[steven]

I have to be honest, not only has my wife been to plenty of snacks, she used to work at one with a friend for years (for the record, no we didn't meet there). The area in which I live seems to have A LOT of snacks. It's pretty insane, actually. For such a small population to have so many snacks is almost funny in a sense. If you take the population of adult men, you get something like 1 snack for every 150-200 men. In comparrison to any other kinds of establishments here, those numbers are insane.

I've talked to dozens of people who work(ed) at snacks as well.

By "dates" I mean that sometimes the people working at these places will "go out" with one of their patrons in the day. That kind of activity might include the guy going out and buying something for the woman. (It's not something I understand as a man, but I know it does happen). Other guys might just give gifts sometimes. Usually buying a drink for the worker is customary in my experience. They might even ask for it. I've heard of people giving bags of rice (that they harvested themselves of course). I've know people can keep their own alcohol at a place for when they go there. I've seen people bring ingredients for food as well (like homegrown vegetables and soup and stuff like that... but that was only once). People will go out with the girls from a snack as well for dinner (before or after).

The older women starting snacks is something I've heard of quite often. Here's a couple of circumstances that I've heard of this in-- 1. maybe it's a single mother who previously had experience at a snack and has recently been divorced (it's good money and free alcohol). 2. maybe it's a mother who's kid has finished school (it's good money and it's hard times for finding other kinds of work for people past a certain age).

I've seen the "knee length" skirts you're talking about. I've also seen things so short I wouldn't even call it a skirt. I've seen a lot in between too. I think that the length just depends on the person and the establishment, really.

I think certain places play on the whole S and M thing (which totally depends on the worker). It's usually to a very subtle degree though. Really, it's kind of like flirting without it really going anywhere.

I'm a little confused at the end-ish area of your post though. Are you saying that a Hostess club involves longer skirts than a snack? Like it's in that sense "higher class"? That sounds like it would fall in line with what my wife said. I'm kind of assuming "longer skirt"= "higher class" as well as the fact that you were talking about "hostess clubs" at teh end of your post though.