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.