"It's woman's day, what do we do for them this year?"

When I first arrived in Greece, I had lots to do and things to try and understand. Clients, staff, international crap, and getting use to this place, so out of the blue comes the question, “it is woman’s day, what do we do for them?”

It seemed like a weird question, but what the hell, what could we do for them?
I remembered in Mexico, woman’s day was pretty easy; the bosses got the secretaries coffee and flowers etc.
No big deal, but as we all know “Greece is different”.

We brainstormed and came up with flowers and Champagne, not very creative.

The PR gal says, “what about a male stripper”? What is Greece coming too, love the idea, do we have the Arxidia to do it?

Here is the idea, we got all the women into the conference room, me, the financial director, and the head of client service are the only males there.
We serve drinks and give them each a rose, silence, quizzical looks, they think we are nuts, all 40 of them.

At this point our male stripper is supposed to come in dressed as a cop and arrest the financial director.
Pretty good idea, he then starts to dance and strip, we get out and the fun begins.

Our stripper comes in on cue, but he is dressed as a sailor, and tries to arrest the financial guy, evidently he could not get a policeman’s outfit. Pretty funny anyway, by now the women realize something is up, especially when he gets up on the conference room table.

We get out and listen at the door, screams, laughter and yelling, some from the stripper. They are hitting him with the roses that still have thorns on them. He is evidently on the table with a rather chubby secretary; we later find footprints on the ceiling. The screams and laughter go on for close to an hour, seems it is a success.

Periodically some women step out fanning themselves and going “po, po, po.” the receptionist comes out with the stripper’s underwear on her head.

I am suddenly worried about husbands, brothers, fathers, all the Greek machos, have we gone too far?

I am relieved when some of the older women come out and thank me. I figure we are safe, if nobody says anything we will be OK.

Later the stripper’s manager wants more money, the stripper is scratched and bleeding, he will not be able to work for a few days, and the roses were put to good use.

Every year after that, the ladies waited for woman’s day, what would the Americanaki come up with this year.

We could not afford the Chippendales’, the only thing that would have topped our policeman dressed as a sailor, stripper.

We resorted to Champagne and flowers; they were always waiting for more, no sailors, policemen or soldiers.

I wish we could have seen and filmed the show; it would have been a hit on you tube.