Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Freak of the Week - The Peeping Tom

Not too long ago, a girlfriend of mine from another business warned me about a new thing to watch out for (as if we don't have enough to worry about already). Apparently with all these new phones with built in cameras and video recorders, customers have been trying to secretly tape their sessions.

As soon as I heard about it, I tried experiementing with a customers phone. The deal is that a customer will hide his phone in a shirt pocket with just the lens poking out. And while he's alone in the room he'll turn it on and just let it go for the entire session. We tried it a few times with the lights on and turned down. I was shocked at how much you could actually see, even with the lights turned down.

My friend warned me to watch for the tell-tale signs of a peeping tom:

1) Suspicious placement of clothing on a chair or elsewhere in room.
2) Customer lies on table in wrong direction.
3) Customer asks for lights to be left on or turned up.
4) Furniture or items that have been moved.

Well, I got one the other day. He was a new customer, but I could tell he was familiar with the whole massage thing. When I entered the room I knew something was weird. We have lockers in the rooms, so the customers can put their personal things away (I can't tell you how many times customers have accused us of stealing $$ out of their wallets before we got those lockers). They are there to protect both you AND me.

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was his entire outfit hanging perfectly off the back of the chair which had been moved into the corner of the room. I remembered the signs of a peeping tom, so I didn't panic. Instead, I casually asked him if he could move his clothes to the locker. He replied that it looked "dirty" to him and he felt better keeping them out.

Strike one - damn! On to Plan B.

I picked up a fresh towel and walked over to the chair. "Well sir, I have to remind you that we are not responsible for any stains to your clothing from the massage oils that we use, and that's why we ask that you use the lockers." He didn't say anything, but just looked at me nervously.

"I apologize if the locker does not meet your standards of cleanliness and I will take care of that before my next customer. So to ensure that your clothes are protected, I'm going to use this towel to keep any massage oils that we use from coming in contact with them." And with that I unfolded the big white towel and placed it squarely over top his hanging clothes.

When his expression went from nervous to frustrated, I knew I had him. I took a quick check around the room to make sure nothing else was out of the ordinary, then I began the session. He seemed obviously distracted at first, but calmed down a few minutes into the massage. And when we were done, I made damn sure that I was fully clothed before he even had a chance to pull that towel off his clothes.

So take that as a lesson guys. Don't try any of that pervy stuff on us - unless you pay us extra! Heck, I've let guys use their cell phones to record the happy ending, but I charged them extra and even reviewed the video to make sure you couldn't see my face. I've only let 1 customer ever record an entire session, but that was a while ago and only as a special favor. I think I mentioned him in a post a while ago.

And one more thing - think before you start recording all of your little activities. It's sooooo easy to record stuff and post it on the internet nowadays. And remember - I do this for a living, so I'm not the one who's getting embarassed nearly as much as the married, father of 3 who forgets that he left that video file on his phone...

CJ

3 comments:

Mr Me said...

Very clever, CJ!

The one place that i used didnt have lockers, so i would imagine just bumping the clothing to ruin their carefully set up angles would have been enough.

Never even occured to me about the excuse with the towel!

Again, well done!

Anonymous said...

I did that once. Nothing beats the imagination and memory. I deleted it, it wasn't as good as I remember it.

Plus, the stress of recording it, takes away from the massage.

DickieTrick said...

Wanna make a few extra bucks? Tell clients you can make a video of the session they can purchase for $30.

Wanna make a LOT of extra money? Tell 'em after the session you made a video and charge $1,000!