Something in the air

There's a feeling at the club that's been developing over the last few weeks/months and it's all going to end in tears.

Since the change in management, and the reshuffles in staff between various venues, the club has not had a steady set of doorstaff working on a particular night. Now in other larger cities on mainstream club nights you don't really need this consisitency. There are enough punters to go around, enough similar venues and as long as you set a door policy that's consistent you can get a certain ambience every night.

I work in a smaller city where you rely on seeing the same faces in the same clubs night after night. There is a certain amount of leeway offered to regular trouble free punters whose dress or inebriation wouldn't be accepted from randoms wandering in. This protects the takings on quiet nights and builds a certain loyatly in the very fickle club business.

Now, that the staff have been changed more often than an obsessive compulsives pants after an explosive bout of the runs, we've lost that essential familiarity. This leaves you with two options. The first is to set an absolute standard and not care if you've seen their faces before. This makes for easy door work but is bad for business in the quiet summer holidays and students away time of year. You need to make your money in this business so the other option is used.

I n this second approach, if you recognise the punters faces you extend some leniency. This works as a way of getting punters in but without knowing wether they're good punters, spend a lot of money and cause no bother, or bad punters, sharing a pint of house cider between 4 and causing low level grief every night. If they're bad punters you end up with a very bad vibe. You can only know if they're good or bad punters if you've been working, seeing them, week in week out.

This second way, the money keeps flowing in for a bit but, the big spenders move somewhere more exclusive and you're only left with scum. This is where the club is at for every big night at the moment. We're getting the feeling all hell's gonna kick off. There's alot of aggressive gesturing, incivility and posturing.

Normally when their numbers are few within a premises you just keep an eye on them and laugh when they make themselves look like idiots.

When you're worried they're nearing critical mass and you can feel and see the tension, you've got to be very careful that you don't get tunnel vision. Even if you're fairly damn certain you'll be taking one group out the nearest exit some point in the night, it may not be them you're taking out next.

It's too easy to focus on some groupm waiting to see them be idiots, but it's bad form and poor work. It's all too easy to pick up on the vibe and get drawn into the tension. It's best not to be boiling yourself when you need to be the cooling water applied to hot tempers.

I get the feeling it's going to go off big style, only hope I'm there that night. It's been far too quiet since summer has begun.