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Cachet Ladies Toronto Escort Agency Extremely poor working conditions, abusive and unsafe environment, zero respect for workers, & no privacy or discretion for clients, poor business practices, lack of integrity,Toronto, Ontario
I am writing a report about the abominable working conditions during my
brief employment at Cachet Ladies in Toronto. Cachet Ladies
(http://www.cachetladies.com/) has offices in Toronto, Montreal, &
Vancouver and purport to be a VIP Event Planning Top Model Escort
Agency. I inquired about employment during the summer, as I had been
accepted to begin my Masters degree in January. I had previously held
employment in corporate environments and made the decision to enter the
adult entertainment industry due to a large debt load I had incurred
during my undergraduate. The debt load had become unmanageable and I
made a rational decision to use this as an avenue to relieve some of the
economic distress, as the industry can be quite lucrative. As an
educated person, I was met with instant interest from the agency; I met
with one of the owners and was formally invited to join the agency after
an initial meeting. I had looked into other agencies and was originally
drawn to Cachet Ladies because of the above average pay scale: top
models earn $400+ an hour (the agency keeps $175 of this amount and the
model received $200) for her services. The first thing I noticed that
should have been a red flag to me was that I was not given a copy of my
employment contract.
Furthermore, coming from a background in public health, I was
extremely surprised and weary that there was no medical examination
necessary to gain employment --the agency does not require that you have
a clean bill of health. There is no guarantee that the person you engage with at the agency is healthy: that person may very well have an STD or STI.
It was not even recommended or encouraged that the females get regular
medical examinations. I think that from a top agency, this should be
absolutely mandatory; however as you will see from this report, Cachet
Ladies is not the high-end agency it claims to be. The practices are shady, questionable, unhealthy and unprofessional.
As an educated individual using this solely as a route to eliminate my
debt quickly and progress to the next stage in my education unscathed by
economic disparity, I quickly learned that this was not the type of
environment conducive to progressing in society. The female owner of the
company is extremely aggressive and dehumanizing to the workers. She
uses threats, intimidation and coercion to demean and degrade the women,
making many so uncomfortable to the point that they avoid the office
all together when given notice of her attendance. The owners have
absolutely no respect or sensitivity to the needs of females. They are
treated with contempt.
Additionally, the owners frequently make humiliating remarks
about the regular clients. Often drivers will reveal personal and
confidential details about the regulars, showing complete
disrespect toward their discretion and privacy, engaging in gossip
surrounding details of their personal lives (often with the intention to
humiliate and demean). This is not an agency that cares about the health and well being of their female workers, nor is it the type of agency that provides respect,
professionalism and discretion to the regular and loyal clients. They
charge exorbitant fees for those clients that opt to pay by way of
credit card ($480) and actively encourage their workers to manipulate
the clients into extending and bringing more girls into the calls. They
will ploy the customers by incrementally adding $5 to each hour, so that
after 4 hours the fee is $495 an hour. The agency particularly exploits
the client and worker when the method of credit payment is used, as the
pay scale is reduced to $200 for the female worker (instead of $225
when the client pays cash), meaning the agency receives $280+ from the
transaction, excluding fees paid to the institution. In this
way, both the paying client and female worker are being materially
exploited, as the worker takes home $25 less, while the client pays
increasing fees --only the agency seems to benefit from the transaction.
Not only is Cachet Ladies extremely profiteering, they are disrespectful
and exploitative of the female workers, actively encouraging drug use
and alcoholism. During my time there while waiting for calls, I would
try to maximize my efficiency by reading and preparing for my academic
semester. The other girls there found this peculiar and would give me
unwelcoming looks, much preferring to lounge around watching TV. Most of
the girls occupied their time listlessly as they waited for calls,
sometimes not getting any work for the evening. They would sit
around idly and gossip about other girls and regular clients. None of
the time seemed to be spent productively or constructively. Most of
these girls do not have a life outside of the agency, because social
progression and positive contribution are not encouraged.
I was met with a lot of hostility for remaining focused and spending my
time reading while at the agency; I could very well have been one of the
only educated girls there. The culture did not encourage academic
advancement. It did, however, encourage drug use, female aggression and poor medical and health practices. Females often presented as rough and aggressive, not intelligent and graceful as the site suggests. This
is not a high-class escort agency and you would be better off looking
for an independent escort or alternative agency in the city at
these type of high prices. I believe that this line of
work can be respectable, however due to the poor management practices and inter-competition between girls for clients, the environment can be very tense and uneasy. Many of the
girls complained about the experience of poverty due to their diminished
bookings, claiming they had not paid their rent or were falling behind
in other economic obligations. This
is not something to be expected of a top agency and is a reflection of
the illegitimacy of the claims surrounding providing VIP services. This
is a scam agency and the owners only care about exploiting their female workers and
profiteering for the clients.
By the time I left Cachet Ladies, they had demoted some of the "top
models" ($400/hr) to "glam models" ($300/hr) to get more business. The
owner frequently complained about how the business was failing and would
take out her aggression and frustration on the female workers, creating
a hostile, unsafe and abusive environment for the women. Many of the
girls complained that they were getting not getting the work they needed
to meet their financial obligations. I believe this is because of poor
management practices and failure to retain professional and educated
females that boost the morale of the agency and improve the working
conditions. Furthermore, the owners are absent for weeks at a time,
usually on trips to exotic destinations, only making appearances
to hound and hassle the female workers into fearful subservience and
apprehension.
The female owner takes every opportunity to intimidate the female
workers and threatens to fire them on a whim. This causes considerable
distress to the women, who often turn to drugs and alcoholism to cope,
rather than using the lucrative earning potential to make positive and
healthy life choices. Not only that, most of the male drivers earn more
than the escorts! If you are considering becoming an escort at this
agency, you would have more respect and earn more money applying as a
driver this is no joke. The business at Cachet Ladies is
floundering due to the dip in the economy, recent negative press
surrounding the death of Kera Freeland
(http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crime/article/1006106---somebody-knows-something-says-mother-of-deceased-escort), and
questions surrounding the legitimacy of the agency and the extent
of protection, safety and respect for the female workers.
While the girls are destitute, sitting listlessly as they await calls, making trips to the washroom to snort cocaine,
the drivers are profiting more than the escorts (some making over
$1,000 a week part-time). The female workers are pressured into using
the drivers rather than the TTC or cabs to get to work. They are also
expected to tip, regardless of whether the girl has made money that
night or not, just to be safely driven home the girls have to tip
generously for the luxury of safety. If you do not call in to get picked
up by a driver, you quickly get in the bad graces of the drivers and
may even risk being fired for not contributing to their income. The use
of subways or TTC for economy is frowned upon and discouraged. During
the time that I was there, many of the girls complained about running a
deficit due to the pressure to constantly tip drivers to remain in good
favour and ensure job security.
In every respect, I found the environment very tense and uncomfortable. There is
zero respect for the privacy and discretion surrounding personal
details of clients lives, nor are the female workers afforded dignity
and respect.
I once tried to engage the owner in discussion and she made every
attempt to ridicule and humiliate me. One of the girls there later
commented that it was because I was not "gangster" like many of the
other girls. I was different for being classy and educated! If you are a
nice, intelligent, well-mannered girl the ones they claim to hire
you will not be there for long, as you will find the working conditions absolutely intolerable.
The culture is not conducive to any type of social or academic
advancement. This does not have to be the case: it would be
possible for the agency to be more respectable by adopting more
honest practices and supporting the emotional growth of the females,
rather than actively denigrating the status and worth of the workers.
However, as things currently stand, the management is run by a male and a
female owner that have no idea how to run an honest business, or even update a
website for that matter --everything is done amateurishly.
Even though this agency charges the highest
rates in Toronto, the owners do not invest in social networking or
any modern forms of advertising; their claims of providing VIP services
are completely illegitimate.
The owner is actively hostile toward anyone that presents as educated, well
mannered and cultured. If you are looking for a women of
high-class, dignity and self-respect, you are better off paying an
independent escort, as I can assure you they will provide higher
discretion, professionalism and honesty than Cachet Ladies ever possibly
can hope to offer. Cachet ladies is not a business that focuses on retention and service, they simply want to rob clients of their money and female workers of their self-respect! Dont be fooled, this agency is not elite or VIP: the business practices are not legitimate or honest. The owners have absolutely zero credibility or integrity, and the female workers are under unhealthy amounts of stress.
Clients: This is definitely not the place to go if you are looking for healthy, well-adjusted and educated women. If you
are a regular client, you will be gossiped about: there is zero
privacy or discretion, and details of your personal life will be
revealed! They will talk about you to everyone and anyone.
Female workers: this is not the place for you to work if you are
serious about advancing yourself socially, as you will be treated very
poorly by the owners and reception staff, who will take
every opportunity to humiliate, degrade and diminish your self-esteem,
making even the lucrative potential of the job unappealing. The
management is terrible and due to their frequent vacationing to exotic
locations, often fail to actually tend to the business, update the site,
or meet other managerial responsibilities.
As an example, I was met with tremendous hostility and resistance for
asking politely that my pictures and profile be updated on the site when
I first started the job. The owner did not seem to take the job
seriously and grunted like a teenager being asked to do a chore as she
begrudgingly uploaded the pictures on the site. The owners have no
experience with marketing or media management. The owner then took to
abusing me in retaliation for having the "gull" to ask her to create a
media presence for me--something that should be nascent knowledge to
business owners! It should be increasingly clear from this report that
Cachet Ladies isn't running a "business", what they are doing is
undermining the trust of their clients, female workers, and society at
large with their poor management and working conditions.
I would highly advise against supporting this agency by becoming a client or a female worker. I suspect that they will be out of business soon, anyway, by the looks of things when I left. This is definitely not a high-end or upscale environment. If
you are a client looking for a substance abuse free women with dignity,
self-respect, and healthy habits, Cachet Ladies is not the place for
you! This agency is literally a scam, run by criminals, with some of the
worst working conditions imaginable in Canada.
Scam agencies like this are why Toronto needs to regulate the
adult entertainment and escort industry, however until then, the public
relies on people like me to spread the word about the dishonest and
disreputable business practices of these agencies, to inform the public paying clients and female workers alike about exploitative and illegitimate "business" practices.