Ask the (former) Bouncer

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by lost4life

Most of the time, incidents would be handled quietly as mufatango described, but it was amazing how these things could escalate in seconds. Someone pushes someone else, the bouncer gets involved, gets pushed into a group of guys who retaliate against the bouncer, the other bouncers join in and now there are like 25 people going at it. This was rare, and the goal was to drag everyone out the closest door.

One of the bouncers' duties was to clean the lot after the club closed. One night some guys were hanging out, giving them a hard time. The bouncers come in saying "we're going to kick those drunk mofo's asses." The owner stops them and says "guys...let's remember who got them drunk!"

- One of the really scary things about big loud clubs is how quickly a joyful, celebrating crowd can turn into a chaotic angry mob. In some cases it was reminiscent of one of those mousetrap chain reaction experiments where the experimenter sets off a whole roomful of traps with a single ping-pong ball. Two guys start a "pushy-pushy" stand off, spilling someone's drink, a friend tries to jump in, someone getting out of the way gets shoved and falls down, and adrenaline and fear just take over...

In one fight that took the entire security staff of a large dance club over twenty minutes to control, I saw the entire progression from start to finish. The inciting event was a girl bumping into another girl, who reacted by pushing back and calling the first girl a bitch. Their respective boyfriends immediately faced off and began exchanging words. By this time I was off my "perch" and flashing as I pushed through the crowd. I saw the first punch thrown, and it was by someone totally uninvolved! Apparently someone had a latent beef with one of the boyfriends and took advantage of the situation to... just... obliterate him with an undefended sucker-punch from his side.

As I was getting to the site of the altercation, I saw the two women lock into a hair-pulling clench, the first boyfriend staring, utterly dumbfounded, at the now-supine-and-unconscious guy he was about to fight, and then someone tackled the deliverer of the sucker-punch as he attempted to melt back into the crowd. Someone threw a drink on one of the bouncers that was pushing through the crowd, and he turned to confront them, opening another epicenter. Suddenly it seemed like everyone was fighting everyone! Mass hysteria! Cats and dogs! At least five times, I ran in, picked up a swinging or struggling person, and ran carrying them into the entry hall and threw them out the door. The DJ stopped the music and turned the house lights on. The final pair to be separated were a guy from VIP and a guy who had been drinking at the bar with a group of friends from work. Totally unrelated to the original incident - how (and why) they ended up trying to kill each other I have no idea.

This is one example of what I mean about human behavior manifesting in these situations. I doubt if any of the people involved in the fight would proudly admit to starting or participating in a club brawl, any more than someone involved in a road rage incident would describe themselves as a road-rager. Yet, in the actual moment, people act with amygdala-driven behavior in a seemingly contagious fashion. (Of course there is some prior selection bias towards young, high-testosterone males with alcohol-inhibited prefrontal cortices...)

[enomaj]

Thanks for your answer to my last question. Any insight on dating co-workers especially strippers? Is it different dynamic than any other place of business?

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by aBouncer

What I found interesting was the comments about letting people cut the line, because I feel absolutely no remorse when someone who is known or a VIP cuts the line of people waiting. In fact, people slipping us money to cut the line is one of the main ways we'd make money at busy club, because base pay is pretty crappy.

But then I thought back to when I first started, and realized that I initially felt bad just like Mufatango described. Somewhere along the line I guess I lost that, which leads to my question.

I'm not sure how long you did the job, but did you find that over time, you became less compassionate overall and maybe more indifferent and even uncaring towards people? And if so, did it worry you?

- Most definitely. I think any job where there is a strong dichotomy formed between groups based on authority leads towards a dehumanizing effect. Talking about this with policemen, flight attendants, even people that are in charge of the lines at theme parks, you tend to get the same response: after a while, it is hard to maintain the humanity of the interaction, to not become misanthropic.

Move 'em in, keep 'em from fighting, move 'em out.

I worked bouncing jobs during school and summers for 6 years. 2 years working all kinds of different nightclubs and dance clubs overlapping with 2 years at a strip club, 3 years working for bars only.

One of the many reasons I stopped working at big dance clubs was how I found myself starting to slip routinely into a mode of putting on a sort of mask, maintaining a serious disconnect from the patrons. It's very easy to start seeing everyone that goes in the club as a drunk, a douchebag, or a tramp when your lowest possible expectations of people's behavior are fulfilled night after night. And this is only in a single setting! (I honestly don't know how police that deal routinely and repeatedly with sociopaths in all sorts of different settings keep from suspecting and loathing everyone.) So, yeah, it worried me a lot - that's not the way I want to be.

An essay that really hit home around the time I was really dwelling on this stuff and getting ready to quit was David Foster Wallace's Kenyon commencement speech. He talked about how easy it is to get sucked into your default setting, to expect the ugly, inconsiderate, selfishness of other people. How you have to force yourself to consider other possibilities, to try to feel some kind of common ground or fellowship with the people you deal with in mundane or frustrating contexts. Hard to do at a nightclub full of drunk, coked, X-ed, horny, aggressive people. So, I stopped doing that type of job and think about it now as an education of sorts.

[Scumpup]

I was never interested in justice, only peace. The places I worked were not at all upscale, exclusive, or discerning. We had regulars, who were who they were. Glad you had the leisure to pick fly shit out of pepper.

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by enomaj

Thanks for your answer to my last question. Any insight on dating co-workers especially strippers? Is it different dynamic than any other place of business?

- When I started at the strip club, the manager told me to follow one rule if I wanted to work there for more than a week or two: never trust a dancer!

What glamour or excitement there is about a strip club wears off entirely by the second or third day working there, especially when you are charged with enforcing rules (Bouncers at most strip clubs are in charge of keeping customers in line, but also keeping the dancers in line. It's an awful, thankless authority position, like being a babysitter for a bunch of bratty, catty ten-year-old girls having a slumber party and determined to wreak havoc. Dancers will try to do drugs with patrons, get real drinks from the bartenders (when you buy a stripper a $10 drink, they are served either an extremely diluted drink or a special glass with only about 25 mL in it - one of their jobs is to get customers to buy them some minimum amount of drinks per night), lie about how many drinks they sold to try to keep the entire price instead of their percentage, have sex with patrons, poach another dancer's rich customer, sabotage another dancer's clothes, shoes, or cosmetics, get customers drunk enough to steal their wallets, and on and on... when there is a conflict between dancers, they will either start fighting or come and get the bouncer to settle it. At my club, the manager had absolutely no interest in these mundane, small issues, and left the decisions totally up to security. My first night on the job, I fired a dancer for dealing ecstasy and suspended two more for fighting.

There are a lot of dancers who work only at one or two clubs, but the way that most clubs have established their rules, dancers can be suspended, fined, punished by being put on "floor only" duty (no stage dancing, just mingling and selling drinks, which makes them less money), or just plain fired. In practice, this leads to a whole subset of dancers that basically rotate through area clubs, staying until they get in trouble for something or have a serious conflict with management or other employees, then repeating the cycle. If you know the management or security of other clubs, you learn why the new employee left their last job, and what to watch out for.

Short answer: I never dated any strippers, nor would I recommend it. I'm sure there are honest, good women who are actually doing the job just for the money, who take their job and family seriously, who are worthy of trust (I knew exactly one the whole time I bounced - she became a very successful real estate investor and got married), but the odds are stacked dangerously high against any trust being validated.

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by Scumpup

I was never interested in justice, only peace. The places I worked were not at all upscale, exclusive, or discerning. We had regulars, who were who they were. Glad you had the leisure to pick fly shit out of pepper.

- Uhhh... thanks?

[Evil Captor]

So ... "Roadhouse" was not a documentary? Say it ain't so!

[Tad--]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

So ... "Roadhouse" was not a documentary? Say it ain't so!

Every Swayze movie was a documentary--don't worry.

[astro]

Thanks for the great responses!

Two questions -

In my area almost every black dance nightclub that has started up has closed down (or been closed down) in year of two due to the extraordinary amount of fights and violence in the parking lots. Some of it lethal. Is this deadly violence characteristic of black nightclubs in other areas or are we just having a string of bad luck?

The head of security of one of the aforesaid clubs, whom I knew casually, said by far the greatest number of fights were instigated by women and then the men got involved and everything went to hell. Is this true in non-black nightclubs as well?

[Gukumatz]

Do you do a pat-down of guests? If you do, what do you do if you actually find a knife or sidearm?

I've worked the late/night shift in hotels for five years so I can relate to your experience with de-escalation, but fortunately my experience with having to get physical is limited to people who my old boss described as "combat ineffective."

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by astro

The head of security of one of the aforesaid clubs, whom I knew casually, said by far the greatest number of fights were instigated by women and then the men got involved and everything went to hell. Is this true in non-black nightclubs as well?

I worked a few overnights at an inner city Perkins. In my small experience, women started more shit than men.

I had a woman follow five other women into the women's restroom and try to start a fight with the lot of them over some imaginary slight. I walked right in and kicked her out. She spent the next 10 minutes stomping around the parking lot screaming at everyone not to go inside because we were 'racist' for kicking her out. Finally we ended up calling the police over something else and while waiting for them, I walked out and told her that as long as they were already coming, I was going to have them arrest her for trespassing. She left in a hurry.

[Qwakkeddup]

When my best friend got a job bouncing with his brother in law, He got to witness a 5'11" 250 lb man brought down by a 4'10" 98 lb girl. His brother in law "waved" his mag-Lite at her menacingly to which she grabbed it and tried to crack his skull with it.

Bent & ruined the flashlight.

Most of the other bouncers decided he deserved it, he practically handed the thing to her after all.

Sound like any co-workers you dealt with?

[Chimera]

Well that is one thing I had drilled into me on various Security jobs and carries over into normal life. Don't let this public idea of "you can never hit a woman" make you think that you can never defend yourself against a woman or that you shouldn't take them seriously as potential threats. Or you wind up like that guy, or dead.

[Hypno-Toad]

What's the absolute worst thing you ever saw on the job?

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by astro

Thanks for the great responses!

Two questions -

In my area almost every black dance nightclub that has started up has closed down (or been closed down) in year of two due to the extraordinary amount of fights and violence in the parking lots. Some of it lethal. Is this deadly violence characteristic of black nightclubs in other areas or are we just having a string of bad luck?

The head of security of one of the aforesaid clubs, whom I knew casually, said by far the greatest number of fights were instigated by women and then the men got involved and everything went to hell. Is this true in non-black nightclubs as well?

- I have never worked in a "black" nightclub, although the patrons of most of the clubs I worked at varied widely with respect to race, especially from club to club. I think this is really a problem of culture, both the culture that the club is promoting, and the background of the patrons. Most black jazz clubs in NOLA, for example, have no record of violence that I am aware of. Any club promoting a "Hip-Hop Night" will beef up its security big time, though. I think that cultures that are big on machismo and violence will be plagued by fights whenever men and women get together and drink. Look back at the 1920's Argentinian culture Borges wrote about in stories like "Man on Pink Corner" - not much has changed.

With regard to the male-female question, I think that women can get a fight escalated much quicker than men, but they can also get the situation de-escalated quicker too. It all depends on what their goal is.

[ralph124c]

Did you ever work for a "Studio 54"-type place (where bouncers determined who gets in)?
Are bribes involved?

[minlokwat]

Strictly out of consideration of our latest episode with a similar theme, will you please post a video clip of you manhandling some hapless drunk so that we can verify the veracity of what you’ve previously posted?

[Poysyn]

When I managed at a popular dance club, I once had a call to go to the front door to provide "emergency assistance". I was a bit perplexed as to what help I could possibly provide.

Upon arrival, there were two very scantily dressed, underage girls there, offering the Head doorman oral sex for admission. He was a bit concerned to even deal with them, since they were so young and he didn't want to be accused of anything. After I told them to leave, I teased him for a while about the day the "two little girls" knocked him off his game.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by mufatango

I'd like to think I was the nicest bouncer ever.

The current "Nicest Bouncer Ever" is Merle Zuel at Knuckleheads in Kansas City. He's so beloved that they have a two day charity festival in his honor every year.

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by Gukumatz

Do you do a pat-down of guests? If you do, what do you do if you actually find a knife or sidearm?

I've worked the late/night shift in hotels for five years so I can relate to your experience with de-escalation, but fortunately my experience with having to get physical is limited to people who my old boss described as "combat ineffective."

- I only worked at one club where we did pat-downs, and that was for a very short time. The only thing I ever found was a pepper spray canister, which we held at the hostess' stand and gave back at the end of the night. One of the scariest things about working at that club was working "Teen Night" (for many, many reasons). You would see a group of young men come up to the door, and when they realized they were going to be patted down, several of them would turn around and walk back to the car, then return a few minutes later.

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by Qwakkeddup

When my best friend got a job bouncing with his brother in law, He got to witness a 5'11" 250 lb man brought down by a 4'10" 98 lb girl. His brother in law "waved" his mag-Lite at her menacingly to which she grabbed it and tried to crack his skull with it.

Bent & ruined the flashlight.

Most of the other bouncers decided he deserved it, he practically handed the thing to her after all.

Sound like any co-workers you dealt with?

- I am amazed that anyone could bend a Maglite. I have seen them dropped out of third story windows, run over by cars, etc. They are tough! With the batteries in, the standard bouncer light weighs over 2 lb. The guy who got hit sounds very lucky.

I never had to deal with ineffective co-workers in that sense, but dealt with plenty of overly aggressive coworkers who seemed determined to prove a point or to fight someone by the end of the night. I'm not sure which would be worse!

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by Hypno-Toad

What's the absolute worst thing you ever saw on the job?

- I would split the absolute worst things into three categories: fights, misogyny, and OD's.

By far, the most awful, affecting things you see are the episodes of violence. I never saw a "good, clean fight." Fights can be horrible and disgusting, they can be laughably absurd, they can be quick, brutal and scary. Any fight where someone inflicts serious trauma on someone else is a terrible thing to see, and hard to forget.

The worst I ever saw was between two alpha male types, a bodybuilder and an arena football player. They had gotten in a "pushy-pushy" in the club over some perceived disrespect, and had been separated. At the end of the night, the bodybuilder and his girlfriend were hanging out with the club staff for the after-closing "shift drinks" and cleanup. The head of security had actually encouraged this to keep the two men separated during the push to get everyone out of the club. After about a half hour, all the employees started to leave. The football player and his entourage had been hanging out in the parking lot across the street and in an example of spectacularly bad timing, were just getting in their Escalade to leave when the two men saw each other. Like a switch was flipped, they both got enraged again. The bodybuilder ran across the street as the football player exited his SUV and slammed the door, shouting curses. Suddenly everyone was shouting and running. I was heading over when my boss stopped me. "Not our business anymore," he said.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of the club marquee and watched the men square off. The bodybuilder obviously knew more about fighting, since he easily stepped inside the looping punches the other guy threw, jabbed him in the face a few times, making him forget to keep his guard up, then hit him with an unprotected cross right in the temple. The football player was limp when he fell, and I remember the sound his head made when his falling body whipped it into the asphalt: "THOK!!" I remember what happened next with brutal clarity. The bodybuilder carefully hitched up his pants at the knees, knelt down beside the supine, unconscious man, and began punching him in the face repeatedly, at least 20 or 30 times, like a jackhammer. People were screaming and pulling at him, and he eventually jumped up, ran to his car and peeled out.

I made sure the manager had called 911 and went to see if the guy was alive. His friend was trying ineffectively to get him to wake up, and the crowd was screaming contradictory things about rolling him over, not moving his neck, starting CPR, etc. An off-duty paramedic stepped in and began finger-scooping huge dollops of blood and shattered teeth out of the guy's throat and he started breathing again. All of his front teeth were spindly shards, his nose was mushed over like a wad of clay smeared onto his cheek by his ear, and his left eye socket was bulging and deformed. By far the most violent thing I have ever seen not involving weapons.

[Qwakkeddup]

- I am amazed that anyone could bend a Maglite. I have seen them dropped out of third story windows, run over by cars, etc. They are tough! With the batteries in, the standard bouncer light weighs over 2 lb. The guy who got hit sounds very lucky.

Too be fair, I tend to use MagLite generically. I do know they were very expensive back then and knowing him It was a cheap knock off.

Then again, one of his favorite way to win a fight was to let 'em chuck him in the forehead.

[Agent Foxtrot]

I've always wanted to ask this of a bouncer, so with all due respect, I'll put it straight: Have you or any of your coworkers ever gotten your asses kicked? What's the SOP if one or two guys manage to handle the entire bouncing staff? (Unlikely to ever happen, I know, but let's assume hypotheticals.)

Also, does the establisment owner pay for your hospital bill if you're injured? Is it considered workman's comp?

[YogSosoth]

Other than drunks or disorderly people, do you ever turn anyone away? I don't go to nightclubs or bars, so my experience with bouncers are from TV and movies. In it, they always seem to turn down the ugly girls and single guys, and usually guys get in only if they bribe the bouncer or bring girls. This is done so that only rich guys and hot girls are in the club. I've always thought that was dickish. Shouldn't clubs let anyone in? If a bunch of guys want to go in, so what?

[Mr. Kobayashi]

Fascinating insight, good thread. If I might...

When it came to IDing people, did you have many people kicking off? How did you diffuse them? Were the lads or lasses more annoyed at being ID'd?

Do you agree with this breakdown of dynamics leading to violence?

[mufatango]

Originally Posted by Agent Foxtrot

I've always wanted to ask this of a bouncer, so with all due respect, I'll put it straight: Have you or any of your coworkers ever gotten your asses kicked? What's the SOP if one or two guys manage to handle the entire bouncing staff? (Unlikely to ever happen, I know, but let's assume hypotheticals.)

Also, does the establisment owner pay for your hospital bill if you're injured? Is it considered workman's comp?

- I have never gotten my ass kicked while working. I have gotten punched in the mouth, gotten my shirt torn several times, and the worst on-the-job injury I ever got was a set of several fairly deep rakes on my arm and neck from an enraged woman with sharp nails.

- Once at a strip club, a boxing club (uh-oh) was celebrating a bachelor party and after an hour or two of imbibing, some less-amicable members got into a shouting match and then apparently a bunch of old animosities flared up and suddenly 5 or 6 trained boxers were squaring off. We only had two bouncers present. I tackled the drunkest, most out-of-control fighter and dragged him outside. Meanwhile, the president of the boxing club, an older gentleman, had been sitting in the back office shooting the bull with the manager. As I was running back inside, he ran out to the floor and began what looked like a human whack-a-mole routine, screaming at a younger fighter for "ruining the party" (jab to the face), then turning to another and screaming about "this is why you never get to go out with us (slap to the face) then pirouetting to shout "You oughta know better!" at another (punch in the belly). Everyone was so dumbfounded that they pretty much stopped fighting. Amazing. He apologized, made the younger guys clean up the club, and then got them to all tip everyone extra for the trouble.

I have no idea what would have happened had he not been there - probably the police would have been called and the manager would have brought out the stun guns or his sidearm, depending on the level of violence/danger. Most clubs will have some never-used contingency plan like this in place.

[purplehorseshoe]

That's an awesome mental image - thanks for sharing the story, mufatango.

[astorian]

This question is inspired by

1) The recent arrest of football star Adrian Peterson

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...ub-police-say/


2) And the longer ago arrest of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson.

http://www.vh1.com/artists/news/1503...603/rush.jhtml


Whenever I hear about an athlete or musician getting arrested at a bar or club for "assaulting a police officer" or "resisting arrest," I almost immediately assume that it happened in Texas or Florida. I also assume that what happened was, the guy in question got a little drunk and obnoxious, then got into a shoving or shouting match with a cop who happened to be moonlighting as a bouncer.

MOST ordinary bouncers, in my experience, want to avoid a fight, and many will endure a fair amount of disrespect or macho posturing, in order to avoid a real brawl. But a cop WON'T stand for much crap... and so, a guy who THOUGHT he was just cursing out a bouncer ends up face down, in cuffs, charged with assault or resisting arrest.

Long intro, but the question is..... have you had many colleagues who were moonlighting cops, and what did you think of cops as bouncers?

[astorian]

I'll give this ONE bump, just on the off chnace the OP still has anything to add.

[lucy_taylor]

Did you instantly remember underage people who were rejected and would come back another weekend and try again?
I am 23 now, but my friends and i always couldn't believe how none of the bouncers remembered us.