5 'golf-cart girls' dish on what the job is like, from making hundreds in tips per shift to dealing with creepy men
Claire Hart; Cassie Holland; Danae Lyons; Marianne Ayala/Insider
- "Cart girls," young women who serve as bartenders for golf players, are blowing up on TikTok.
- Insider spoke with five women in the job, who said perks include big tips and time in the outdoors.
- They said the downsides include dealing with harassment.
TikTok is abuzz with videos depicting the daily lives of "cart girls," young women who serve as bartenders on golf courses, riding around on golf carts and offering drinks to players.
The job typically pays around the minimum wage, but some cart girls make hundreds in tips, while others have landed brand deals with companies such as Abercombie.
Insider spoke with five women about the job. They said they loved the ability to be out in nature, socialize, and make "unreal money."
They also said harassment, such as groping and lewd comments, is a regular occurrence.
Cassie Holland has 1.8 million TikTok followers and brand deals
Courtesy of Cassie Holland
Cassie Holland used to waitress at conventions in Las Vegas, but when the pandemic hit, someone told her about bartending on a golf course.
Holland said that being out in nature for her job changed her life. She soon started making TikTok videos about the job — she's racked up 1.8 million followers and 45 million likes on the platform and has gotten offers to work with brands big and small.
"The biggest brand I've worked with was Abercrombie, although at first I was kind of skeptical about it and I didn't believe it," she said. "Why would Abercrombie want to work with me?
"But they followed through and it was legit, and that was pretty cool."
She said that other golf courses' reaching out to her with opportunities prompted the owner of the golf course she worked at to bump her up from earning $9 an hour to earning a salary on contract. She said she also made $400 to $500 a day in tips and would try different outfits to see what might earn her the most.
"Sometimes I'll do a tomboy thing to see how it affects my tip," she said, adding that a skirt-and-polo look, however, was the winner.
She said younger men especially recognize her from her TikTok videos and ask to take photos with her. She added that while some men had gotten handsy while she was on the job, she hadn't dealt with too many incidents like that.
"It's annoying and weird, but nothing too crazy," she said.
Ellie Dressler puts harassers in their place
Ellie Dressler
Ellie Dressler said that when she began looking for a cart-girl job, she spoke with eight golf courses that told her they'd seen an increase in applications for the role because of TikTok.
She said that while she was making the most money she's ever made from a summer job, she doesn't make as much as some cart girls on TikTok do.
"On TikTok, you see cart girls making thousands of dollars a day, and that's not realistic for most of us," Dressler said.
She said it's a "pretty basic job" where "all you need to do is be bubbly and fun." But she said some drawbacks of the job had prompted her to start a TikTok series titled "Ridiculous But True Stories of a Golf Cart Girl."
She said men sometimes comment on her clothes or body, whistle at her, or try to touch her.
"There was once a man who grabbed me — but he made a mistake because I'm trained in MMA," Dressler said. "I dislocated his thumb, and he said he was going to tell my boss. I told him to go ahead."
Caroline Scheffler says it's the perfect summer job for students and people interested in networking
Caroline Scheffler
Caroline Scheffler have worked as golf-cart bartenders in Texas and California.
Scheffler said she'd heard about the job from the son of one of her dad's clients and enjoyed it both for the money and for the ability to socialize.
"It's unreal money," she said, adding that sometimes people will give all sorts of reasons to pay for services — she said her sister was once paid a lot for finding a man's lost iPhone.
Scheffler said last year that she had a summer internship with a law firm but would likely try to squeeze in a few shifts on the golf course "because it's hard to give up that job."
Danae Lyons says it's been her favorite job in the service industry
Danae Lyons
Danae Lyons, who has also worked in Texas and California, said that working on the golf course had been her favorite job in the service industry and a good networking opportunity.
"My clients are either retired or high up in their companies," Lyons said. "So they always tell me that once I've graduated, they have opportunities for me in this field or that field."
Like many cart girls, Scheffler and Lyons said they'd dealt with harassment on the job.
"I feel like guys have a tendency to sexually objectify cart girls," Lyons said.
Claire Hart likes the flexibility, despite hazards like killer bees and flying golf balls
Courtesy of Claire Hart
Claire Hart said she took up the job during the pandemic when her photography work ground to a halt.
She described her golf course in Las Vegas as more upscale than others and said she'd met celebrities and made hundreds in tips a day.
"In my first week, three or four celebrities showed up, including the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team and Alfonso Ribeiro, who played Carlton in 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,'" Hart said.
She said that in addition to her tips, she gets an automatic gratuity on every transaction.
But she said the job also comes with hazards, describing one situation in which she'd faced a swarm of thousands of killer bees. She added that one time she used her background in medicine to help a man who was bleeding profusely after a golf ball hit his nose.
Hart said that as she picks up photography again, she's grateful that her golf course is flexible and works around her schedule.