The Mystery Shopper
Friday, 30 March 2007
Nothing happened tonight. The highlight was the better-looking members of the female ENTS (entertainment) team going on stage to do classic rock numbers (Val Halen's Jump, etc) in spandex and tops that were so sheer you could almost but not quite see everything. That was the point, I guess. Still, being the doorman it seemed kind of obvious if you just stood there staring so the best you could do was a quick glimpse and an even faster exit.
Spent a good half an hour filling out incident reports on what happened yesterday; it seems they're taking it very seriously, which is of course a positive. Time will tell if it amounts to much.
I've done 46 hours this week, over six straight days. Now, that might not sound a lot to those of you who routinely do this or more, but twenty quid says you spend 90 per cent of that on your backsides. Try doing 7-8 hours a night on your feet with two ten minute breaks, and then we'll share war stories.
Still, this lack of action gives me a chance to fill you in about one of our biggest causes of concern at the moment - the so-called 'Mystery Shopper'.
See, it's not good enough to just be regulated and have a license and shit. Nooooo. The industry and regulatory bodies need to test you by sending out people who pretend to be tourists and visitors but are, in fact, charlatans. All they're really there for is to try and catch you out, by either observing you doing things that are unlawful or tricking you into doing them. The latter stinks of entrapment to me, but nobody seems to care. If the Mystery Shopper catches you out, you're fucked.
Now, I don't really give a fuck, but the anticipation of all this has got the staff spooked. And that's exactly what the regulators want, of course. Because we don't know who the Mystery Shopper is - I could be him, for Christ's sake, in the eyes and minds of everybody else - it keeps everybody on their toes 24/7 and working their shiny little butts off.
We've already had a few suspects; a nice, somewhat out-of-place couple who returned one night to ask if the man's jacket had been handed in, only for him to 'find it' back at his caravan about ten minutes later. He then proceeded to return to inform us of the good news and then spent an hour or so drilling us with questions about the SIA and our licenses. His knowledge, for a punter, was a bit beyond the norm, to say the least.
And then there's the chap I mentioned earlier, ploughing his pre-teen kids with alcohol blatantly in front of everybody while drinking himself into a coma. Could he be the Shopper? Now, this might sound like an example of somebody taking their work above and beyond but according to local legend it has happened. A few years back, one chap trying to sneak out of the complex with a couple of opened bottles of wine (a big no-no, in case of smashed glass), announced, when stopped, "Don't worry lads... I'm the Mystery Shopper." But even that could have been some kind of test.
And it's not limited to the alcohol license either. He could be a fire inspector, or magistrate. Christ, he could be anybody.
Equally, he might be nobody, and the complex will spend eight months worrying about a ghost that won't even have the decency to show up.
(p.s. It's my day off tomorrow, so don't expect much in the way of an update.)
posted by Sheamus @ 2:52 am
"If you don't start treating me with some respect, you're gonna get a punch in the fucking face."
Thursday, 29 March 2007
This evening, I had the pleasure of doing the doors on my first football match. England versus Andorra, of course. Droves were expected but probably 50-60 people showed up, and about 15-20 of those left on the back of the 0-0 result at half time. England went on to win 3-0, but to be honest I really didn't give a crap. It was a fairly interesting experience but not the one I'd assumed or possibly hoped for.
Moved up to the main complex at 10pm and it was quiet pretty much until 1am and closing time. The same regulars had glued themselves to their seats and decided that they'd have yet another five minutes drinking time on all that they'd had the rest of the week. Cue much watch-looking from the door staff and a plethora of rolling of the eyes. One particular troublesome area was this group of owners, and their children, who were all of drinking age, by the bar. Despite repeated "drink up, lads" they held their ground, and it was only when the security descended upon them en masse that they gave up. One bloke, the eldest, and by all accounts the main owner, had to down his entire pint before he left. This turned out to be a fairly decisive move.
So, ultimately, they, and another table of mostly women, make their way out of the club. Fine. Two women are left, and after they've pissed around for another ten minutes or so we get them outside too. It ends there, yeah? No. The collective of owners and totally pissed-up female visitors have now grouped just outside the first entrance to the complex and are making all kinds of noise. We'd already been warned about it by the park security and so decide to take a walk down there to ease them on their way. Edmonson leads, I follow, with Jabba a few paces behind me.
When we get there, one of the girls, who had already been repeatedly warned about her language, is effing and blinding herself into oblivion. There's pissed, and there's pissed, and she's another pint past the latter. Edmonson steps in and tells her that he's already warned her, and when a few of her mates start to buzz around, all of whom are trying to get her to stop shouting and go home, I say, "Yeah, come on, it's late and there are kids trying to sleep just down there," pointing to a nearby pitch.
Well, that was clearly a major mistake, because out of nowhere the pint-downer I mentioned earlier steps right up to me and says, "If you're going to be this hard this early you're in for a tough fucking season, mate."
To which I'm like: what?
"I wasn't speaking to you mate," I say.
He moves closer. "If you're going to be this hard this early you're in for a tough fucking season, mate," he repeats.
By now I'm trying to figure out exactly what he's trying to say to me. I hear the words, but it doesn't make much sense because I hadn't looked at or referenced him even once and was being absolutely clear and very calm. At this point I even held my arms out and my palms 'open', as you're told to do, to ease his aggression. Of course, some people think the Nazi salute traces back to an indication to show an empty palm, but we'll ignore that for now.
"I don't know what you're saying to me mate. Sorry?"
"If you're going to be this hard this early you're in for a tough fucking season, mate," he said for a third time.
"I wasn't even speaking to you mate. I was speaking to her." I nodded towards the girl in question, who by now had collapsed on the floor to the right of us.
"We're fucking owners mate," he said, stepping in so that our faces were about three inches apart. "If you don't start treating me with some respect, you're gonna get a punch in the fucking face."
What!? I again thought to myself. This time I even said it. "What!?"
"If you don't start treating me with some respect, you're gonna get a punch in the fucking face. We're fucking owners."
By now, I had no fucking clue what to say to him. He wasn't a tall bloke but he was fairly broad, but he was pissed out of his fucking mind and I'm pretty sure that if he went for me he'd do well to get one decent punch in. But more than that I was stunned as to how a situation could change so quickly and without me doing anything even remotely wrong; indeed, I was utterly confused as to how anything I said could be misinterpreted. The reality is it couldn't. The truth is he was wankered. I was saying these words to him and they weren't even registering. He had what he had to say and that was it; like an autotron, he was endlessly on repeat.
"If you don't start treating me with some respect, you're gonna get a punch in the fucking face."
We'd been standing literally face-to-face for about 30 seconds when suddenly his youngest son walks up to me and carefully pulls me away. "Leave it, mate, " he says, "Just leave it." To their credit both of his sons had been telling him to leave it throughout and I guess it had reached that point where something had to happen unless somebody stepped in. His elder son then came over and said the same thing to me, and both offered me their hands, which I took after some pause. By now, dad had been led away, but continued to eyeball me the whole time.
What!?
The collective dispersed and went back to their respective sites. Meantime, we walked back up to the complex, and the entire time I was tracing back the sequence of events to see if I had done or said anything strange or odd that might have set him off. I didn't, and Jabba later confirmed it. "Drink is evil," he added, and in some people it most definitely is.
The upside to all this is that the days when owners called the shots are long gone. Throughout the toe-to-toe in the back of my mind was the thought that this guy is fucked, as even threatening a staff member with violence is enough to see him not only be barred from the site but lose his £60,000 caravan in the process. Happy days. Or, so you would think, but if Jabba's story a few days ago has taught me anything it's that if this guy gets anything more than a polite warning I'll eat my fucking badge. In other words, I'll probably see him tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. Until one of us does something.
posted by Sheamus @ 3:04 am
Doing it for the kids.
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
The drinking license of any venue is obviously of major importance because if you lose it, or do anything that risks losing it, you no longer have a business.
Underage drinking at licensed establishments is a big no-no.
Quick bit of trivia: did you know that once somebody is 18, they can legally escort their 16-17 year old mates to any restaurant or bar that serves food and, as long as they're having a meal, they can drink as much beer, cider or wine as they please? No spirits, mind, but Jesus: if even 10 per cent of the 16-17 year olds in the UK were aware of this the entire country would go down the crapper.
However, if you're by yourself, you can't legally drink in any kind of licensed premises unless you're 18 years old or over. We all know this but, of course, this doesn't stop the young'uns having a good go.
We had two instances tonight. The first was a chap who was in his mid-fifties at least and I can only assume the grandfather of three children, who ranged in age from about 12 down to about five. He was so pissed he was beyond wankered, and he figured it would be a good idea to let his two elder kids have regular sips from his various beverages. This, of course, is not a good idea, but as pissed as he was it took about half an hour to make him see any kind of sense, and it was only when his wife got involved and starting threatening him that he wised up.
The second case involved a kid of a maximum of 15 years of age whom we had been observing yesterday. He was here with his parents and three younger siblings, and was walking around smoking etc and his folks didn't give a crap. Fine, not my call. But as the night went on he also appeared to be getting increasingly intoxicated. Around midnight he somehow managed to blag a slow dance with a woman at least ten years his senior that rang all kinds of alarm bells. He left pissed. Something, Watson, was afoot.
One of my colleagues - we'll call him Edmonson - suspected that this kid had been waiting for people to leave the venue and then was prying upon their remainders, picking up near-empties or, one suspects, the odd almost full pint, and polishing 'em off. We never actually saw him doing this but there was no way he was going to be served, as that kind of thing gets places shut down without a second thought. I mean, he looked 15.
Well, tonight he was pissed again and lo and behold I caught him walking around the place - like he owned it - with half a pint of beer. "Got any ID, mate?" I enquired, and of course he did not. "That's mine then," I told him, and politely stated that if he was ever seen with an alcoholic beverage again he'd be banned from the complex. He left with his tail between his legs.
So, I went back into the club to tell the barstaff what had happened and to keep an eye out for him in the future. They all nodded in agreement, but then I noticed that another bartender at the opposite side of the club hadn't heard what I said and so I walked over to repeat it to him.
This is how it went:
Me: "OK, there's this kid, right, who's a maximum of 15 and is wearing this light blue shirt..."
Bartender: "Oh yeah, I served him earlier. Anyway, go on..."
Me: "You served him...!?!"
Bartender: "Yeah. Oh fuck. Shit, don't say anything... it's my first night..."
posted by Sheamus @ 2:23 am
Hepatitis Blues
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
I had to get up early to have a Hepatitis B shot this morning. It's the first in a course of three, and was strongly recommended by my employer on the "... offchance that somebody spits in your eyes or your mouth."
If you get it, this is how you could end up.
Groovy.
posted by Sheamus @ 10:40 am
Owners, tourists and locals.
Three down. Eight of the next nine to go.
Yeah, somehow, even though we're meant to have two days off a week, I managed to bag myself eleven out of the first twelve 6pm-whenever shifts. Fortunately, it's still very early in the season and relatively quiet. Finished at 1.30am tonight. However, the upcoming Easter holidays are a very different kettle; they're expecting a throng of some 5,000. Sounds like fun.
I didn't explain my working environment very well in my opening blog post so I think it's only fair to do this now. You have a rough idea of my hours, and some sort of take on what it is I do (stand around, look bored/tired/mean, usually in reverse order), but I haven't said a lot about the people. I did use the word bastards, which probably isn't really fair, but I'm pretty sure it's going to turn out to be accurate.
You see, there are three kinds of people that come to my complex: owners, tourists and locals.
Owners - These folk actually own property on the site, which is usually a caravan of some kind. Now, 'caravan' is a bit of a loose term where I work as none of them look anything like the common-or-garden white number they blow the shit out of on Top Gear each and every week. These things are more like bungalows on wheels. Think white trash USA and you'll be kind of close, but even that's not really fair as, depending on the grade of caravan that the owner has decided to purchase (or, indeed, a visitor has chosen to rent), some of them are really quite swanky indeed, with two-grand plasma TVs, expensive leather sofas and toilets that actually flush. Some, however, are very much on the opposite end of this scale. But the owners typically go for the posher end. Most of the owners, very much above the touted 90 per cent figure, seem decent, reasonable, salt-of-the-earth type people. They're almost all from well outside of the area - typically London or up t'North. There are something like 300 owners, many of whom have partners and multiple children. The children, especially those in their late teens, can be a bit of a pain.
Tourists - Tourists make up the rest of the numbers. In high season, as said, the place packs in some 5,000 people and most of these will be visitors, here for a weekend or more. These people are more of an unknown quantity as while most of them (90 per cent) are here to have a good time, there's a remainder who go on these kinds of holidays just to smashed out of their skulls and to hell with the end result. When you throw in 'special' bookings like football teams, rugby teams, martial arts teams, etc, chaos can, and often will, ensue. The camp prohibits bookings from stag parties and the like but these do sneak through in multiple bookings.
Locals - Locals are the park nuisance. Unwanted, unwashed and generally undesirable, they're people who live in the immediate area but have no right to come on to the camp and use the facilities, quite simply because they haven't paid to do so. Now, while it may not make sense to you and I why anybody would want to sneak in to a showbar to see some slapdash cabaret believe me they do. Or, at least, they try, and the real reason is for the bars - they're actually pretty decent, with loads of bar staff and the kind of 'Four-Pint Pitcher for £8' deals that keep people interested. You don't get many trying to sneak in during the week but you do get a few on the weekend, and they'll give you every excuse in the book why you should let them in. Everybody who wants to enter the complex needs a pass, which they get when they check in (or buy some property). Locals, of course, don't have one, but they'll try to convince you that they do, really, but just don't have it with them, or that they don't need one at all. "Yeah, my mate works here," they'll tell you, or ask if they can just use the toilet, or visit the shop, or grab a burger, or pick up the mobile phone they left behind earlier, the last time they didn't come.
You have to be careful as some of them can be quite convincing and it doesn't help that many of the owners' kids never seem to remember their passes either. With the latter you soon remember their faces so it comes down to the good old-fashioned process of elimination.
Technically, there's a fourth class of person too, the VIP, which includes such luminaries as Keith Harris, Mike Reid and The Krankies, but I've yet to see any of them, probably never will and, let's face it, don't really want to.
No major incidents at work yet, which is a shame as we do have an 'incident book', and right now it's just a load of blank pages. It almost threatened to kick off last night (Sunday), and even though it didn't really happen it does serve as a great example of where touted policy can very quickly be reversed and re-written.
Jabba was alone in the showbar while I was working the door. Suddenly, all this noise comes over my radio but it's too loud where I'm standing for me to make it out. It keeps repeating, though, so I figure something is amiss, and when some random comes running towards me saying they need my help, I charge off to investigate.
Outside the showbar Jabba is talking to a couple of blokes; he's a very big guy - about 6ft5, probably 17 stone - but there's two of them, they're pissed, and so they're giving him a bit of stick. Nothing physical. I walk over and calm things down a bit. Jabba explains that he was watching the dancefloor inside the showbar when one of the guys suddenly walked up to two women and pushed his way in between them and seemed to be kicking off. The other guy wasn't having it - he explained that what really happened was that one of the two girls was his sister, who had just been punched by the other one (yeah, it's that kind of fine establishment), and he was actually stepping in to stop her getting hit again. At first it sounded like the standard excuses, and his pissed-up mate wasn't helping, but the guy repeated his story several times over the next 20 minutes or so and he was always consistent, and polite. It dawned on me pretty quickly that he was on the level. However, Jabba had by now radioed into the head security office for a decision and was now telling the bloke that he had to leave. The chap, who had now been joined by his fiancee, wasn't impressed, as they felt, probably quite rightly, that it was unfair if they were getting chucked out while the other side involved in the scuffle were not. So, Jabba stepped away and radioed the office again, and was told that both parties should be given the boot.
Another one of our security team went in to sort this out and moments later when the main girl involved in the incident - the one who had hit the guy's sister - came out, I knew he was telling the truth. She behaved in basically the opposite way to him, being really aggressive, using loads of bad language, pointing fingers, etc. "Why the fuck are we being chucked out? Are you mates with 'im, or something?" etc etc.
Well, by now the complex manager had become involved, and we figured things would be taken care of pretty easily now. When we did all of our training we were told that modern policy was that the door staff would always be backed up by management when they had made the decision to not allow somebody access to the venue or to ask them to leave. The reasons are pretty obvious - if management reverses one of these decisions and an individual is allowed to stay, the doorman has been undermined and there is a risk that the person allowed back in will now push that privilege and start to really cause some problems. Of course what happens then when the shit really hits the fan is that that same doorman is expected to wade in there and sort it all out again, even though he'd already made the call that would have ended any chance of that happening.
But this wouldn't happen now, because we've been told that's now how they do things around here.
We were told wrong.
The decision was overuled and everybody was allowed back inside. The reasons for this are pretty obvious too - the six or seven involved were probably spending £60-90 per hour and it was only 9.30pm. As we were expected to close at 12.30am, that's a pretty decent return. It was almost like an insurance scam - weigh up the chances of something happening against the expected intake and make your decision. If the intake is good enough to offset any risk of trouble then hello, sir, what can I get you? And that's exactly what happened. Jabba was pissed. "I feel like a right fucking plum," he said, and I could totally sympathise. While I think one could argue that the wrong decision had been made in the first place, there's no doubt that the management were taking a bit of a chance that it wouldn't kick off again, and it did undermine the door staff.
I shouldn't be too surprised, though. Earlier on, one of entertainment staff was on stage with a mic and decided to get the audience to do a cheering thank-you for the various staff members. First, the entertainment team, and they roared. Then the bar staff, and they roared louder. So on and so on, until she noticed me against a wall in the corner, and said, "And a big thank-you to the security team."
And the place went totally fucking quiet.
posted by Sheamus @ 1:50 am
Sunday, Sunday
Monday, 26 March 2007
Today, or rather, tonight, is my 'easy day'.
See, my actual shifts are meant to be seven hours at a time. 6pm-1am, specifically. This, of course, is a nonsense, as the main club in the complex doesn't close until 2am and so my shift automatically is eight hours: 6pm-2am. Of course, while the club shuts officially at 2am, the hundreds of people inside are allowed 20-30 minutes 'drink-up' time. So, we're now at 6pm-2:30am. Then, naturally, you have fifty or sixty people who just don't want to leave but eventually have to. Add to that your last minute security/fire door/rubbish/toilet checks and you don't actually clock off until somewhere between 3 and 4am.
All except for Sunday night, that is, which as you would imagine is the quiet night of the week. This is for two reasons: one, it's a Sunday, and two, most of the weekend visitors are going home early Monday morning (check out is 10am), so they don't really want to push it. Plus, the showbar closes at 12:30am sharp. We still have a few taking it to the nth, of course, so it wasn't until 1:30am that I actually left the premises.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not moaning. I knew what I was getting into when I took this job on. Still, there have been adjustments that I have had to make. One, I no longer eat breakfast. Breakfast doesn't even exist for anyone who doesn't get up before 11am. My first meal of the day is therefore lunch. My second meal - we'll call it dinner - is enjoyed just before I begin my shift. I then find myself having some kind of mid-shift support at about 9-10pm. Finally, whenever I get back home, it's time to rustle up some fuck-off sandwich to see me through the night. This 2am+ treat is my breakfast.
posted by Sheamus @ 2:15 am
Somebody's gotta do it.
Sunday, 25 March 2007
I must admit I never really saw any of this coming but Goddammit if it doesn't feel so fucking natural.
Six months ago I had no real aspirations towards security work, let alone becoming a bouncer. Scratch that - door host. "Bouncers" are so 1980s. Door hosts, supervisors or "meet and greeters" are the new, 2007, faux-PC, Security Industry Authority (SIA) approved rent-a-cops, highered by the hour/night for pub and club work, and the like. Gone are the days of cabbage-eared monosyllabic neanderthals lurking in the shadows ready to leap in and beat the crap out of anybody who even dared to look at them funny. Those kinds of blokes are, we've been repeatedly told, no longer welcome. No longer employable. Now, it's just mugs like me, and others who have the iota of intelligence required to pass the regulator's examinations and get their badge, but still have the required chutzpah and enough of 'the right look' to get the job done.
I started work Saturday night; I'm not ashamed to say, nor is it I suspect, too unusual, to admit that as I walked towards the security hut for the first time to pick up my radio I found myself somewhere between opening night anxiety and bricking it. It was less about any fear factor towards being beaten to a bloody pulp, and more the realisation that despite a fortnight's training I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to be doing.
An hour later, I felt like I ran the place.
"Ninety per cent of the people here are great," my boss told me, a few days before I started work as a door host at a holiday park complex. "You'll have no problems with them at all."
Which is great, except that in the peak-season the nightclub at my venue often holds 1300 people. What this means is that at any one time there are 130 of the bastards that you need to keep an eye on.
Still, that's all to come. Right now the season has only just began, and tonight we - that's basically myself and Jabba, as he shall be known, as we were the only two of the five door staff to show up - only had to deal with about six hundred people, and for an opening night it went unbelievably smoothly. No problems at all. Time passed between in its usual different whims of "Christ, it's nearly midnight." to "Christ, it's not even midnight." but to be honest the biggest problem on Saturday was the weather - it was pissing down with rain and bloody freezing. My shift began, as I think it will do every night, outside at the main entrance to the complex - the 'main gates' - which apart from a hut that's so small and exposed that it probably qualifies as some kind of torture chamber means that for 2-3 hours a night I'm right in the thick of it. Weather-wise, that is. After that, we get to meander up to the proper entrance to the complex which at least means you benefit from some of the heat the leaks out of the automatic doors. This is great now but no doubt is going to be hellish in the middle of summer where of course we'll all be waxing lyrical about the brilliant weather in late-March and how we'd kill for a bit of a cold wind.
Still, that's at least five months away, and until then it's one gigantic learning curve. As I said, an hour into my shift I felt like I ran the place, as I imagine most people feel when they walk into any room with the self-illuminating words SECURITY written on the back of their jacket in three-inch pitch. There's something about the look and the uniform that does probably 99.99 per cent of your job for you. Just being a visible presence, and all that. It's only when something kicks off and everybody in the room turns around and looks at you that all those
I guess that's all to come. Still, chin up, and all that.
posted by Sheamus @ 3:45 am