Owners, tourists and locals.
Tuesday 27 March 2007
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
