Midnight ballerina in Las Vegas earns $700 in 30 minutes. Then she catches a ‘hater waitress’ pocket watching her customer

Working both smarter and harder can be a great recipe for workers with some hustle to make extra cash. But sometimes, having more dollars can lead to extra stress.

One worker is going viral for sharing her experience with a coworker who allegedly tried to sabotage her at the workplace after her numbers started going up.

What did Kimmie charge that night?

Nightlife dancer Kimmie (@kimmiexoxo_) shared a video that has more than 35,000 views. In it, she detailed what went down with her “hater” coworker.

“Okay, so I'm going to give you guys an example of what pocket watching looks like in [gentleman's club] working as a [nightlife dancer],” Kimmie said. “Now, I have multiple incidents, but I can remember this freshly.”

Kimmie said this incident occurred while she was still working at Peppermint Hippo, a club in Las Vegas. The establishment charged $200 for half-hour dances (which are generally private sessions). Kimmie was unimpressed with this rate and made a habit of “never really [paying] attention to the prices” set by clubs, so she “would always charge more.”

“So I remember I ended up getting this guy and I asked him for a total of $700,” Kimmie said. “He had no problem giving that to me. None whatsoever, right? Mind you, I had already went over the prices prior to him giving me that extra money.”

What did her coworker do?

However, one waitress overheard how much Kimmie was charging. The waitress, whom Kimmie called a “snitch” and a “[expletive] weirdo,” told the club's host. He ended up getting involved.

“And so the host comes into the room and he's like … ‘Just making sure everything is okay, you know, the prices and things like that,'” Kimmie said. “And [the customer's] like, ‘Yeah, it's all good, I gave her … some extra money.'”

Kimmie had already squared things with the customer, but she bemoaned the jealous and sometimes “hateful” culture she experienced as a dancer at such nightlife establishments. 

“Why would you even do that … like, why?” Kimmie said. “And that's the [expletive] I'm talking about, like [expletive] be so [expletive] weird and just so hateful in the clubs. It's like, if you wanted to be a [nightlife dancer] you should audition with your big back … but you can't. That's why you're a waitress.”

What is pocket watching, exactly?

Kimmie mentioned that her coworker was “pocket watching.” But what does the phrase actually mean?

According to Know Your Meme, “pocket watching” originated as a slang phrase in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and is “used to describe the act of carefully following someone else's personal expenses.”

“‘Watching someone's pockets' means monitoring someone's income and expenditure, and is an activity that is generally taken to be annoying or off-putting,” Know Your Meme says. “Throughout the 2010s, the slang term became more widespread as it was increasingly popularized online … The earliest known uses of the phrase ‘pocket watching' on the internet can be traced back to tweets as early as 2009, with various Twitter users using the term in a negative way. The term pocket watching is also used in various rap songs.”

Finance writer Brian Chikami says that people pocket watch “out of envy,” and advises against the practice altogether.

“I may be wrong, but we're all so closely connected and have access to other people's perceived personal lives,” Chikami says. “I'd say most of us pocket watch to some degree thanks to social media. It's normal but not healthy for our own self-esteem.”

Buzz News reached out to Kimmie via TikTok comment.