Ho Ho Ho...

Merry Christmas.

little man syndrome

It is becoming clear that size does indeed, matter. On Saturday night I had the misfortune of working in the gentlemans club rather than the nightclub on a particularly eventful bassline night. If you regularly visit nightclubs you'll know that a different style of music will pull a different type of crowd, for example if you put a 80's themed night on you'll most likely get the type of punter that wears some delightfully styled tweed trousers and will leave easily with a gentle 'good-eve sir!' as he walks off to his Volvo*. On a bassline night you should expect any chav within a radius of say, 1000 miles picking up a signal on his chavdar to head towards the club wearing the stupidest hat, the baggiest of trackies with the most sheeplike of addidas trainers.

I was on the front door of the gentlemans club, at approximately 10:02pm - exactly 2minutes after the door opened to the general public, and heard a shout of 'oi, fucking fat grandad cunt' from upstairs. I moved the ropes and charged up the stairs to help my colleague escort a gentleman down the stairs, I believe he had some sort of rabies as he was spitting and dribbling the whole way down the short flight of stairs. As he landed on the concrete he took a swing at 'grandad' and spat at me. Now, I generally (of late) have quite a high threshold, and quite a lot of patience, but spitting; is absolutely disgusting and is always a good way to help me introduce you to the concrete that little bit harder. It was all very split second reaction, as once you've been in the game long enough it becomes an electric reaction that bypasses the brain, the body just acts. As I saw his fist raise I tensed, my right foot goes back to create some momentum, my arm moves out with a flat palm, I process his position, I process my position, I process my colleagues position, will there be contact with the fist if I (or my colleague) does not react? When the answer is yes, the flat palm slightly enters the customers chest as the force transfers from my bodyweight to his body, usually it results in the customer stumbling backwards, creating a gap, a chance for him to walk away. Unfortunately, when the proximity between the customer and two experienced rhino's on a door, both rhino's will react at the same sort of speed, at the same time. In this case, resulting in the customer flying so far backwards, with such a force that he is unlikely to stop for a fair few metres, unless he gets in contact with something; in this case; a police car that just pulled up for another gentleman kicking off. Yes, all at 10:03pm.

Anyway, back to the main reason for this post, as the above story has suggested, bassline nights generally don't go without issue, and are generally quite long nights for a doorteam. Customer after customer was ejected from the venue, I was surprised they had any left. I won't lie, i'll admit that I was standing on my door quite jealous of the upstairs team, because I was standing babysitting some sexual frustrated chaps while they had a bit of fun, a shit load of adrenaline, and one or two minor injuries.

Anyway, a particular large gentleman was ejected from the venue, by 3 of our larger members of doorstaff, they got him to the bottom of the stairs, and were still struggling, now I'm not huge, but i'm equally not tiny, so I joined them to restrain him to the ground while the manager got hold of some fluorescent assistance. A sight to be seen, 4 fairly large members of security restraining a lump, when a 5foot2 doorman comes out, weighing in at an approximate 9 stone, comes out and starts shouting at the guy 'you try and punch me, you cunt! i'll fucking kick the shit out of you, fucking cunt, come on then'! the shock on myself and the other upstairs team's headdoor as he came out was and completely useless to the situation, if anything, his presence meant I had to dig my knee in just that little bit harder.

He is a new member of doorstaff that we are valiantly trying to train up and give some experience on what some would not call an easy door, but his attitude is completely wrong; he needs to realise that being a door supervisor is no longer how well you can use your fists, its how well you can communicate.

He clearly has little man syndrome. I hope my area manager has listened to my advice to pull him off our door.

3 days...

With only a couple of days left until Christmas this is the time of year when I start really panicing as I usually have shit loads of presents to buy and loads to sort out before I give out presents on the day. However this year due to the impending strike from the much reliable postal service I actually pulled my finger out and got my presents fairly early (most of them arrived last week). I've even actually made an effort, and spent a lot more money than I usually spend this year.

So for once, I'm actually looking forward to christmas already! ...

.... Just got back to the ruralshire Village after a particularly dull shift with less than 10 customers, apart from 'hi' and 'bye' there was absolutely no interaction with customers whatsoever. Dull.

respect

This shall be a short post as i'm quite tired and should really try and wake up before noon today. Tonight an ex-colleague who I used to work with in another city was in the venue after his shift at a venue across the street. When I worked with him years ago I was an inexperienced cocky teenage member of doorstaff, the sort of doorstaff that if my agency sends us now i'll most likely attempt to reject; and because of this he has certain assumptions and judges me on my skills.

Because he was in the venue, I felt nervous, firstly because I felt that I had to change his image of me, and secondly because if I fucked up I know he'll tell everyone that I used to know, and thats just embarrasment. I shouldn't really care what other people think of me, but its always nice to know that if the situation ever occurs that we are working on a door together, it would be nice for him to know that he can rely on me to watch his back.

At the end of the night a customer was refusing to leave without his coat, after losing his cloakroom ticket and being advised that he would need to wait until the end of the night the customer decided to dance; at which point I got him in a goose and straight out the front door down the steps and onto the street. When I noticed the ex-colleague standing there (subtly of course) I released the customer and stood exactly where I was. In most situations I would take a step back to create a gap, to show that the hostile situation is resolved, and most importantly give the customer a chance to walk away. I decided not to create this gap, and not to take a step back, of which, the customer did, with a pleasant 'fuck you' and he waddled off.

Retrospectively i'm not sure whether my actions throughout that process improved the ex-colleagues image of me, or whether it made me look reckless, and thus, useless. More to the point, should I care? *

* This is not rhetorical, I would actually like a response!

Just another night on the steps...

I arrived at work promptly at eight thirty tonight, driving from the village I spoke about in my previous post. As I walked down the steps (The club I worked at tonight is one of my two regular venues, one of which the steps go up to the front door, the other of which, the one where I worked tonight the steps go down to a basement type venue) and into the venue I felt fairly relaxed, not at all worried about the night ahead. I should elaborate in mentioning that this particular venue is a gentlemans club and so the clientelle we usually get is never particularly a problem, and when they do insist on being escorted from the venue with reasonable force they rarely cause much contention. Tonight seemed to be ever so slightly different.

With the run up to the event that everyone seems to enjoy and remember due to the fat guy in a red suit rather than the thinner guy with longer hair, anyway, at this time of year with many staff parties and people that usually don't drink so much, drinking so much there are the inevitable idiots causing situations on my steps. Tonight however, the particular said idiot turned out to be a vaguely handy off duty member of door staff.

If you're reading this and you're a member of doorstaff, you'll fully understand the predicament, and the embarrasment of the entire situation. Firstly, as an off duty member of doorstaff he should understand our situation and sympathise with us, rather than creating a situation.

The guy in question was asked extremely politely to leave the venue (the reason though irrelivant, was because he had touched one of the dancers twice, and warned twice), which eventually he did after swearing at me in a foreign language and flashing his SIA badge. The conversation from my side was extremely polite with a possible overusage of the title 'sir'. When he got to the bottom of the stairs I could see the cogs in his evidentially small brain working and he decided that for me to get him up those stairs without him having a good chance of giving me a headache would be an extremely difficult task. So at the bottom of the stairs I asked him ever so eloquently to please walk up the stairs, at this point his girlfriend came out to the door too, the rest of his party still inside. I asked him no less than 3 times to please walk up his stairs, at which point I had the task of forcing him. This is when the difference between a punter and a member of doorstaff becomes a serious concern for me, as an experienced member of door staff should know most restraint moves, most techniques, most psychological techniques and the level of force that we can legally use.

I decided to go for an illegal move, a decision to which I came to the conclusion would be one of the only ways of getting the guy up the stairs without a significant risk of phyiscal harm to myself. The exact move I used is irrelivant, but it worked half way up the stairs.

I'm not embarrased to admit that at this point I came unstuck. I forgot to watch my surroundings. From behind me, a complete judas attack, his girlfriend got an excellent swing at the back of my head, always, always watch your surroundings is apparently the moral to this story. At this point my earlier requested assistance arrived and helped me move the member of off-duty doorstaff up the stairs, at which point the rest of his group came flying through the door with such force that I slipped down the dripping wet stairs and ended up smashing my head against one of the concrete steps.

At this point I then realised it was 2 of us, against 8 of them. Doorstaff on Doorstaff. Embarrasing for them more than us, since if I went out on a staff party with my team from my usual venue (up the stairs) I would be highly embarrased if they kicked off with another team. Luckily for myself and my single colleague their head doorman had the same thought and told his team to stop being wankers.

Due to the significant launch down the stairs and the skull smashing against an extremely hard surface the venue manager was very adament that I get checked out and radio'd through for a paramedic, who suggested that I should head to A+E.

I did realise that I was well overdue a visit....

Driving

This week i've been visiting a particular someone in a village in a very rural part of the country. Its around an 1 hour and a half drive from my house to the village, and thats if I get clear roads, I can expect it to take up to 2 hours. 

So anyway, I remembered that i'd be working tonight, so had to drive the 2 hours to my house to get my work stuff, then the 30mins to work. Got on the door, realized within an hour that it was going to be very fucking dead, so I decided that there would be no point in staying. Signed out after an hour, and drove the two hours back to the village, which only took me 50mins - I wasn't speeding! 

It seems that I earned a tiny amount for a silly amount of driving, I guess its all worth it if she's worth it? Yeah, she is.*

* obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be doing all this driving!

ripples...

I just got into bed after a particularly arduous door shift at my regular venue. When I got into the kitchen and turned the lights on, with the adrenaline gone, and the threat extict I suddenly realised two things.



1. There is a small cut on my right hand thumb



2. I went through 2 shirts tonight, thats how much other peoples blood was spilled.



The two added together are enough to make one nauseated, and begin to worry about a transfer of virus' and onasty thoughts start rushing through your head. Thinking back throughout the night I consider the different environments and situations where people have decided to leave their hemoglobin (or should it be oxyhemoglobin?) everywhere. I realise that in all the situations i've had my leather gloves on, protecting my cuts from their toxins and ensuring that I am most probably clean.

It put things into perspective though (well sort of, please understand that at 5am after a busy shift and very little sleep the night previous, my babble is exactly that; babble) with the fact that if I had not been wearing gloves, or taken them off because I got too hot, and then dealt with an issue on the dancefloor, getting their blood in my cut, infected me with HIV, it shortens my lifespan. A simple thing as not wearing gloves can have a life changing effect. Its scary how vunerable we are, and how every single decision we make could change our lives significantly.

Thinking back to various decisions i've made, that have changed my life significantly, or could have done:

- I dont particularly want to write this in words, as I dislike the words, however if this decision was made differently i'd have a young child at the moment, which would change my life probably most significantly than any other decision made.

- I decided to leave my other half, which resulted in me having to live back with my parents and have a level of freedom taken away, and a level of freedom granted, this comparatively isn't such a huge significant change; and its a common one, but to me its still a life changing decision.

- Deciding to overtake at a junction. This decision could have resulted in an end to my life, luckily I was only vaguely injured, and my car was very injured, but this small momentary lapse of judgement could have been my final decision.

Unfortunately at this stage i'm so overcome with fatigue I cannot think of any more 'life changing' episodes, and my writing style for this entry has gone... crap...

and so, I shall try and sleep.

alcoholism.... part II

Well as it happens I started drinking at a friends house, but we made a huge mistake of having dinner before deciding to head to our local luminar venue. We had a fairly sophisticated (we're students remember) meal, with a salad starter and a huge amount of pasta and meat for the main. It was all rather relaxing, and we all ate far too much, and drank far too little. We then made our second wrong decision of the night by sitting down in-front of the TV to watch a bit of comedy (Al Murray I believe, irony). This didn't particularly help as we all became quite subdued and relaxed, it was clear that we would not end up heading out.

Throughout the night particular 'stages' happened, from the sitting down, to the getting the duvets to keep warm, to the lying down on the couches, to the drinking of tea... at this point, I did suggest 'what time shall we leave' to a look of no chance, and I believe a snore, from the other party. 

I must be getting old as this was the perfect end to the term...

alcoholism....

As a security operative in a nightclub I feel that when I decide to go out with my friends I need to ensure that I compose myself in a certain manner. However tonight is the last night of University until after christmas, or so the last night of alcoholism before 2009. When i'm back in my hometime I don't particularly have time to drink alcohol as I try and work every possible moment that i'm actually awake.

Just returned from an alcohol run to our local large superstore with enough beer for about 10 people but there are only a few of us, It should be a good night. Copious amounts of alcohol is always good on your last night, I think i'll probably end up driving home tommorow afternoon rather than the morning as I previously planned.

In reference to the two pieces of coursework due last week, i've decided that i'm not going to get them done this week, and instead intend to do them for next Friday (Drive up and hand them in especially.) as that way I have the best chance of doing them well... 

This friday i'm working at a gentlemans club, which I always find so boring, yes the fact that most of the women inside are half naked, is a plus, but its soooo boring, I'm a young doorman, not a short fused, but a young doorman who from time to time likes a bit of action, rather than a 60 year old married pervert touching a girl... sometimes they make the wrong decision of refusing to leave, but only very, very occasionally.....

Motivation

It seems that once you have lost motivation; you've lost everything. I should elaborate in noting that the motivation lost is contained to university coursework and that infact my motivation in other particular areas is still more than sufficient.

I have two pieces of coursework due in on the 5th, and i'm well aware that its now the 10th. I haven't started either, not through lack of trying, through lack of knowledge? no, its not that either. Its more to do with the fact that I just simply cannot be arsed, I have other distractions, i.e a particular fantastic episode of SPOOKS. I haven't even attempted to get some shifts on the doors this week, thats how lazy i'm being.

I need to get my motivational mojo back!...

1000 words.

'they' say that a picture says 1000 words, sometimes 1000 words aren't necessary, sometimes its only a single word that is necessary. wow.

the Weekend

When you get home from a tiring Friday Night shift around 5.30am, you make a quick sandwich, or an other quick not-too-heavy snack, maybe have a pint of beer, or a glass of milk, whichever is your preference, you'll eventually get into bed around 6.30am, asleep by 7am. This suggests that you'll goto sleep on Saturday morning at 7am with the prospect of an equally tiring Saturday Night shift and so you'll attempt to get as much sleep as possible. Now technically this means that your actually doing a 'complete' nightshift, and that Saturday is vaguely a write off. I just spoke to a colleague who went home at 1am, got to sleep at probably 2.30am, and his Saturday is most likely not a write off; he's off to play football. I myself, wouldn't have the energy just yet, but I probably could a bit later. So i'm lying in bed, and this is what sparked this entry, I turned my TV on and to my horror my DVB box isn't working, so I went for the elementary 1-4 (yes I live in ruralshire, I do not get channel 5!) and its all completely bollocks, I wonder, at any point does anyone ever turn on their TV at 2.41pm on a Saturday afternoon and go 'ohhh what do I watch, there's so much on!!' its utter fucking bollocks, who wants to watch a film pre-hitler.

The next chapter...

I'm back in my home town now, home for the weekend to work the doors. I should explain that while i'm at university, I travelled back at the weekends to stay at my house with my fiance (now ex-fiance/girlfriend) and work the doors. However now that we have split up, i'm now living back at my parents house! Its not ideal, we get on very well, but only since I moved out. When I lived here last myself and my parents used to argue about almost anything and everything but our relationship is a lot better when we're apart. So from after christmas onwards i'll be staying up in my university town working the doors rather than travelling back and fourth. This will be a huge impact as currently i'm top of the food chain, nobody tells me what to do, I have colleagues on a similar level who advise me,but I never get ordered around, while when I work in my University town I have to work my way up from the bottom.

On the upside I have now got a new car that is not only faster than my previous car, but also significantly better economy, silver lining and all that.....

Charity Work

I agree'd to do some charity work at a nightclub tonight from 9pm-1am, even though I have a shit load of coursework that needs to be completed by Friday. Not entirely sure why I agreed though, I'd imagine its probably because firstly its for 'Children In Need' and secondly I don't really give to charity much, being a poor student so I decided i'd give somehow.

With a week and a half left of Uni until Christmas the work load has suddenly got extremely hard and my motivation is lacking severly. I have two major pieces of work due on Friday and even though I have a lot of time I haven't bothered to start or even look at what needs to be done; I think I probably should!

Also, what the fuck, a replacement car key is £106.50 plus vat???

Sleep?

There is a significantly large problem with being a doorman and trying to earn a degree; during the weekend you stay up late, drinking redbull, ejecting customers and other such happy tasks through the evening. The evening ends, if you're lucky 2am, or if its a usual fun filled evening 3.30am, possibly 4am. At this point, any good doorman will realise that this is the time when you need to be on your highest guard, defcon 1. You could have an uneventful kick out, you could have everyone leave, everyone accept that ''fuck off'' really means that the dj won't encore, and that it really is time to finish your drinks. OR maybe you'll have the overly inebriated group of 12 lads out from a different city who decide that they really want to stay, and you and your colleagues have to ask them to leave a litte less politely than you'd hope; whatever happens a decent experienced doorman will know that you need to be on high alert, as a result, you have a significant amount of adrenaline surging through your body to ensure that if the worst scenario happens - you're ready.

Club is clear, toilets checked, radios on charge, doors are locked, everyone is happy, everyone leaves, at this point, an inexperienced doorman might switch off and start thinking about his bed, wrong. This is the point when I probably worry the most. I must not forget that 4 hours earlier I threw someone out of the fire exit using reasonable force, which they might have construed otherwise - and so, the long (or short) walk to my car could well be a risky situation. The adrenaline continues to surge, my heart beats a little bit faster. Thank fuck, I made it to my car, but now i'm wide awake. So i drive home, chill out, watch some TV and finally get to sleep around 7am. Its now Sunday evening (Well, Monday morning) and due to the sleep pattern being fucked I wont get to sleep for a bit - even though there may, or may not be a rather attractive person next to me most definately expecting attention (even if she is asleep..). The worst part is that as a student I need to be awake tommorow to study and such, which wont happen. I'll eventually by thursday night have a vaguely sensible sleep pattern, only for the weekend to go and fuck it up again.

I enjoy the job, I enjoy the money, I enjoy the banter from the many wanker customers. I do not enjoy the sleepness nights which result in me never ever being on time to the coffee shop to meet my mates.