Skimming off the top and stealing

rogue_drummer

Gold Member
I felt compelled to report this as an FYI more than anything else.

One of the bands I am in played a gig last Saturday at bar near the local university. All in all, it's a good place to go with your buddies or to take a date to for pool, darts, dancing, etc.

We played for 3 hours and the deal with the bar owner was 10% of the bar receipts. No cover. We took the approach to take the percentage and play there more, than be buttholes and demand more. Usually that approach doesn't work.

The last time we played there we scored a nice chunk of cash, so we were happy to play there again.

What we forgot to check was the other venues in the area. One bar venue right across the street had a faily well-known regional act playing and there was a local arts fest going on in downtown.

At the end of the night, the bar receipts were not what we expected and we even questioned it among ourselves since the take was so low. We came to the conclusion it was just an "off night"; no biggie. We'll play there again and score more.

Yesterday, Monday, the bar owner called me to apologize. He said his bartender was skimming off the top and pocketing what she thought she desreved. He even questioned the low payout but couldn't prove anything at 2 am in the morning. It wasn't until he looked at the register tape Sunday that he figured she was skimming. He fired her.
The owner was very sincere and apologized and begged us to come back. I told him no problem, stuff like that happends and we'll play there again since we like it and it's a faily good venue to try out new material. It's very fogiving of mistakes.

Anyway, just thought I'd report that as another thing to watch out for. Bartenders skimming. Lousy wench!!
 
I think rather than complaining about the bartender, you should be complimenting the owner who fessed up to you. Not many would go out of there way to make it up to you like that!

But that is a problem with any cash heavy based business, is skimming is so easy.

I've taken fraud classes as part of my Accounting studies, and bars and other cash heavy businesses are the #1 way people manipulated income, because it is just so easy to skim cash (or add in illegal gains so as to make them look legit) without investing a ton into advanced security or accounting systems.
 
Oh I DID compliment the bar owner many times and thanked him for being so honest. It's a fun venue to play and the owner communicates well with us and is very easy to work with.
 
Oh I DID compliment the bar owner many times and thanked him for being so honest. It's a fun venue to play and the owner communicates well with us and is very easy to work with.

Wow... nice - you would NEVER get this kind of treatment at a bar here in philly... it sound like the owner really values you as a draw for his customers... that's a rare thing these days where many venue owners think they are doing you a favor by "allowing" you to play at their place.

I would def. keep up a relationship with that particular bar.
 
Oh I DID compliment the bar owner many times and thanked him for being so honest. It's a fun venue to play and the owner communicates well with us and is very easy to work with.

It's always great to hear a good (honest) bar owner story. Thanks for sharing.
 
Some of the big places are very easy to skim a bit off in....two of my buddies work in this place where they just don't get caught......I don't partake in this by the way but, if on eof my other buddies goes up, gets something that costs €4.....the lads will give the customer BACK about €50, and their goods! it's been going on for a long time, they have robbed the place of so much money i'd say.....but then again, they do live in a rough enough area! no excuse, no excuse
 
I know firsthand of an incident where one of the bartenders there (does it matter that she was smoking hot?) and her boyfriend were fudging actual band costs in her favor, to the owner, from some bands whose bookings she somehow finnegled. She pretended to be a really great "friend" of the owner. The bands didn't know they could have gotten more, she probably talked them down. Not us though, we book through the owner only. She got caught and got fired. We all thought she was really cool...She'd bounce around and dance and was a lot of fun... Money makes you do ugly stuff.
 
The only time I'd been ripped off (that I know of) was when a singer stole the tip instead of sharing it per policy.
 
great story with a good ending...I hope he ponies up the difference next time.

F
 
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