In the course of my work, I listen to the quarterly earnings calls that public companies hold for analysts and shareholders. Much of what I hear disgusts me, from the startling lack of sensitivity toward the nation’s working poor shown by a big oil company senior executive quite literally laughing over the fact that the economy’s poor performance did nothing but increase their profits; to the CFO for Phillip Morris gloating over the spike in cigarette sales in Mexico and Latin America more than offsetting the drop in profits in the United States. My work may not sound ideal for an embittered near-socialist such as myself, but I admit that I like having a keyhole view into the heart of capitalism.

These calls are public information, and audio as well as written transcripts of the calls are published on each company’s website for a week or two after the call. By divulging the contents of these calls I am not breaking any laws or doing anything but call attention to information that anyone can access.

Yesterday, Rick’s Cabaret (for those of you who don't know, Rick's operates upscale gentlemen's clubs throughout the US and Latin America, is based in Houston, TX and has the dubious honor of having been where Anna Nicole Smith met her billionaire husband) published their quarterly financials and held a conference call to discuss them, and it was much like any other earnings call. Analysts expressed dismay that Rick’s might be expanding too vigorously, and the company president defended his company’s actions. What intrigued me was the way the president and analysts alike so nakedly (pun intended, with my apologies) referred to the cornerstone of their business, otherwise known as highly sexualized women, as a commodity.

Seriously: oil executives speak about barrels of crude more fondly.

Consider these words from Rick’s Cabaret president Eric Langan: “While we anticipated start-up costs in Dallas and Philadelphia, what we didn’t anticipate was having [sic] to keep out-of-town entertainers in Philadelphia for about 4 extra weeks, which added to our costs.”

The women who dance at Rick’s are referred to predominantly as “girls”, such as in this exchange between an investor and Mr. Langan:

Eric Wold: Are you seeing any impact of people in the clubs spending less on the girls, on dances and what not, impacting your ability to retain workers in the club?

Eric Langan:Actually, as the unemployment rate goes up we actually see more girls coming in and applying. So, it’s actually, as times get harder, we’re seeing more girls come in. So I think we’re seeing – you’re seeing, kind of seeing a cross theme. I think we’re seeing the customers spend a little less money on the girls and I think we are seeing more girls at the clubs because of the current economic conditions.

You can compare that to the following snippet about salary and wages referring to managers (mostly, if not exclusively, male) as “people”:

Eric Langan: We have -- we have cut a couple of management, high level management personnel in the last two months due to: a) we believe we’ve got stronger people coming up, and they just weren’t performing to the standards that we wanted, so...

When Mr. Langan speaks about his marketing plans re: the football season, he says this:

Eric Langan: We take a bunch of girls down to the stadium, they pass out a bunch of free passes, and the club fills up.

Not, “the dancers go to the stadium” or even “the girls go to the stadium”, but “we take” them there.

Eric Langan: And we’ll send girls in from Fort Worth, from the Fort Worth location if we need to in Dallas. But our girl count in Dallas and the quality of our staff in Dallas has improved remarkably.

Girl count. I’ve heard of human capital, but this is ridiculous.

Now, I know everyone hates disclaimers, but I don’t necessarily have a problem with strip clubs (or even oil or tobacco companies). Some things I like are made from plastic, I find driving to occasionally be the best way to get somewhere, I once was as adamant a smoker as Dennis Leary, and I find nothing inherently wrong with people looking at naked women (unless, of course, I am among them). But I find the attitude towards women shown in this call to be deplorable –worse, if possible, than the attitude towards people in general shown by other industries.

So, what do you think? Does sexism + capitalism = yikes?