Strip club sues Oracle over unpaid $33,540 tab
An Oracle employee is said to have used his corporate AmEx card to run up a rather large sum on two consecutive nights at a San Francisco strip club. The company allegedly refused to honor the expense.
Corporate life involves a certain amount of carousing.
This is filed by accountants under the line-item "entertainment."
Sometimes, though, the bills get out of hand and the accountants' eyes boggle at the content.
This may have occurred when an Oracle employee allegedly ran up $33,540 of torrid expenses at San Francisco's salubrious New Century Theater.
This is not a futuristic arcade of gaming and wonder. It is rather an old-fashioned place where ladies remove their scanty garments to the wonder of attendees.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, a lawsuit filed by New Century Theater alleges that the Oracle employee -- named as Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez -- wafted into its environs and partook of the entertainment.
Indeed, the entertainment was so alluring that it may have left him wanting more. The Oracle employee allegedly came back the following night.
His first night of expenditure is said to have been $16,490. His second $17,050.
Why is this at all interesting? Well, New Century claims that on both nights he used his corporate American Express card. It further claims that Oracle then refused to honor the payments.
News of lawsuits can sometimes have interesting timing. In this case, the action is said to have occurred during last year's astutely named Oracle OpenWorld.
The anniversary is now upon us (OpenWorld is occurring September 22-26), so a little publicity surely does not hurt New Century's cause.
However, a couple of things bother me here.
Firstly, I have searched, but cannot find, any record of Oracle currently employing someone called Jose Manuel Gomez Sanchez.
Moreover, I wonder just where such large amounts of money might have gone.
Was it spent on expensive alcoholic beverages, there to lubricate the possibility of an important deal? Or might there have been other forms of personal entertainment that eased the transition from business to pleasure and back again?
It can happen that men lose their sense of balance in these places. But if this supposed employee went back for a second night, then the pondering over what might have occurred goes to places normally only featured in cable mini-series.
Neither party is commenting on the lawsuit. However, New Century, despite enacting this suit, hasn't lost its sense of enticement with respect to Oracle OpenWorld.
It's offering a discount to attendees.
