Dave the Skimpy says masculine name helps bring larger crowd to pub

Offering men a chance to see a “Dave” at the pub has been a gold mine for one Kalgoorlie-Boulder skimpy.

Dave the Skimpy, as she is known across many WA pubs, has been pouring drinks and entertaining patrons for about four years.

Originally going by Daviana George after concerns were raised that people wouldn’t come to the pub to see “Dave”, her chosen name has, in fact, done the opposite.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to call myself, and I figured everyone knew a ‘Dave’, so it was simple and easy to remember,” she said.

“It works really well with the boys up in the mines; they love making jokes about how they can come to the pub and see Dave’s a.., so it works quite well for me.

“It was good marketing for my Instagram too because people would always be like ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’.”

Before she joined the skimpy industry, Dave worked as a waitress in fine-dining restaurants but struggled to keep up with her bills.

A friend of hers told her about skimpy work, and once she heard how much money she could make, Dave decided to give it a go.

“I had a lot of reservations, though, because I’m super-conservative normally. I don’t like showing skin, and I don’t like people looking at me,” she said.

“The thought of interacting with a pub full of men and women made me really nervous.

“And I thought what everyone usually thinks, that people were going to be trying to touch me and saying weird things, and I was worried I would just be uncomfortable the whole time.”

But after four years, Dave says she has never had a bad experience.

“Even with private jobs and stuff like that, I’ve never had an issue at all,” she said.

“I’ve been very lucky in that way and just really fortunate that everyone knows the rules and doesn’t overstep them.”

And while the job has given her financial stability, earning far more than she ever had before, Dave said it had also helped boost her confidence.

“I still do get a little bit nervous. I think that will always be in me,” she said.

“But when I started this job, I had no confidence whatsoever.

“Now, I would say I am the most confident I have ever been.”

The job also opened up the opportunity for her to move from her home in WA to Queensland, where she is now looking to start studying to open her own small business.

But she isn’t ready to walk away from skimpy work either.

“I absolutely love the job. It’s very hard to do anything else now because I have so much freedom of time, freedom of being financially stable, and you get to meet so many cool people with different cool talents and stuff, get to travel for work, which I love as well,” she said.

“I know I can’t do it forever, but it’s just a really great job to have for now.”

And while her future plans are not set in stone, Dave said the people she had met in the towns she visited through work had opened plenty of doors for her in the future.

She is even considering a career jump from the skimpy industry to the mining industry in the future.

You can catch Dave at the Broken Hill Hotel this weekend before she heads back to Queensland, but she promises she will be back again.