Loyalty to whom? by Arthur
Posted by Arthur | Blog, Reader Submissions | Posted on July 21st, 2007
editor’s note: I thought this was interesting enough to post just to see what people thought about it. Always love a controversial subject. To be clear – unless the boyfriend where to alert the bar owner of the situation beforehand then my guess is the bar owner would not even know a girl was getting sent money in the first place.
I was chatting to a farang bar owner in Pattaya last week. He’d had a situation where earlier this year a customer started dating one of his girls and was sending her money so she would not work in the bar.
Not surprisingly she took his money but continued to work. Customer found out and was angry that the bar owner didn’t tell him. His view was that the bar owner should be loyal to other farangs.
The bar owner disagreed 100%. He said his biggest challenge is getting and keeping good girls. If he got the reputation for ratting on them to customers he thinks he’d lose most of his staff. He said he has been asked ahead of time to inform on girls’ activities and has refused.
What do you think? As bar owners, would you take the same position? As customers would you expect otherwise?
25 Responses to “Loyalty to whom? by Arthur”
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Translator
i agree with the bar owner…stay out of it…if the owner had told the guy she was fooling around, he may have lost the punter AND the girl.
buyer beware should be the byline
View all comments by bo
Spying on bargirls is the lowest point that a man can sink to, but then a real man would either be smart enough not to get involved in this kind of arrangement, or to figure out who to trust.
View all comments by Bababobo
I agree – it’s not the bar-owner’s responsibility to tell the idiot Farang that his lady is still working the bar. The bar-owner is under no obiligation to inform any guy what his employees are doing when the man is back in the world. The lady “lied” – the punter should be mad at her. Like you said, it’s hard enough for a bar to find and retain good women, why ruin it by getting involved in the dating scene ? Also, the bar still kept the woman working there, making money for him. It’s a business, plain and simple – not a dating “site”.
View all comments by calvin
Not surprisingly indeed.
I think it’s best to leave the bar owner out of it. If a punter suspects that his girl is still working in the bar after having promised not to, then he should have a friend or PI check up on the girl — leave the bar owner out of it. Running a bar is hard enough as it is, and it is unreasonable for a punter to expect a bar owner to put the punter’s interests ahead of the interests of the bar.
Similarly, when I am sick I go out of my way NOT to take advantage of my neighbor and friend who is a physician — sure, it would make my life easier if I could ask for a diagnosis as he is tending to his garden on a Sunday afternoon, but doing so is taking advantage of our friendship — if I want medical advice from him, I should visit him at his office. And if I want to know if my BG is lying to me, I should not put the manager in the uncomfortable position of having to let me know.
View all comments by Ling
If punter expects the bar to look after his girl then said punter should be prepared to pay up. Otherwise they should just shutup.
View all comments by joebkk
Agree with joebkk the customer should also pay the bar owner a monthly salary to update him on his BG location.
Bars are there to make money not babysit, why would the bar owner want to own-up on one of his girl’s? who could be the bars start attraction.
View all comments by ChangMai Sausage
Sounds like a new business model for the bars. I am going to research right away. All kidding aside I think the bar owners have enough to worry about and the punters need to understand what they are dealing with. This is a business. For the girls and the bars. Granted there is a fine line here – like when we talked about customer service and bad bar girls but I think the idea that a guy “rescues” a girl from the bar and wants the bar owner to help enforce the deal is a little over the top.
I could tell stories about issues we have seen with customers and bargirls but I don’t kiss and tell. Point being is that usually the stories don’t line up very well but many times we find that the girls are usually telling the truth to us because they want to keep their jobs for the most part. Many of them value their chance to stay employed with their friends over lying and losing their jobs and face with their co-workers. The really strange behavior tends to come from the customers. I could talk about the time with the old dude, his thai gf and the katoey but no one would believe me.
Good banter folks!
View all comments by smitty
The bar owner should not be involved in telling “sponsors” of girl’s activities. Any guy that sponsors a bg is asking for trouble, but there’s one born every minute.
View all comments by wedge
Maybe you should give a copy of Stephen Leathers “Private Dancer” to punters bar-fining for the 1st time. (charge of course?!)
View all comments by daywalker
I don’t know about “Private Dancer” as being a good tool for 1st timers. A great book, an entertaining read, some definite gems in their, but in my case I think reading that hurt rather than helped my first interactions.
I think realizing that they are working – by choice. This work pays them quite well, but more importantly makes them look good in front of their families. Realizing the cultural implications of the latter is key I think.
Helping the family (and thus looking good to her family) will pretty much take priority for any Asian woman over any relationship, bar girl or not.
View all comments by Rob
My choice?…..all of the above
View all comments by Smitty from the USA
IMHO, the bar owner should bitch-slap the farang. Then he should bitch-slap the farang again
One bitch slap for supporting a BG;
The other for trying to suggest that the bar owner take rice out of his own bowl.
Once the farang gets that, the bar owner should bitch slap him again just to make sure the message got across.
View all comments by The Asian Badger
I think the girl should get a lecture from the Bar owner about fucking over a customer. Then fired!
Just because this is Thailand, does it mean we throw OUR morals and integrity out the door?
View all comments by Khun J
I think the girl should be promoted to lead dancer, second class.
View all comments by Jack Dawson
Khun J: Perhaps it would help to distinguish between two classes of action: 1) actions that one is morally required to do –i.e. it would be wrong NOT to do them (for example, the negative action of refraining from killing innocent 10-year-old children just for kicks is an act of type 1; it would be wrong not to refrain from killing the children); and 2) actions that it would be good to do, but not wrong NOT to do (philosophers call this second class of actions “supererogatory”). In other words, if one performs an action of the second type, one has gone above and beyond the call of duty. For example, running into a burning building to save the baby of someone you don’t know is a supererogatory action. But failure to perform a supererogatory action ought not to be regarded as evidence of morally bad character — it simply means that one is not a moral saint. In everyday life, we are quite willing to regard a person as morally upright provided that he meets all of his duites of type 1, and even if he never performs a supererogatory action. And this way of assessing the moral character of agents is quite sensible, I think.
I invoke this distinction because I think doing so will help us understand why, on the one hand, your comment that the bar owner should reprimand and then fire the lying BG strikes some of us as plausible, but at the same time it seems absurd.
I suggest that the bar owner is NOT morally required to reprimand and fire the lying BG — that is, reprimanding and firing the lying BG is not an act of type 1. But it is an act of type 2; it would be morally good of the bar owner to perform the action, but doing so is going above and beyond the call of duty. It is supererogatory. And we should not regard the bar owner as morally culpable for failing to perform this supererogatory action, just as we should not hold it against you if you fail to run into a burning building to save the life of a stranger. Of course, if you or he decides to perform the supererogatory action, then more power to you. You have joined the league of moral saints.
(Here it is worth noting that Kant makes the novel argument that one has a duty never to tell a lie, even if it means loss of life. Read all about it in his essay, “Of a Suppossed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives.” So Kant would disagree with my way of applying the supererogatory distinction to the bar owner. But then I’m not a Kantian in the first place.)
View all comments by Ling
U huh.
View all comments by Khun J
I am not sure in this case how the girl has to be dealt with by the bar for the situation with the customer. As I have stated before – how would the bar even know this was happening. My guess is the girl was coming to work as normal and the guy was sending her money without any knowledge if the bar owner. Remember in most cases the bar stays out of this for a reason. So the guy comes back – finds out the girl was working and then gets mad at the bar owners? Not sure it all computes for me.
View all comments by smitty
Easy question: Was the girl doing her job at the bar? If the answer is yes, then the bar owner should have nothing to say about the whole situation.
More than that: The girl is working even though she really doesn’t have to….great work ethic – she should get a promotion
View all comments by Rob
Forget Kant remember ancient Rome and Zero Mostel:
“caveat emptor” …. enough already lets get on with the show …..
View all comments by nampla
I would need more facts than what have been given before making a decision but overall I won’t lie to a BG or a Customer, but I also won’t go out of my way to squeal on them UNLESS they are friends. Sometimes for me though it gets gray on when BG and Customers become friends and that’s when it gets tricky.
In the case above if I knew the BG was getting paid to not work at the Bar by a Customer, I would advise her strongly against working in the bar and tell her that if he asks me I will tell him she is working in the bar, because I won’t lie. I have done this once already and the girl decided against working in the bar.
I have been asked to spy and lie by both BGs and Customers and I always refuse. I always take the “it’s between you guys” line and I talk about how important it is for me to be Discrete. I have reported to a Friend that I saw his girlfriend out with a guy and on another instance I didn’t. It’s not always black and white so you just have to go with your gut sometimes.
View all comments by pmmp
Great discussion – although the philosophy made my brain hurt. Perhaps farang and Thai cultures recognize and reward supererogatory actions differently? That could be a reason behind so many of our Farang/Thai communication problems. That is an interesting combination of philosophy and anthropology. I see a Ph.D. thesis here.
Regarding the original conflict: I understand the farang in question was of the opinion that since the bar owner was a fellow farang he should have supported him. “Farangs should stick together”.
Whereas the bar owner saw himself as a first as a business owner in Thailand. It was more important to him to keep good relations with the girls who enable him to make a living. Hence the conflict.
If I was the bar owner I think the most sensible course is to keep my big mouth shut in all cases without exception. As pmmp hinted, making exceptions for “friends” (I’d tell Paul that I saw his girlfriend working in a bar becacuse he’s a good customer / friend./ But I won’t tell Peter because he’s only been in here once …) is a risky course.
In times past in analogous situations (although I am not a bar owner I’ve been in the middle similar situations) I have tried to be the good guy and ended up being blamed by both sides. Lose-lose for Khun Arthur.
One side note: in Bangkok there is the common practice of “buying a girl out of the bar” commonly for 10,000B. According to my Pattaya friend there’s no such convention in Pattaya. He sees losing girls to be girlfriends of customers as a cost of doing business. For his particular bar it has acquired a reputation as a place where girls meet men for long term relationships / marriage. Hence he gets more “long ball” girls applying for a job and more customers seeking same. That’s his market positioning so he is content with the situation.
View all comments by Arthur
Stick to your principles pmmp. Your business should be your priority but I like the fact that you won’t lie if asked. Any punter that pays a girl to stay out of the bar should know that there’s a fair chance that’s not going to happen, if they can’t accept that then they should get out of the relationship.
Thanks for the tour last week, always happy to help out with your ‘research’. I don’t know when we will be back but you can be sure we’ll be back at the Big Mango.
View all comments by Aussie Dave
Come on! Let’s get real here what sort of an idiot trusts a bar girl not to get right back to working the bar the minute he is out of the country!
The Bar owner has got nothing to do with the situation and can and should employ who he wishes, I think this is very much a case of a Bangkok naive newbie who hopefully now has been educated.
View all comments by Bill
All the punter has 2 do if he is suspicious, is 2 arrive unannounced & see for himself – lesson learn’t ( the hard way!!)
View all comments by Rusto1
Oh, come on. If the guy’s stupid enough to send money to this girl he’s only getting what he’s asking for!
Only date a “bar”girl if you’re prepared to deal with the stuff that comes along with it.
Otherwise, go snoop around in a university library!
View all comments by Linepigen