Club Contests and Staff

Do you feel Club staff members should be able to enter the club contests, such as costume contests? Why? As an employer or Club Owner do you allow your employees to enter? Thank you for your thoughts!

I tend to leave clubs and places that allow their employees to enter contests that are meant for the guests. It seemed that it either created an unfair advantage, such as the one hosting will give a "boost" to the one not hosting OR the employee threatens the guests with, "If you don't vote for me on THIS, I'll ban you from MINE."

Plus, imagine the moaning and groaning, claims of cheating and such that happens if an employee wins the contest. Even if it's a popular vote contest, someone is going complain.

no..In fact they were not even allowed to vote..all our contest voting was done through IM's to either the host or dj..there is too much gaming for something that is meant to be for the customers..

All of the clubs I have worked for, with the exception of maybe one, prohibit their employees from entering the event contests while on shift. Some of them go the extra step of prohibiting their employees from entering the club's contests - ever. I actually agree with these rules because it could be a huge source of drama otherwise, as it could be seen as favoritism if a staff member wins.

There is one club I work for that provides a *separate* contest board just for staff. It does not take away from the main contest board, which are off-limits to staff both on and off duty, and it still allows the staff to participate in a way. This is actually a pretty novel approach that helps maintain staff morale, encourages them to dress for the event, and encourages them to *really* chat up the guests. It's a pretty good idea if you have the money to sustain it.

Nope - definitely not. I stopped going to clubs a long time ago but while i was going to them on a regular basis, it was obvious that too often people vote for people and not for what they think is the best outfit. At one place, the popular DJ must have won at least half the competitions and maybe more. He only had to be there to win.

Generally, no.

However, in my club, I've had two successive managers talk me into letting staff join contests. It's a strip club where the dancers only get tips, and there are a lot of days where they are working a few hours and getting nothing. Allowing them to enter contests boost morale- not necessarily for the money, but being voted "sexiest in _____" is good for self-esteem.

We only have L$ 250 contests, it's more a token amount than anything, and I don't think guests are coming solely to enter that little contest (when there are much bigger ones everywhere). My dancers are also smart enough to realize that, when we do get good tippers showing up, voting such a person "sexiest in ______" is a good way to encourage that person to come back.

If that system were to become problematic, I would consider splitting it into two contests- one for staff, the other for guests. But so far what we do seems to work fine. Guests often win instead of dancers, no one person dominates the wins. We have occasionally had dancers who would TP their friends in to vote for them at the last minute, but those dancers don't last long. If they aren't TPing their friends in for a substantial portion of the event, and only at the last minute for their own personal gain while at the same time making the club look bad, they really aren't team players.

I don't think staff should be able to enter, already contests can be nothing but popularity competitions totally disregarding any themes or such....

I also would say if you have a visiting DJ not to let them join either, I have been at a club many moons ago when the DJ had all his groupies and fans come in and vote for him and he walked away with a hefty prize fund, despite also having been paid I suspect. The people in the club were NOT happy

Staff should NOT be able to or allowed to enter any contests, promotions, etc. Neither should owners.

If hosting a party (house party, IRL) would the host enter the contest themselves? No. I've seen some who do but I find it terribly misplaced.

What's the point of inviting guests, and then lessening their chance to win? Isn't the point of being a host, making guests happy?



Unsolicited advice, feel free to disregard.

But, how about having nights where the club is closed and the staff can invite friends and only those people (staff/their friends) can win all sorts of prizes? Taking that away from guests seems counter productive. The guests keep the traffic high, keep the place running, and pay the tips. The staff is paid to be there. Perhaps find other ways to boost morale. Oprah did it (IRL) with shopping trips...

(If they want more admiration, perhaps create a stunning photo display once every couple weeks to a month, of 'employee of the month' or some such, with praise-alicious adjectives underneath.)

No, allowing staff to enter contests gives customers the impression the contest is rigged.

And sometimes they are.

If the staff outnumbers guests and staff still wins...why even bother pretending it's a contest. Lol (I've seen that happen.)

I have only gone to one club that allowed employees to enter. A friend of mine was part owner so I went there fairly often. What I would do would be to dress for the contest but not enter, and if they asked me why, I told them. Eventually they did stop allowing employees to enter.

It is a very poor practice to allow employees in any form - on duty off duty or as an alt - to enter contests.

And how about the other dynamic?

You go to a club where the staff isn't entered into the contest.

You arrive 15 minutes before the event even starts. You spend your whole time there actually talking to people and being an active participant in what's happening.

Suzy Blingtard shows up oh, sometime, whenever she gets around to coming, starts running animations, gets her name up on the contest board, and is merely taking up space, not interacting with anybody, she may as well be a bot for all we know.

Voting opens and suddenly Suzy Blingtard is showered with incoming avatars. They don't say a word, they're just there.

Voting ends, Suzy Blingtard wins, and leaves, taking her entourage with her.

Why should we care if staff members can enter when things like this happen far too often?

An attentive staff will actually catch this sort of thing happening and immediately disqualify Ms. Blingtard. I have actually seen this sort of thing happening where I work, and we nipped it in the bud. Some places also lock the sim just before voting opens, thereby preventing that from happening. Do we catch and stop all instances of contest gaming? No, probably not. But we do our best, and stop the overt cases.

It really would depend on the club, I think, and the kind of impression it wants to leave with guests. For a large majority of clubs, I agree with the other posters: staff shouldn't enter contests. (That's with the exception of contests specifically among staff members only, a la "Vote for Most Hospitable Hostess" or something.)

But there are a lot of tiny clubs out there, where the "staff" is really just the regular club-goers pitching in to help out, and tipjars are either absent or more decorative than functional. Depending on the hazy definition of "staff" in such places, excluding them would leave the contest board pretty much empty. Such clubs may have no pretension to popular appeal: just a bunch of friends gathering semi-regularly, with an occasional contest motivating folks to clear a common calendar slot.

At the first club where I worked, on-duty staff could not enter the contests, but off-duty staff, there on their own time, could. I can see the potential for abuse, but in our case, the contest board would have been pretty bare without those extra names. We also had an unspoken rule that we didn't vote for each other, except in cases where an outfit was just exceptional. Our winners were pretty evenly distributed among our regulars and new guests.

This worked well for us, because we were a small club with a small, close-knit staff and regulars. I've heard enough stories of staff members abusing contests that I'd have second thoughts doing it nowadays. (It wouldn't turn me off attending a club, though.)

At the most recent club where I worked, we didn't have costume-type contests. We did have trivia games. I don't believe there was a rule, but in general we hostesses and the DJs didn't participate when on-duty (except for the music trivia, and to toss out an occasional answer in fun or if a question was stuck) but off-duty staff could play if they liked. It seemed to work out for all concerned.

QTF.. Ceka.. Girl you better get outta my head.. I keep catching you there you know one of these days you are gonna get dirty..

Thank you all for your thoughts and opinions they were all very helpful and will be put to good use!

i brought my own shower just in case

My partner and i run a reasonably sucessful club. It started off small where mostly t was staff members coming in their free time to events and a few regulars.. although it has grown our staff member are made up exclusively of regulars who have decided to join staff.

They are unpaid and work only for tips, therefore in our minds they are volunteers.

Although my partner and i never enter contests we allow our staff to when they are not working.. they are regulars just like anyone else then. They come and spend time and hang out just like any other regular and should be alowed the fun of joining the contest.

We have never had an issue with staff members winning constantly nor have we ever had anyone complain about our events being unfair. We do all we csan to keep the contests fair for ALL our patrons, including those who take the time to help us to run events at other times

Normally staff don't enter contests in my club, and I never enter, of course.

There are exceptions. Lately we do the "top 3" winners for the contest, which is never a large amount of lindens. Contests are run for fun. Occasionally, for some reason, we don't even get 3 people in the contest. In that case, I will actually ask staff to enter the contest; it's not terribly exciting to have only 2 entrants in the contest with the top 3 winning... However yes, normally, staff (hosts & DJs on shift) don't enter the contest.

No. I went to a few costume contests on halloween.... at each one, the owner or friend of the owners won. Not much hope for the rest of us now is there? (granted their costumes were really good)

I vote with my feet. If owners or staff win, or if the winner has obviously called in "friends" at the last minute and the club doesn't disqualify them, I don't go back.

Pep (And still club owners keep asking here "How can I attract people to my club?"

At the club I work in, they operate 2 contest boards, one for Club Staff, and other for everyone else, it makes it better for everyone around that way.

I don't hangout in clubs that much anymore since most of the DJs I know are not around that much anymore (too busy with RL music projects), but if I am at place and I see that it allows on duty staff to participate in contests I leave and I take the few thousand linden dollars or so that I would have tipped out to the club staff with me.

It's irrelevant whether they work on tips or not. Almost every place I know of in SL, the staff work either completely on tips or almost completely on tips, much as staff in RL nightclubs do (at least in the U.S.). It doesn't justify the practice of letting them participate in contests meant for patronage and it's inappropriate for on-duty staff to participate in contests meant to attract visitors.