Fire, fire. Fire, fire.
Monday 7 May 2007
I know I said last night was fucking busy, but really, last night was a fucking joke.
Tonight was the busiest night ever.
I mean, we're talking four thousand people here. 500 in the arcades alone. Five hundred. Ninety per cent of which are kids, running around like a scene from Lord of the Flies that William Golding tore up because it was too over the top. It was to the point of being a farce, because despite the previously-touted eight security guys and gals that came with the footballers, it was really only Jabba and myself, because Bilbo (yeah, he's still around) was down the lower bar and the football boys basically did fuck all. They even pissed off when last orders was called at 12.15am, leaving close to a thousand of the people they were meant to be looking after spread over our three main complex bars. Worse, they each got paid £350 for three days of work - and by 'day' I mean effectively 8pm to just before closing - which dwarfs the fucking money Jabba and myself make. Really, it absolutely takes the piss, but you have to ask yourself: who are the mugs here? Yeah, quite.
The reason why it was so mental tonight is that the kids' football teams - of which they were scores - had special trophy and award presentations in the main bar. Each member of each team obviously had his parents and siblings with him, and for tonight they also got special day passes for anyone else they wanted - aunties, uncles, grandparents, friends, that nice bloke from the corner shop, etc - which rallied the total up to that mystical four thousand level. As said, it was quite, quite mad.
What did amuse was that they'd roped in ex-England international Paul Parker to MC the presentations and hand over the awards. Now, you'll probably remember Parker's classic own goal in the 1990 World Cup, but most of the kids here were under-fifteen and didn't have a fucking clue who they were looking at. So when he was announced, quite brilliantly, about a hundred of them starting chanting, "WHO ARE YA!? WHO ARE YA!?" The look on his face was priceless. Good times.
So... it was effectively solidly mental from the start, and stayed that way right up until 10.10pm. And then the fire alarm went off. Once I'd figured out that the irritating noise I was trying to ignore was actually the alarm, somewhat to my credit, I got the main fire doors open in the main bar and everybody out in about a minute and a half. Thinking that that was basically going to be it, I walked back out into the arcades.
The other three thousand of the fuckers were packed somewhere between there and the main complex doors. Now, this was bad enough, but when we'd got them outside (which didn't actually take all that long), we were then told we needed to get them to the car park. This took forever. I can totally empathise with parents who can't find their young children and want to go back inside to have a look, because I'd do the same thing, but the simple fact is they cannot. But they don't care. But you have to. Hilarity ensues.
It was, of course, a false alarm anyway (quite literally) - some brilliant kid had devised the cracking wheeze of setting the thing off himself (well done there) - but for half an hour or so it was all a little chaotic. We got them out of the building fast enough to have saved everybody if the fire had been real (and obviously to a level that was threatening), but it didn't half take some work to get the fuckers moving once they were outside.
Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow; I'm working, but I don't give a shit. The footballers are all going home. Their security team left tonight. Oh, did I mention their hilarious, blatantly over-padded jackets to make them look twice the size they were? I didn't. Darn it.
posted by Sheamus @ 2:30 am
