Week in review - favouritism and 'connections', mixed with bouncer's fear of confrontation

This week has been really rather frustrating, for several reasons. Frustration mixed with exasparation, channeled towards venues, management and colleagues! A caveat: I work several different venues each week, the names and locations of which shall remain anonymous.

First off, on Wednesday night, and underager we dealt with ended up in hospital. Yes, you heard right. An underager. How he got in to the venue in the first place epitomises one of the major flaws of this industry - connections.

You see, you will be hard pressed to find a single venue, or security officer for that matter, who will not offer favouritism and perks to people they 'know'. This usually extends to queue jumping or waiving the entry fee at one end, to automatically siding with them in an incident on the other end. In the former case, the vast majority of patrons are ok with this practice - most likely because most if not all have been on the receiving end of this favouritism in the past. If you're on a night out and you know someone is working at a venue who can get you in, you'll naturally be inclcined to take advantage of this.

From a security officer's point of view, we don't usually question or object to this practice occurring if one of our colleagues is getting people through our door. It's an unwritten rule and time-honoured tradition that we turn a blind eye to this, as our colleagues will do the same for us should we ever bestow such priveliges upon our own people that we 'know.' Valid objections are when we know the person is barred, the place is over capacity and police are nearby, or potentially disapproving managers are watching.

It is also accepted that the security officer getting the people in is 'vouching' for the integrity, character and state of sobriety of the people they are doing this for. In other words, they won't get us in the shit later on. Unfortunately, this is where the first few problems start to arise.

'Knowing' people can be interpreted very widely indeed. We may 'know' people as friends or family or we may 'know' people as acquaintances, with whom we are not that close but would still help out in this way. Commonly, we 'know' people through reputation - gangsters; bikies; infamous people, that sort of thing. After working in the industry for a while, these faces pop up regularly at various venues, and you know to let them in. No clear justification is given, you just 'know' to let these guys in, no questions asked. I tried asking why at first, and was told 'that's how the industry works - it's who you know against who you don't know'. It's another unwritten rule that trouble for the venue, and trouble for the security officer personally, may arise should we refuse to show favour to these people.

Then, on the other end, we may 'know' people purely in the capacity that they had a quick friendly chat with a security officer they'd previously never met in their life last time they were here, and now drop the security officer's name at every given opportunity, sincerely believing that they can now be 'sorted' at the venue for entry, waiving cover charges etc., when the reality is most people, including the security officer concerned, barely 'know' this person at all. Finally, and worst of all, is the 'knowing' people in the capacity that, as they're in the group that contain the friends of the security officer, they're 'all right' by association, when in reality the security officer probably has no freaking idea who these people are.

That's how this underager got in - he was with a group of people the security officer 'knew', and thus became 'known' by association. In short - the security officer screwed up, either unwittingly or recklessly, by either knowing (if recklessly) that the underager was in the group, or assuming (if unwittingly) that all people in the group were of age, and that his mates weren't screwing him around. Either way, the guy shouldn't and wouldn't have got in via normal channels (eg the front door and ID checks), and this whole mess wouldn't have happened.

As per usual, the underager got into a fight - newly found testosterone combined with alcohol, and an inabiltiy to handle it, usually results in this. We calmed down the other guys involved and got rid of them, but this underager (who certainly didn't look it and was quite heavily built) continued to arc up, eventually striking a security officer in the head. He was duly restrained, requiring several of us and a fair degree of force, as the resistance coming from this guy was constant and violent.

Fancy armlocks and restraint moves that look nice in a training environment don't work in reality, when the people concerned are thrashing about, are intoxicated and have a higher level of pain tolerance, or are on drugs and are simply off the planet. The fact is that many people are restrained by overpowering them through numbers and force. It's messy and it doesn't look nice, and if there isn't good communication between people as to who has which limb, whether the person is staying on the ground or getting up, where they're going etc. then it can become a free-for-all of grappling and struggling. As we were dragging the guy to the door, now bleeding from his continued violent resistance and our attempts to bring him under control, I tried to get an armlock on one of his arms. He had stiffened his arms and was thrashing them about, which made it difficult. As I grabbed an arm to try and apply the lock, he threw all his weight to one side to resist, with such force that I inadvertendly let go of his arm and he careened, head first, into a solid wooden bar. This didn't deter him, and he was throwing himself around right up until we finally got him onto the street, let go and quickly retreated. I did my rounds to help clear the venue out, and by the time I got back to the front, the guy was lying on the floor being treated by paramedics. It struck me as odd, since he was showing no signs of needing or requesting medical assistance throughout the entire time we were trying to deal with him, nor did he appear to have sustained any serious injuries, at least none that impaired his movement or ability to speak.

As of writing, nothing has come of that one so far...