Monday, November 16, 2009

Let's Play Dress Up

As many of you could have guessed, Monday Night Football is big at Hooters. It's the busiest night of the week and the only thing that brings in more people than that is the UFC fights. I'm not exactly sure what the reasoning behind it is but every Monday night, the girls that are working have to dress up. There's a list of themes in the back that tell you what you will be dressing up as for each game and there's a little booklet with ideas of what to wear for each week.

I've worked almost every Monday Night Football since I started (tonight I have the night off though!!!) and at first, dressing up was fun. Now it's really just turned into an expensive pain in the ass. I spend, on average $50.00 every week on a costume that I will probably never wear again. I do make the money back in tips that night plus a lot more but if I saved that $50.00 every week, it wouldn't take me long to have enough money for new tires on my car. Which I desperately need before the snow comes...

It also is a bit of a scramble to get a costume together since the schedule for the next week usually up until the Thursday before. I don't work Thursdays, and although I could call and ask what days I work, I don't find out my schedule until Friday night, when I'm working and unable to go shopping for a costume. Saturdays I like to sleep in a little bit and then go out with friends and not think about work and then Sunday I work until about 5PM at which point all the stores close for the night. So Monday, in the 3 hours I have between school and work, I have to rush around the city trying to find myself a costume. Not fun and pretty stressful.

Last week, we had to dress as cheerleaders. So on Monday afternoon I went to 4 costume stores, all of which had no cheerleader costumes left. I went to a couple sex stores but decided that I didn't want people to actually see my breasts while I served them their food and putting a shirt underneath that top just wouldn't look right. I went to a fifth costume shop and found a pink cheerleader costume that came with white pompoms. It was $120.00. At that point, I was getting pretty desperate so I tried it on. The thing was too damn big. So I went to the mall and pieced a costume together. I got a white skirt, a red sweater with a big letter H (perfect!) on the front and some pompoms from the dollar store.

I got to work and changed into my costume. The other girls usually dress a little bit more revealing than me but not too much. This week, they outdid themselves, though. There were miniscule skirts with no shorts underneath, bare midriffs and v-necks cut so deep that nip-slips were inevitable. I still felt good about what I was wearing because I wouldn't constantly be worrying about what was hanging out of where. I walked over to the table where we were doing jump start and GM F told us to give him a second. He came back with a pair of scissors and handed them to Tink.

"Go fix HGWB."

Seriously? My skirt was kind of short and the sweater was a v-neck. It wasn't nearly as extreme as the other girls but it's not like I looked like I was wearing a burka or anything. Me and Tink went to the back and laughed about how ridiculous our job is. We cut an inch or two from my skirt and cut the neck of my sweater to make it a deeper V.

GM F was pleased with the results. I was glad I wore spandex shorts under my skirt.

Things like this happen a lot at Hooters. Most weeks, there's a girl who isn't showing enough skin and just a few weeks ago we were told that on the days when our city's hockey team is playing we were no longer allowed to wear jerseys or t-shirts for the team since, according to GM F, "nobody wants to go to Hooters and see a girl in a plain t-shirt serving their food."

I just have to laugh about it.

Friday, November 6, 2009

My Essay...

I did a research paper a little while ago for my English class and it was about Hooters and the Hooters Girls. I got an A on it so I thought I would share it with you guys... Let me know what you think of it!


The word “hooters” paints a colourful picture for a lot of people. The picture can be very different, depending who you ask. If you look up the definition on Word, for example, you will see that it is simply an “offensive term”. For many men, when there is a mention of Hooters Restaurant, visions of greasy wings, pitchers of beer and girls running around in microscopic, orange shorts are often what come to mind. Feminists see their efforts at empowering women vanish. They see a venue where women are exploited and men can act like pigs. For the employees of Hooters, the only thought that occurs to them is that prettier girls mean more money. You may have noticed that there is a recurring pattern between these different perspectives. The Hooters Girl is a large, if not determining, factor of Hooters’ success.

The vast majority of Hooters guests are straight men and the reasons for this are fairly obvious. The biggest reason is the Hooters Girls. What man wouldn’t want to be served his favourite food and pitcher upon pitcher of beer by a scantily clad waitress? According to one of my closest friends, going to Hooters is “like going to dinner and a show, only the show flirts with you and doesn’t sing irritating songs” (Lacroix). One of the unique things about Hooters that is illustrated in his comment is that the Hooters Girls are encouraged to sit with their tables and make friends. The friendlier they are, the more money they are likely to make. If they spend time with their tables, add a personal touch to the service they give and even flirt, it will be noticed and appreciated. I was told that one girl had a man order crab legs and since the girl had nobody else sitting in her section, she sat with him and cracked each crab leg for him. This earned her a $200.00 tip (Kamen). Exceptional service like this is what Hooters Girls are told to strive for.

Upon hiring, Hooters Girls get a handbook in which they sign multiple documents stating that they are aware of the fact that “the Hooters concept is based upon female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace” (34). Customers ask for phone numbers and offer a plethora of cheesy pick-up lines that they believe to be irresistibly charming. The Hooters Girls become impervious to all of these things and simply laugh it off as a joke while making a mental note to not pay too much attention to that customer in the future. Men seem to think that when one of the Hooters Girls is friendly to them, it must mean that they’re special. It couldn’t possibly be that, during their orientation, they are told it is their job to look like they’re enjoying themselves and to joke around, play games and entertain their tables (Neri). The management at Hooters makes it clear during interviews and orientation that you must be comfortable with your job and that you are more than welcome to leave at any time, should you have an issue with any of the job requirements.

Not everyone sees the way Hooters Girls are treated as being fair. Feminists do not agree with the Hooters concept and see the hiring of Hooters Girls to be exploitative and demeaning. Feminists argue that Hooters uses female sex appeal for the benefit of men. Girls are put into revealing uniforms and are made to ask questions with sexual undertones such as asking if a customer would like their wings breaded or “naked”, which is the Hooters term for non-breaded. Though this is true, Hooters management teams check in to make sure that the girls are not unhappy with their jobs and that they don’t feel uncomfortable performing their duties as a Hooters Girl. Another issue that feminists have with Hooters is their obvious rejection of anyone who is not conventionally attractive. The Hooters Girl Image Magazine states that the desired appearance of a Hooters Girl is one of an “All-American cheerleader, surfer girl and girl next door” (15). It is said in Battleground: Women, Gender, and Sexuality that feminists believe that “beauty is not a mechanism of nature so much as a political and economic tool to maintain a gender hierarchy of male superiority and female subjugation” (29). Based on that, the problem that feminists have with Hooters and the Hooters Girls is evident. The Hooters Girl, from the outside, seems to represent everything feminists are fighting to stop from happening. They are conventionally attractive, hired to serve mainly men and must wear an outfit that, in most work environments, would be deemed as being inappropriate. While I understand where the arguments of the feminist groups are coming from, I noticed that they are overlooking the fact that the Hooters Girls do their jobs because they want to. Nothing bad would happen to them if they were to decide to leave Hooters. In fact, most of the girls who work at Hooters stay there for a long time, mainly because of the money.

Hooters Girls know that they are using their sex appeal to attract a certain type of clientele. They know that the more they use their sex appeal, the more money they will make and they can use this to take advantage of their customers. A blogger, and Hooters Girl, who goes by the name of KH, believes this, saying:

At the end of the day,…, when I walk out the door with $150 tucked away in my wallet, I can laugh. Those men, with their sexist, classist worldviews have just paid my car payment for the month, and I only had to deal with them for a few hours. Who's being exploited here? (par. 16)

The women who work as Hooters Girls use their sex appeal to their advantage and benefit from the power that they have over men. As long as they feel comfortable with what they’re doing, who is to say it’s wrong?

The goal of any business is to make a profit and it is widely known that sex sells. Hooters doesn’t try to hide the fact that it is using sex to target a certain type of customer. The blogger, KH, that I had previously mentioned describes in the same post how Hooters Girls allow for the chain to charge prices that are unheard of at other restaurants since customers are receiving a unique experience. Where else can you go for wings, beer and pronounced cleavage (par. 16)? Men will pay an arm and a leg just to get some attention from one of the Hooters Girls and if an hour and a half of small talk brings an $80.00 tab and a $35.00 tip, what part of Hooters’ theory about Hooters Girls bringing in more money is wrong?

The employees have the same perspective as KH: if I’m going to make more money serving food in orange hot pants than I would in black dress pants, why shouldn’t I? Hooters Girls make more in tips than a server at another restaurant might make in the same amount of time, with the same number of tables. The average tip at Hooters is about 25% while in other restaurants 15% to 20% is more along the lines of what they see. Hooters Girls also have less side work to do. They don’t have to clean the bathrooms, sweep or mop, or prepare desserts, all of which are required of waitresses at most other restaurants. (KH, par. 1) Hooters Girls do less of the work for more money and, to me, that sounds like a good deal. Obviously, there are going to be people that judge Hooters Girls simply because of their job. Many of the assumptions that people make about Hooters Girls are that they are promiscuous, unintelligent and shallow. Though some Hooters Girls may be one, or two, or even all three of these things, for the most part Hooters Girls are university or college students who may or may not have a boyfriend and who have wider interests than just getting their hair and nails done. Much like any other restaurant staff, Hooters Girls can’t be put in one category. They are not all the same kind of person. Hooters Girls, like the Hooters franchise, are subject to the uneducated assumptions that people make about them.

Though it has faced much criticism and many attempted lawsuits because of the presence of Hooters Girls, Hooters remains a thriving restaurant chain. Hooters has a very competitive edge that has been working for them for over 20 years now and I can’t see them getting rid of this brilliant idea any time soon. Whether you love them or hate them, the Hooters Girls are here to stay.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Tilted Kilt Girl



I was checking out The Hooters Girl's latest post and it was about a new blogger who goes by "S". She is also a server and works in a place called Tilted Kilt. It's really the Scottish version of Hooters. They've got tartan and white knee highs instead of tacky orange and scrunch socks but the concept is basically the same.

S has started blogging about her job at Tilted Kilt. Although she only has 2 posts up at the moment, I'm sure her stories about what happens at "TK" will be great!

Take a look at Tilted Kilt Girl!

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Everything said here is my opinion alone. These statements are NOT NECESSARILY THE VIEWs AND/OR OPINIONs OF HOOTERS INC, HOOTERS OF AMERICA INC, OR OF ANY OTHER HOOTERS AFFILIATE. HOOTERS INC, HOOTERS OF AMERICA INC, AND OTHER HOOTERS AFFILIATES ARE IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH, "THE HOOTERS EXPERIENCE," AND THEY DO NOT ENDORSE OR SUPPORT, "THE HOOTERS EXPERIENCE."