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
