Monday, September 25, 2006

The girls upstairs

We live in a very colorful neighbourhood and my apartment building is a great example of it.
Today I will only tell you about one apartment.

On the third floor on the left is an apartment owned by the owners of a club called Champagne Girls. The owners use this apartment as a place to house dancers and bouncers for the club.

Champagne Girls is a strange place. I have heard stripping is not allowed in Iceland but these girls dance. Then guys can buy the girls drinks. The girls sit with them and be nice while these stupid guys pay lots of money for drinks.

Two of these girls moved upstairs from me. They were super nice and moved here from England and Scotland to make some extra money.

They were hired under contracts and promised large amount of money to come work in Iceland. After a month of working it came time to get paid..... The employers took huge hidden fees and what they called taxes off the checks and left them with next to nothing.

They worked 6 days a week, often 12 hour nights and tolerated unfair treatment. Then when it was time to get paid they were left with just enough to fly home with.

They were badgered and harassed until they agreed to just take the small amount of cash offered to them.

I suspect that I will be seeing a lot of this. This company brings in girls from all over the world.

What if these girls had lived farther away? Lucky for them there is cheap flight from Iceland to England, so they could get home. I can imagine that a lot of girls would have trouble getting the money together to leave.

This is only a part of the story, the entire thing is to long to type out in one day, but I think you can get the point. So, if ever in Iceland and happen to walk past Champagne Girls downtown, please feel free to grab a rock.

1 comment:

  1. These sort of stories make me so mad. Poor girls.

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