In the trough

No-one enjoys the gents toilets in nightclubs. I've worked in attendant toilets and they're cleaner, fresher and almost tolerable but still not a place to spend your evening. Most places, most of the time they're grotty. The smell of cleaning fluid fades fast once the sweaty pissing masses start to trickle through the door and trickle over the floor. It is the unfortunate soul who, while mixing the fine balance of splash soaked linoleum and slight alcohol hydration imbalance, slips on the well signed wet floor and lands in the trough. Hand slipped, elbow slipped, shoulder flank and hip in the vile mix of nightlclub effluent.
warm I discover the scene a few minutes after the event. I walk in to a foul smelling room to find a gent, naked from the waist up, jeans wet over one hip, hanging his dripping shirt under the lukeasthmatic effort of a hand dryer. Not a pretty sight and not a pretty smell either but at least he didn't take much looking after, once he'd got his shirt dry enough he wasn't going to freeze he slunk off homeward. I can only imagine he reasoned the piss stained outfit would impair his efforts with the ladies for the night. I can only say I think he over-estimated the quality of the ladies in the venue.

Summer Getaway

The school holidays have descended upon this little town again. The impact upon the drinking age folks is limited. The last day for A-level students has been and gone and they won't emerge in force 'til results day in a few weeks. The 13-17yr olds that aren't yet old enough to legally drink still enjoy the few venues that don't notice or care. They all seeem to think that getting into a nightclub mid-week will be cool. They all think it'll be fun and grwon up. Little do they know that it's mainly the sad, chavvy and the odd bunch of students that fill out the quiet weeknights of summer.
It is fun to watch their insistent efforts to enter what you know to be a dire quiet night. But it's a night club and it's got to be cool, hasn't it?

I think the alternative, of running to an overpriced overcrowded summer party island and dancing 'til the sum comes up with spirits unmeasured and sunburnt flesh for entertainment for a week of saturday nights, has less appeal to me. At least the more that do that, the less I have to see of them.

Fallout

This post is not, you'll be relieved to read, a reference to the sometimes breathtaking faith larger bodied ladies have in their minimal underwear.
No this a post about the route shit takes to get to me. When a customer has a shit day and decides to meet his mates for a drink, the stress, poorly understood emotions and poorly expressed anger come my way.
underlings, who pass it out to the bar staff. These When a manager gets a roasting for shit profit and loss figures, they pass down the shit to theirbarstaff, give shit to the customers and I end up clearing it up when they make their frustrations known.
When the management of the door-company get a bollocking from the club company for not meeting the service level agreement, my boss gives me shit for keeping a slack door.
None of these is me bringing my shit to work, I don't do that as there's more than enough shit from other people to go 'round.

Running Around

I'm not happy being led on wild goose chases, even less happy doing it in a hot busy nightclub with the usual workload of drunken numpties to deal with.
The goose chase begins with me ejecting a customer the week before, too drunk, unsteady on his feet, time to go home without any issue about getting back in another night. That was until he ranted and raved at us on the front door, calling us a large number of abusive things, none of which were massively original. This ended when the local constabulary came by and after a whole 5 seconds of observation, hopped out the mini-van and had words to the effect of "go home, now!".
This worked and we decided in his wake that when he returned the next weekend, something we were certain about, he'd be excluded for a couple of nights to establish the point.
The following weekend, we see the punter walking past early doors, on his way to hit a few warm up venues with high velocity vertical drinking and large discounts. We clock his outfit for the evening and make a mental note to block his efforts later on.
I pop inside for a wander round, a glass of soda water and trip to the loo. I return to front door and the new lad on the team, oblivious to the discussions last week and earlier in the night, says to be aware we've just let in X many local chavs. I ask if one was 18-20, 5'7" to 5'9", brown spiked hair in Y brand shirt and Z brand shoes. He says yes.
Here, I could send him back in to dig him out but he'd be in a shit situation and have to about face from letting him in only 2 minutes ago. I wander in and start my search, every seating and standing area, the smoking crowd, the dancefloors, the gents toilets, systematically sweeping through. This is a busy night, it's hot, I spot a dozen folk to put on my mental watch list. Get called over by the barstaff, get all the usual action of a night. I get my sweep interrupted and have to go back and start again.
After half an hour of wandering about inside, I'm sweating, grumpy and figure it for a bad job. One punter sneaking by is gonna happen every now and again, I don't take it personally, I'll just have to up the rest of my game and attempt to nudge the line for order over anarchy a little in my favour.
Getting back to the cooler air of the door, I send the young one back in and cool off a little. Who do I then see staggering up the street towards the door. The punter I'd been searching for. Not his fault, no need to be nasty, but he did get knocked back and told to cool off.
The new lad, he got a roasting, but sod it, he'll learn.