Going to Hooters never appealed to me until I watched Undercover Boss and realized that maybe I’d been judging it unfairly for all these years. Like a lot of women, I based my sanctimonious attitude about Hooters on what I thought I knew about the place versus my actual experiences.
I thought Hooters would be a dark, dirty, and tawdry little place full of older men ogling young women dressed in skimpy little outfits. However, watching Coby Brooks’ go undercover to see what was really going on in his business, I realized a couple of things: Hooters is more like a little beach bar than anything else and it’s not only dirty old men that go to Hooters. Along with some sanctimonious and uptight broads who judged Hooters the same way that I had, the video showed families and couples heading out to Hooters to enjoy wings and burgers.
John and I were downtown the other night and after dinner we were looking for a place to watch the Blackhawks game. There was a Hooters just up the street so we decided to head in and check it out. The first thing I noticed at Hooters wasn’t the girls in skimpy tank tops, but the wood paneling on all the walls and the Christmas lights strung up along the walls and the bar. There was a slight wait, so the hostess (how was wearing a polo shirt and loose shorts) said we could sit at the bar since we were only getting drinks. A cute young African American girl named Andrea served us our drinks and then we settled in so John could watch the game and I could observe the joint.
On the stainless steel above the grill, there was a wall of bumper stickers full of slogans. Some of our favorites were, “I wish I was Barbie because that B*** has everything” and the Blackhawks bumper stickers. We also noted bumper stickers for a host of cities and countries including Vancouver.
There were a couple of parties of young college guys, but overall the patrons were a mix of young and old, men and women. Some of the Hooters girls were drop dead model gorgeous wearing extremely tight shirts that showed off their assets to a considerable advantage, but others were ordinary clean cut girls wearing polos and shorts. There were all wearing sneakers that I could tell got considerable use as they never got a chance to take a break. Observing them, I realized that these young ladies had to be strong (those plates of food aren’t light), hard working, and tactful. Although the patrons in there when we were there were fairly well behaved, I’m sure there are times when the clients aren’t so well behaved and the girls have to politely tell them they’re not interested without loosing a customer.
And unfortunately, in today’s world, girls who work at Hooters aren’t the only ones that have to be able to deal with drunk customers. My daughter Cat works in a bakery and every so often on Saturday and Sunday morning she gets drunks in from the bar next door that she has to politely fend off.
Expanding my mind and being willing to give Hooters a chance got me outside of my shell and helped me realize that there is life outside my sheltered little world and that is an eye openingly blissful realization.
PS: The only reason there aren’t pictures of Hooters girls in this entry are that the ones I took turned out pretty bad.
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