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Monday, April 03, 2006

Travels

This weekend I've been an intinerant doorman doing 5 venues in 3 nights. This is possible due to my inherent quantum behaviour or more likely late licences and other itenerant doorfolk. The travels have let me in on one thing to be thankful for.

The venue I like to think of as home for the minute may have poor hours and very near the bottom of the barrel punters but it does have one thing the other venues almost entirely lack. There is a sense of teamwork about the place and it makes working there simpler in many ways. The other venues have separately many characteristics which are far superior to "my place" with generally a much higher standard of clientelle, better decor, a better and less alcohol poisoning tempting bar tariff, prettier and more polite staff and a whole list of other properties that all should make any one of them a better venue to work in.

However they all lack the level of teamwork that exists at "my place". Not just amongst the doorstaff who by their very nature have to work as an effective team to keep out of hospital and earning their pennies. But beyond this to the whole club staff and even the regular punters. The glass-collectors and the barstaff will smile and let you know if the world's good with them or if they can't be arsed with another dead thursday night or if all hell's about to kick off and they'd like to see some big men in black coats arrive like the legion army. This is not the case everywhere.

The management like to know our names and will talk to us like human beings where a quick word here will suffice rather than passing sh*t up the foodchain only to get it multiplied and shat back down the foodchain onto our heads. Not for anything approaching incompetence, just occasional oversights and dimmness. This is not the case everywhere.

The punters, though the scum of the earth, realise that the more helpful they are when sh*t goes down the better life is when they're back in there next week and they've lost their coat or need physical help to stand up and leave the premises. Their loyalty to a club that is draining them on a weekly basis of their money/dignity/a future/hearing/sexual health/liver quality is remarkable if only for its sheer stupidity. This is not the case everywhere.

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