That time I worked in a truckstop with strippers
Terrible jobs I used to have - episode 1
The naked librarian from Huddersfield stood in front of me, in the room behind the bar, fiddling with herself.
“I shouldn’t have done the thing with the Mars bar’” she said frankly, “I can’t get the chocolate out now. What do you suggest?”
Feeling a potent mix of horror and delight, twenty-year-old me fumbled for an answer. “Well, we’ve got the shower attachments we use for the washing up – but no. There’s some actual showers – but actually, you might not want to go in there just now”.
‘There’ was the bathroom of a truckstop, somewhere in the Midlands. ‘Just now’ was the mid-‘90s, approaching closing time and just moments after this young stripper had finished her show, keeping 200 horny and thirsty truck drivers entertained with a range of tricks that, an hour earlier, I hadn’t known existed.
“No, I definitely wouldn’t go in the showers”, I confirmed after a little more consideration. “Umm, we’ve probably got some tissues or something“, I suggested uselessly. I was badly out of my depth and still hadn’t managed to get my head around the idea that this really quite gorgeous and naked woman, who was very different to the usual turns we had here, was just having a normal and practical conversation with me.
This was the latest in a long line of ostensibly normal jobs I had had, over the previous four years, many of which had turned out to be more eventful and unusual than expected. This time, I had gone looking for work, as I generally did in the breaks between terms at University, and as usual I had gravitated towards the local catering industry. Most of my working experience was as a waiter in various restaurants, so the truckstop, just a couple of miles from where I lived, seemed like easy money.
At this point in my life I was not fussy what work I did – I had already learned that any job is what you make it and that the good jobs were far more often about the people than the work. So when I asked about this job, I was relaxed to hear that it was mostly in the kitchens, peeling potatoes and washing dishes.
I already had a job lined up in Germany for the autumn so I knew I wouldn’t be here for more than eight weeks. I happened to mention in my initial conversation with the boss that I had also got some bar experience, so he decided I would spend about four hours in the kitchens, then the second half of each shift upstairs in the bar.
That upstairs bar in the truckstop was in fact a strip bar, five nights a week. I would help out Tom, the bar manager, and would be pulling pints for a very thirsty and relatively demanding set of customers, who were basically fine as long as the beer and girls continued, but could quickly turn sour if the supply of either dried up.
Thursday was the big night – most truck drivers worked Sunday night to Thursday afternoon, and Thursday night was when they let off steam. More beer, no rush to get up in the morning and the weekend approaching.
I got very good at bartending during these evenings. I wish we had been able to video a shift back then because it would have been a wonder to behold. Two young men, serving over two hundred truckers, most of whom would drink seven or eight pints in an evening and who were spread thickly along a thirty-foot bar.
To this day, my hackles raise when I hear a vapid bar attendant call to the sky ‘who’s next?’ We remembered the next ten people we needed to serve, in what order and what they were drinking. We did this flawlessly because if we didn’t, we would have been savagely beaten, and rightly so. We knew their names and they knew ours.
Like a chainsaw-juggling unicyclist we flaunted our dynamic, terrifying art, working miracles while never more than a few seconds from disaster. We would hold several conversations simultaneously while pulling pints, opening bottles, tossing bags of crisps and peanuts over the heads of raucous drinkers.
We even poured a shamrock on the top of the Guinness. It was bar ballet at its finest. I learnt classic British working-class drinks like Black and Tan, Brown Mix and Lager tops. We must have taken an absolute fortune.
We could also drink as much as we wanted while on shift, as long as we were able to work (and we would be immediately sacked if we couldn’t work, so we very quickly learned where a sensible stopping point was). I developed a taste for Guinness and blackcurrant (I know, sorry) and would occasionally drop a vodka in there too. You needed a couple to hit that zone where everything just worked.
This might have been my first experience of ‘flow state’, where everything all just … works, with the minimum of conscious thought. One doesn’t often associate flow state with strippers and drunken truck drivers, but I guess Zen works in mysterious ways.
The strippers, of course, were all just local women earning a living. They were booked via one of several agencies, and it was about as legit as something like that could be. The performers themselves were a real mix of middle-aged women who had been doing this forever and were surprised by nothing, seasoned with a handful of younger, more optimistic girls who hoped this was just a stop-off to earn money on the way to something else they would much rather be doing.
And one librarian from Huddersfield, who like Clark Kent went to some lengths to keep her two personas very separate.
I came back for the third night of my latest career to find that Tom had been sacked, for apparently having pilfered some of the ample takings from the till. “You’re in charge now”, I was told, “and two of the strippers can’t make it tonight so you need to book some more from the agency”.
My young career had never experienced such a meteoric rise before – from peeling potatoes to stripper-booking bar manager in just two days? Who knew where this bizarre establishment could take me next?
I grew up very quickly over the subsequent weeks. I got to know all the strippers well (no, not like that) and understood who was a good fit for which evening and in which order. I trained new bar staff in our strange art while developing my own double life – kitchen scullion by day, Peter Stringfellow by night.
I conducted light-hearted banter with the others in the kitchen during the afternoon while peeling the spuds and clearing the tables downstairs, where the most monumental trucker-style dinners were polished off and where my previous table-clearing skills came in handy.
Then it was upstairs at 7pm into this curious parallel universe just off the A5 where people did unspeakable things with confectionery. At midnight I would cycle home and crash into bed, exhausted and head spinning.
Security was provided by Jeff and his two large dogs. Although Jeff had a pronounced limp and was the other side of 50, the constant presence of a Doberman in each hand provided enough deterrent to make any belligerent truckers reason that while they might be able to see Jeff off, it wouldn’t be without consequences.
We walked a perpetual tightrope – keeping the clientele drunk enough to have fun and spend their money, but never crossing the line into fights or inappropriateness with the turns.
And that wasn’t the only balancing act. Every other Friday I was given the special job of cleaning out the deep fat fryers, the magic cauldrons where the mountains of chips were created. I would stand on the nine inches of slippery metal between the two still-boiling fryers, bent over to scrub the overhead canopies, dripping sweat and filthy water into the bubbling fat below.
This is what casual student work was like in the Nineties. Only ever one misremembered order away from a mass brawl. Just one slip away from losing a foot.
My eight weeks passed quickly and soon it was time for me to pack my bag and get ready for my impending emigration nach Deutschland. But there was one final treat in store – the delightful ladies in the kitchen had a tradition of ‘gunking’ leavers – basically mixing up a large bowl of vile ingredients which would be thrown over the head of the departee at an opportune moment.
I knew this was coming, and also knew that avoiding it was not acceptable, so I had brought in a change of clothes just in case. When my time came, I allowed a small amount of Benny Hill-style chasing around the kitchens before taking my medicine. My god, it was disgusting – a pale blue emulsion which smelt strongly of rum essence and which instantly stained anything it touched.
I spent at least three weeks in Germany before I stopped constantly smelling rum – and to this day, the scent of rum transports me back to those simple, bizarre days at the truckstop. To most of the thousands of passing drivers it looked like a large car park. Only we knew the strangeness that lurked within.
Verdict: Although it was very much ‘of its time’ and almost everything they did at the truckstop was probably illegal, it was one of the most formative summers of my life. An essential rite of passage that I absolutely would not want my own kids doing under any circumstances.