Missed out on the bar fun!

Did an extended shift today, which was singularly uneventful. This place really is too quiet!

Missed out on the fun the night before though! The downstairs 'popular' bar (as opposed to the more 'reserved' lobby bar) had its licence extended to allow for a function of people to drink until 4am. Some of the staff took advantage of the extended hours too, so that a fairly small bar was rammed pretty quickly. An employee and their other half set up a tab behind the bar, and asked the bar staff to let them know when it hit a certain amount. This happened pretty quickly, but as the bar was heaving, there were only two bar staff on and it was so cramped that bar staff probably couldn't physically get to the group, this didn't happen.

A few hours later, when things had quietened down a bit, the group went up to the bar to settle the tab. The other half of the employee was paying, so was asked to go behind the bar to pay the tab as they was required to enter their PIN number into the card machine. On being told the bill was somewhat more than the specified amount, the other half launched into a verbal tirade and refused to pay the bill. The bar staff called the team leader/supervisor over, who was then subjected to abuse not just by the other half, but also by the employee as well. The result was that the bill was settled and the two people were asked to leave.

When I heard about the incident the next day, I was quite shocked. Whilst the incident itself was relatively tame in comparison to, say, a brawl or stabbing, a number of serious issues became clearly apparent and which, if the hotel had bothered to manage the event properly, wouldn't have happened:

o Too many people in a small bar - probably exceeded licensed capacity
o No dedicated security staff AT ALL on to act as safety or crowd control - this is required by licensing law. I offered to work that night specifically on that bar because I knew it would be crowded.
o Getting customers behind the bar, a restricted area, to perform transactions. That is completely and utterly unacceptable - there should be wireless machines or they should be placed so that the customer can enter the number from behind the bar. It creates all sorts of insurance; safety and image problems.
o Inability to demonstrate effective crowd control and bar management upon being granted an extension of hours.

I feel sorry for the staff involved, they don't turn up to work to take crap from people (that's our job), and especially not from colleagues!

Can't see the hotel either extending, or being allowed to extend, the hours of that bar again unless they put a better operation in place. My days as a cop working in liquor licensing came straight back - we'd have closed the place down or fined them had we found out about it!