Not often enough do we spare a thought for shot girls. Often the messianic saviour of the night, the shot girl keeps the party roaring on long after the pre-scheduled Irish Exits. She enchantedly comes to life at the pinnacle moment, with a twinkle in her eye, and uncanny powers to inspire raging club-goers to tap their phones with just the click of her heels.
Her mystical ability to make a hand-poured platter of drinks appear more appetising as the night progresses means she is, despite her best efforts, unable to escape her fate of being branded as the ‘loveable temptress’, one that robs unsuspecting drunkards blind (and looks good doing it).
Every shift promises to be a colourful concoction of alcohol-frenzied madness. From spilling drinks to marriage proposals, there’s never a dull moment on the job. The job itself is also cloaked in a thick cloak of mystery. Sure, the girls pour the drinks. But it’s the other club-goers who call the shots, controlling everything from how much commission the girls get, what time they leave, and, in rare cases, whether they need to file a police report at the end of the night.
Lily is a shot girl at a popular club in York, whom I met with to gauge her personal experience with the job. (Her real name has been removed to protect her anonymity). Dealing with drunk people is a big part of the job, she told me, because when the drinks are flowing, people aren’t always considerate to those doing the pouring.
“Drunk people are dickheads,” Lily told me, very matter-of-fact, before adding: “but the crowds vary venue to venue. I’ve been proposed to twice. In one shift. By two very drunk men..”
And when drunk people are around, it’s easy for shots to go flying. She laughed, telling me about a time she went four consecutive shifts getting an entire tray of tequila rose split over her. Then, likely judging from my reaction, she quickly added that, as lovely as a tequila-rose scented shampoo might sound, it is a whole different ballgame when the drink is thrown on you.
“I’ve had some people ask to buy me,” she said.
“To buy you?”
“More times than I can count. It’s when I ask them: ‘Would you like to buy a shot?’, and they say ‘Well, how much do you cost?’.
Speaking about the job more generally now, I asked Lily if she liked the work. “A lot of people would hate it.” Then, after a moment’s pause, she added: ‘A lot of people do hate it.”
Lily went on to explain what she described as a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the part-time work. “I mostly love it because it’s a lot of fun. And, in my experience, the bouncers are usually quite good at looking after you. I really love this job, and I’m really good at it too. I get good numbers, but sometimes, it’s like, you know, it does make you want to die a little bit.”
“The level of harassment is insane. I’ve never had a shift where I haven’t been majorly harassed at least twice. Usually by older men. But often uni students as well.”
According to the Sexual Misconduct Survey – the first sector-wide survey of sexual misconduct at universities – almost a quarter of students (24.5%) have experienced at least one instance of sexual harassment since starting their studies. Nearly half of lesbian, gay and bisexual students reported experiencing sexual harassment, and women were nearly three times more likely to experience sexual harassment than men. For Lily, this is an unavoidable part of her job.
She told me in detail how the men would touch her: “hand round the shoulder, hand round the waist, hand round the bum, hand on the boob sometimes…”
“How does that make you feel when you come home?”
“Disgusted. Absolutely disgusted. Because, I mean… it’s one thing, men being creepy, and like harassing verbally, right? But, like, um, when they touch you it’s, like…it’s like…it’s just not nice at all. And I’ll push them away as much as I can without trying to cause a scene, I always try not to cause a scene.”
“But, yeah, no, it’s insanely common. Like, just to be touched up and groped, it’s insanely common.”
Lily has even been followed home before, in the early hours of the morning after her shift.
“It’s a very common thing where, if you get a lonely or sad drunk man, they’ll feel very attached to you. They’ll tell you all their traumas. And then they’ll think they’re a little bit in love with you – and they’ll even tell you that.”
When these situations occur, Lily told me that she would always recommend splashing out for an Uber, rather than waiting for the bus. When it comes to personal safety, shot girls can’t afford to play fast and lose.
It’s important to remember that this is not a normal student’s 9-5 Saturday job. It’s late nights that blend into early mornings. It’s missing 9 am lectures because you only got to bed at 6 am, after a fight broke out in the smoking area. It’s being on the clock when everyone around you is having fun. It’s experiencing the brutality of in-person ‘rejection therapy’ over and over again.
On a more positive note, Lily recounted her overall positive experience with the bouncers in her club: “They’re very good at looking after you and making sure that, if it looks like something is about to happen, they’ll step in immediately and make sure you get home safe.” But she warned me that this wasn’t a given. Far from it, in fact. She found that the reliability of the bouncers often varies from club to club, from speaking with other shot girls.
Veering us swiftly onto the topic of pay and commission, Lily explained that, in her company, she gets hourly pay plus commission on the drinks she sells. But this isn’t always guaranteed; in fact, most companies don’t provide hourly pay and sometimes make you provide the alcohol yourself. “A lot of shotgirls only get, like, 25p per shot,” Lily said plainly.
And any of my suspicions that this fact would generate a heightened sense of competitiveness amongst the shot girls (aided by the late hours, perpetual suspicion of harassment and false compliments) was quickly put to bed when Lily started gushing about the “lovely community of shot girls” in York. “Most shot girls are really good at looking out for each other. 99% of shot girls are the loveliest people to work with ever.” In fact, she told me that a lot of the time, the girls who end up buying drinks from her are former shot girls themselves, looking to pass it forward.
Not that Lily really needs their help to target. Selling 221 shots during a 4-hour shift (during Welcome Week) and frequently hitting over 100 shots on a given night, she told me her biggest tip for making the sale: “friendly goes a lot better than flirty.”
“When it comes to being flirty, a little bit of that helps. With the right crowd, of course. But more often than not, it’s off-putting because some people instantly think it’s a scam. Some of the shot girls I know are the most beautiful women you’ve ever met in your entire life. But they often do terrible sales. Absolutely terrible sales […] Once again, I think it’s because it makes you suspicious of the scam.”
“And the thing is, sometimes people will only buy shots of you if they think you’re attractive. But sometimes that does more harm than good.”
But she told me there was a massive misconception about the whole “shotstitute” thing.
“Shotstitute?” I echoed.
“I mean, you do have to flirt a little bit for the job. And I think, you know, that’s sort of what you’re signing up for…”
“Some companies make you wear very specific outfits that are very short and, erm… showy. What I wear is always fairly covered. But I do also make an effort to look nice, I always do a full face of makeup, earrings, nice outfit, but I don’t show a lot of skin usually. Like, I make an effort to look nice but not to, like, just have everything out. Because then it feeds back into the whole ‘friendly goes further than flirty thing’.”
To wrap up, I asked her if she would recommend the job to other female students. And her answer, much to my surprise, was a definite “yes”.
“Yeah, I would. You have to be very prepared for it as in, for some people, it’s just not the sort of thing they could do. And that’s no reflection on them. And you need to make sure you go through the right company, because most people pay abysmally. But for me, my company is great because it’s hourly pay (above minimum wage) and you get commission, and you get to pick your shifts, so it’s really flexible. I would definitely recommend it. I love my job, but you have to sort of know exactly what you’re getting yourself into, because you are getting yourself into something that can really be horrible in a lot of ways.”
For any new shot girls, she advised them: “just remember 1,000 insane things are going to happen to you every shift. It’s insane. Even when it’s a dead night, there are a million horror stories. To me, that’s part of the fun. But to a lot of people, that’s just horror stories.”
“Don’t take it personally. And always go to the bouncers if, for one minute, or even for one second, you’re uncomfortable. Stand your ground and don’t let people take advantage of you.”
She ended with: “I love it for me, but I don’t want to mislead people about exactly what it is. Because the simple fact is, there is harassment. And there’s a lot of rude people. And there’s a lot that can drive you slightly insane.”