Trying To Help
First of all, I must state the fact that I know several guys who have former bargirls as wives, and the ladies are exceptionally good wives. They cook, they clean meticulously, they serve their husband, and they put out an equitable effort to help their husbands in day to day life. They go to school to improve their English, and they complete their coursework for their level at a reasonable rate. They are full partners in a relationship.
However, these are the exceptions to the rule. Far more commonly, a nice guy puts out all the effort, and money, and gets burned in the end by an ungrateful and lazy bum of a lady who carelessly does things to piss off their husband/boyfriend (e.g., neglectful of his needs and/or blows money despite budget arguments and/or is unfaithful). When it comes time to part ways, she takes all she can get and makes his life miserable, in a most ungrateful manner.
When you’re a guy in Thailand who starts talking with prostitutes, you find a few who say clearly that they do not want to do what they are doing, but they have no money, no skill, and few alternatives. You want to help, feeling that they’ve just had bad luck in life.
Many of these ladies are quite pleasant and calm. Others have a lot of energy and hustle at what they do. Some even have considerable education, e.g., are attending the university and supporting themselves by “working” on men at discos.
I’m an entrepreneur with 16 years of continuous self-employment and hiring people. I can always find something profitable for people to do in order to sustain themselves in society, including Thais from top to bottom. However, after several attempts at hiring university level ladies who asked me to hire them out of prostitution, and other freelancer down the skills scale, for anything from running messenger errands around town (low education), to answering the phone and making simple phone calls (medium education), to simple computer tasks (university level), I now must agree with my predecessors in this regard — you will almost surely get burned.
The following describes some of my experiences. I have had 0% success with hiring ladies of the night who ask for and agree to a job, though admittedly it’s a sample of less than 10, and I gave up a long time ago in view of alternative sources of hiring such as word of mouth in my Thai communities. However, I know a lot of good guys who have tried the same thing. The success of my associates is also pretty close to zero.
We always offer them more money than what other Thais are eager to work for, wage levels and job descriptions that many self-disciplined Thais would consider fortunate to get. However, the freelance prostitutes fail to be nearly as reliable or do acceptable quality of service. Fortunately, we usually don’t even have to fire them. They just don’t show up for work after awhile … that is, they don’t show up at the office, but they do show up at the discos again.
In considering “saving” a prostitute, guys lower their expectations for the lady’s standard of work and professionality, and dramatically up the salary and fringe benefits.
I am sure that there are some prostitutes out there who would do a good job if given an opportunity, and be very appreciative. However, they are a very small percent, and I haven’t met them in all my years here.
(If you want to know why the go-go bars are so strict and “cruel” by deducting a baht per minute for late ladies, and strict in enforcing that rule, this is why. As bar owners have told me, it’s the only way to get them to work on time. Some companies have adopted this policy for professional employees, too.)
First, they usually don’t show up for work on time, if at all. Secondly, if they do show up, then they aren’t as good a worker as others, and often do careless work. You care for them, but they don’t care much for your business and your clients. Why should you care any more?
In the end:
- You have wasted effort, money and precious time
- Your employees are laughing at you, the boss, for being a stupid farang (but some of them also admittedly learned to be less foolhearty themselves)
- Some things you expected to get done in your business did not
