in society who have not been to a strip club, and who have a Hollywood idea of what a stripper is, do not understand my hustle. Most people who have never been in my direct strip club working environment do not know or understand my magick. That’s ok with me.

Folks, I am a woman who does my taxes and who is currently embroiled in pending legal proceedings. There is nothing to gain by explaining it, so let’s just move on, to factor se7en.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #5

The fifth factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

"The alleged contractor's opportunities for profit and loss."

This factor and subsequent factors are kind of similar, but I'll try to interpret what this means. Several things that Shakers did might apply to this factor.

Most strip clubs spend significant amounts of money advertising their business to the public, in order to attract patrons. This has usually been in my favor during lawsuits, because the club is the one spending time and money to attract the patrons. Clubs have tried to argue that strippers advertise with social media, but since social media is usually free and not always dependable, it hasn't always worked out for the club to say this. Shakers was a lot different though, because as far as I was able to see, they didn't spend money on advertising AT ALL.

While I worked at Shakers, there wasn't always a lot of opportunity for profit. Shakers was often dead and dancers would complain that the club needed to be advertising more. Secretly, I was thinking about how interesting it all was that Shakers didn't make overt efforts to attract clients. Some of the dancers had regulars who had been coming there for a long time, and came in to visit them. Shakers does have a facebook presence, but that was all that I think they do. I don't have enough information about their past advertising attempts to compare. Shakers had a friend-spy to come in and talk to me about advertising, so I think maybe they stopped after the lawsuit. The slowness of the club had everyone at an economic disadvantage, and I legitimately worried how much of a struggle it must have been for the Robinson family to survive like they were off of their club.

Having to go on stage when called and having a piece of paper with dance prices on them were two things that other dancers experienced which affected their opportunities for profit and loss. Since I was treated special and heard special monologues all the time, this factor didn't apply to me according to most lawyers.

Factors six and seven are kind of similar to factor five, so I will describe other things at Shakers in those posts while acknowledging that they can also be applied to this one.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #4

The fourth factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

"The nature and degree of control by the principal."

The "principal" was Shakers. We will explore some of the control situations below.

When I first started working at Shakers, before they knew who I was, I was told to participate in the stage rotation, with music selected by the DJ, rotation selected by the DJ and set lengths selected by the DJ. However, shortly after I started working there, when they discovered who I am, the DJ and manager began coming up to me and delivering paragraph-length monologues, explaining to me that stage rotation was not mandatory. I participated in the stage rotation until the last week or so of work. When I stopped participating, I encouraged others to stop participating as well. Prior to this, I asked around to find out if other dancers were receiving such a disclaimer about stage rotation, or if they were instructed to just do it no matter what. The latter was the case.

Prior to being sued, Shakers had dress code rules, in an attempt to control how the dancers looked. When I worked there, from the very beginning, I saw no such dress code. There were multiple dancers wearing footwear such as ballerina slippers, sock-like slippers, athletic shoes and boots. There was one dancer who sometimes dressed like a dinosaur in a full-body onesie. This is the type of activity that a self-employed person would engage in, and while a dinosaur walking around was probably not good for business, it was interesting to see the lack of rules unfold before me. The most disgusting outfit was the mentally ill woman who dressed like a baby and brought diapers to work, which will be covered in a future post specific to her. As nauseating as that was, I thought to myself, "Ok, this place REALLY does not want to get sued again."

I've been bullied a lot in the strip club world for not always shaving off all of my body hair. I've been fired from places for it. Shakers was a place run by bearded men in v-neck t-shirts, filled with dancers with more bush than I had ever seen in my life. In many ways I was able to exhale at Shakers like I had never experienced before-- not even in places like Boulder, Colorado or Portland, Oregon. There were definitely times when I thought, "This is how it's supposed to be. I could stay here forever."

Thoughts about staying weren't realistic though, because the backdrop to all of it were the ticking time bomb noises and the paranoia that Shakers exhibited about me being there at all.

Shakers had dedicated dance areas depending on whether or not it was individual songs being sold, or price of the "VIP" rooms. They took a modest cut of $5 for the individual songs sold, and a reasonable cut of the rooms sold. Near the end, I did a funny thing where instead of giving dances in their designated areas, I started doing them out on the main floor at the tables or wherever my customers were sitting. If I was really a self-employed person, that was my right to do that without being controlled. This upset Shakers, because they weren't getting cuts of those songs. Low-IQ dancers, who were eager to get me in trouble, would scurry over to management, urging them to take action. Because Shakers didn't want to get sued, they just pitifully watched me do it, knowing they could do nothing (directly) to stop it. Eventually their dancer friends began harassing me. Whenever I told management about the harassment, they reminded me that they could not control self-employed people. I was instructed to tell the police about my problems, by manager Dillon Maynard, who viciously smirked when suggesting it, knowing that I dislike police.

Prior to Shakers discovering my blog, I was bullied by DJ Steven Loe for reading in the club. I made a post about it without naming him. That post can be found in the search bar with the key words "reading in the club." After Shakers discovered who I am, their attitude toward my studies changed dramatically. I had to take entrance exams to get into the trades earlier this year, so I had to brush up on my fractions and algebra. Not only did I read prose books at Shakers, but I started bringing in math text books and doing thousands of problems during my down time. It REALLY pissed some people off. But, by the beginning of 2018, I was a wiz of all the trades tests.

From the beginning, Shakers was cool about coming into work whenever and leaving whenever, as they should be. I've covered this in past posts without naming them, such as the post "prostitution accusations as a control tactic." This leniency was a signal that they were trying their best not to get sued again by anyone.

Shakers is a fully nude club, but I didn't get fully nude on stage very often. Other dancers, particularly dumb ones, cowardly ones, or ones who had worked there prior to their losing the lawsuit-- the majority of the dancers-- always got fully nude on stage. They thought it was mandatory. Customers complained that I wouldn't get fully nude on stage, and would tattle on me to their loser friend, DJ Steven Loe. While Shakers really wanted to make me get fully nude on stage, that was another rule they avoided enforcing, to avoid a lawsuit. All the while, I would wonder what it was like to be a person so pathetic, he would go to a strip club as a customer and complain to a DJ that the woman on stage wasn't showing her genitals. The mindset of that was fascinating to me, absurdly hilarious and grotesque. Other dancers would get mad about me not getting nude too sometimes, like somehow I was slighting them personally. Clubs that aren't fully nude, but misclassify, will usually have rules regarding when the top is supposed to come off.

Shakers had dance prices listed on a piece of paper, but did nothing to enforce those dance prices. For example, there is a club in Minnesota I worked at prior to Shakers, which sent dancers home if they sold songs for more than $10. That place definitely misclassified and deserves to lose a lawsuit.

One of my favorite things that Shakers did was refuse to touch our dance money. A lot of clubs make dancers turn over their money, and won't give it to us until the end of the night. It is sickeningly degrading and humiliating to be infantilized in that way. Shakers wouldn't allow customers to hand over money to them at the counter prior to dances. They would instruct the dancers to receive the money from the customers, and then hand it to the club. This delicate practice should be a bare minimum, but often isn't.

Most of the rules described in the original judgement were removed by the time I got to Shakers. If you have a question about a specific rule, feel free to email me. There were so many differences in control between the Elizabeth Mays decision and when I worked there, and I have not listed all of them in this post. The rules they did keep were removed for me specifically, verbally described to me in detail, once Shakers realized who I am. Shakers wouldn't let me get away with it long-term of course, but it was fun while it lasted. Sometimes at Shakers, I was able to distill all of the joy I felt there so intensely that my skin burned.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #3

The third factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

"The amount of the alleged contractor's investment in facilities and equipment."

Facilities and equipment at Shakers included things like stage, lighting, furniture, bar, DJ equipment and the building itself. All of these things were bought by the club. The dancers, who the club alleges were not employees, invested little if any money in objects or supplies used solely for their jobs.

While strip clubs sometimes attempt to argue that objects like makeup and lingerie are proof that dancers are contractors investing in their own businesses, these objects are basic hygiene and living expenses that any other employee would use. Strip clubs like to ask plaintiff dancers if they deducted any of their personal hygiene and grooming objects on their taxes. However, these kinds of objects cannot be deducted if used outside of the workplace.

The investment that the club makes in maintaining the business running is overwhelmingly in favor of employee status.

Shakers Studies: FLSA Factor #2

The second factor in determining whether a worker is an employee, under the fair labor standards act, is described as:

"The permanency of the relationship."

When I signed my first contract at Shakers when I first walked into the building, I was informed that I would have to sign another one in a month or so. In addition to the normal contract, Shakers also had dancers sign a specific contract for nights they weren't normally open. Shakers was willing to distribute contracts to dancers whenever one was requested.

The Shakers contract was very specific about how it would expire in a few months time. Dancers at Shakers informed me, several times, that they had to fill out new contracts every so often. Clubs create contracts that expire, to preserve their right to argue that their relationship with the dancers was not permanent. While Shakers preserved this right by including an expiration date on each of their contracts, it could be argued that Shakers kept dancers aboard who did not argue or protest their working conditions, while they banned dancers who gave them problems.

At the end of my time at Shakers, I asked my manager, Dillon Maynard, if I was going to be the only one not getting a job on January first. He wouldn't give me a yes or no answer about any of it or explain much of anything.

If you have worked at Shakers and feel as though you were not allowed back after your contract expired, but other dancers were allowed back, it is entirely possible that you were being misclassified, but that Shakers is hiding behind the ambiguity by using expiring contracts.

Shakers did not want me to be working there, but didn't want to risk firing me. One day after discussing the contracts with my manager Dillon Maynard, the DJ Steven Loe played a bunch of songs about New Year's Day being wonderful. He also played ticking time bomb noises, which he had done before, while staring me down.

It is these kinds of ambiguities and subtleties that Shakers utilized to dance around labor laws conflicting with the way they wanted to run things.