Keep Your Head Down - Security Officer

Sunglasses in a nightclub

2008-01-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

If you wear sunglasses in a nightclub, you are a retarded idiot - male or female - and deserve compulsory sterilisation to prevent future generations being afflicted with your stupidity.

Nightclubs are dark. Sunglasses make things darker. So by logic you should be blind when you wear sunglasses in a nightclub. Which would explain some of their behaviour, come to think about it.

Then there's male patron dancing - it's so spasmodic I wonder whether to laugh or administer an insulin shot in case they're actually having a seizure as opposed to dancing like they are.

I was stuck on one of the main dancefloors for the first part of the night. Patrons were irritating me through their existence, so I managed to swap out to a position outside the club. In fact it was opposite the road to the club. Which suited me fine. Many other bouncers hate not being inside and contracting gods know what from the patrons by proxy.
It was a VERY hot night so I was more than happy to sit in the fresh air getting paid the same rate as the people inside sweating themselves thin.

The only incident that happened was a group of three backpackers walked past when I was doing the important mental calculation of whether to have a kebab or go home after shift. One of them decided to yell 'BOO' at me because he thought it was a fun thing to do. I was just about to make up my mind so was not impressed and yelled at him. They couldn't understand why I was yelling at them, and tried to cross the road into the club. I radioed up that they were disorderely and disrepectful to security staff, so they were refused entry. They can say what they like, but we can still ruin their night!

Hiatus

2008-01-17T01:24:00.000-08:00

Things got stupidly busy over Christmas - worked every night except Christmas Day. Seriously. But I made good money and have now got a pay rise, so can't whinge too much.

New Year's Eve was surpisingly uneventful at the bar I worked at. New Year's Day involved 16 hours - 10 at a big horse race and the other 6 at the usual bar. Both were busy, feral and full of idiots. A complaint was made that I took bribes on the gate. Which is bullshit - I didn't get a chance to! Meanwhile someone else pulled in $2k of bribes and got away with it. Bastard.

Yesterday I received a court summons to testify against a guy who assaulted me nearly a year ago. I've quite honestly forgotten most of the incident and really have better things to do than dredge it up so that he can get a slap on the wrist and a $200 fine.

Meanwhile, my hours seem to have shot up to four/five nights a week again. Which is good for the extra cash but I'm worried about creeping into a higher tax bracket and the last thing I want to do is pay more tax to a government who couldn't spend it properly if they tried.

On another note I've started carrying Speedcuffs on the door. It's raised a lot of eyebrows with everyone except the police. But there's no law against it and they're quite visible on the belt. Strangely enough, since I've started wearing them, nobody's fucked with me. At all. Though it might have something to do with with the fact that I've taken to wearing my police-issue kevlar-lined leather gloves anytime I can unless the weather is unbearably hot. Patrons either ignore it or ask why I'm wearing them.

The line I give is 'It protects my hands from cuts, scratches and bites'. The real reason that voices itself in my head as I tell them this is 'Because I would rather do anything else in the world than come into physical contact with you after you've spent hours in a sweatbox covered in alcohol, tears, sweat and god knows what else. Plus you could be Hep C positive for all I know. Please don't bleed on me!' Other door staff don't mind touching, hugging or kissing patrons (especially the female ones) after they come out from the club at chuck-out. I'd rather not - it means I'll have to sanitise my clothes and any exposed skin after.

We're also facing a dilemma at one of the venues. The place has large windows, which due to the heat are staying open most of the night. In a spectacular design floor, these windows set the background against which the lines form. They're fronted by two railings but are being easily navigated by people who are vaulting over them when it's busy and there's a line out front.

We have an unofficial policy of performing loud, high-profile, messy and sometimes painful removals of those who do decide to practice their gymnastics and put them on the floor out the front. It's in full view of the line to send a message to them all - 'Jump the windows and you'll get humiliated and put on your arse'. For the most part it works, but it's not a long term solution. Management want to put more railings in. I personally think it'll make the place look like Fort Knox. I suggested running small wires down the inside of the railings, which are subtle and covert, but around which the jumpers have to curl their hands to get a grip on the railinsg. We then electrify those wires. It's cheap and legal and we can set the voltage so we don't have to hurt them, merely make them feel quite uncomfortable and dissuade them from jumping.

For some reason management are sticking with the railings. They also ignored my request for a water cannon to clear out the beer garden of stragglers who take the piss in leaving. So Saturday night I'm just going to rig up the hose they use to wash the floors after closing and attach a nozzle to it. Hey - it's hot at the moment - the patrons should be grateful! And let's face it - many of them need a wash!

Why I REALLY Should Have Known Better...

2007-12-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

Caring doesn't pay. Truly, it doesn't!

We had a fight inside the bar tonight, and no sooner had we separated the two warring parties (literally entwined in a lover's embrace with each other) than we had another idiot running in from nowhere and starting to punch one of the people we'd just separated.

Luckily there were enough of us to bundle everyone out. Our flying kickboxer was putting up a bit of a struggle, and I thought it possible that the guy he had punched would want to press charges. So I tried to handcuff Flying Kickboxer. To prevent the prosecution of the case being hindered by his disappearance, to ascertain his details, to prevent him causing further injury to other people and to prevent injury to himself. And because it looks better and is safer than having two or three door staff jumping on him and dragging him out. These are of course all pretexts - I can't just cuff someone willy nilly and theoretically not for a standard physical removal.

The head doorman had one arm of Flying Kickboxer, who was putting up a bit of a struggle. So the handcuff was inadvertendly and unintentionally used as leverage. And damn effective leverage might I say! When you have thick steel nickel grating against a particularly sensitive part of the wrist, you do as you're told. He went out, followed by another who was being dragged out by the legs, and another who went out semi-upright.

But since, for some, a night out is NEVER complete without a good old-fashioned punch up, they started on each other in the street. Some random bitch and her man became involved and the fight continued on the other side of the street. The woman was incredibly angry and was resisting all physical and verbal efforts to hold her back, to get at one of the party from the fight inside.

Synapses in my brain misfired. I wasn't thinking straight and did not consider my own personal safety. I went against years of training and confrontational experience, and actually gave a damn that this hysterical woman could actually cause a fair bit of damage to the object upon which she had fixated her rage. No idea why I did this - normally I really couldn't care less, beyond my limited legal obligation of duty of care (which is conveniently hazy), whether people I don't know live, die or suffer on the street. Can't explain or justify this lapse in thought or judgement. But I know I'll have this apathy strongly reinforced into the hereafter.

So I went to the other side of the road and tried to separate the parties. The woman started pushing, shoving and scratching me. Then she made a full-blown lunge at the guy positioned behind me, who was involved in the bar fight. I spun round and bear-hugged her as she went past, dragging her off her trajectory. Next I felt an arm around my neck trying to choke me. I thought it was a colleague who had mistaken me for a patron -after all I was wearing a dark jacket and trousers. I shouted I was security and heard an unfamiliar voice attached to the arm. I let go of the woman and the guy let go of me. Looking around I saw there were no colleagues - I'd involved myself in something I should not have done and that could have ended with more serious consequences for me.

Initially I wanted to press charges and insisted on doing so. Police asked me to view CCTV if avaialble. There wasn't. The manager pointed out the female involved, against whom I also wanted charges laid, was a good customer. I told him I didn't give a damn if she spent a million dollars a night in there. Police said it would be unlikely to go anywhere. Which I knew, but still wanted to see how far I could go with it. In the end I dropped it. Had there been CCTV I would have pressed ahead.

There's a school of thought that door staff shouldn't press charges when assaulted, minor or not. I think that's an incredibly outdated and naive view by people who should know better. We are not paid to be assaulted. We are not paid to be punching bags. We are paid to monitor and supervise patron access and behaviour in the venue, and intervene in situations as required. Nowhere in our job description does it say that sustaining injury without recourse is a necessary requirement. Therefore those who assault me in the course of my duty, without provocation or justification, should be dealt with accordingly.

So the things I learnt from this encounter

1. Never leave the door. No matter what. Unless I know one of the people involved, I will not intervene.
2. Don't care. Not your problem. Do your minimum legal obligation and that's it.
3. Check your surroundings - a potent refresher of something drilled into me for ages that lapsed due to inactivity.

So if you're involved in any sort of incident on the street and I'm on the door and I don't know you - stiff shit. If it's not immediately outside the door, it's not my problem. I won't get involved. I come first. Sorry but that's the way it is.

Saturday Night Shite

2007-11-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

Some vignettes from a Saturday night that drained me of energy and enthusiasm for the entire nightclub industry and the 'collateral damage' to the surrounding area it causes:

1. I'm stood guarding an exit door at the club and see an incredibly overt drug deal occur, by which a young man we shall describe as 'ecstatic' passed three little tabs to a 'nearly ecstatic' man in exchange for about $50. Presumably these tabs were to help the second guy transced to not-quite-religious ecstacy. It occurred in full of view of about 10 other people including myself.

Since I'm still in 'police mode' at times, my first instinct was to jump on the dealer, cuff him and turn him over to the boys in blue. However the 'done' thing is to have a quiet word with the dealer, advise them to deal off-premises, and leave it at that.

This doesn't stand in my book - as far as I'm concerned it's condoning the behaviour, whether it occurs on-premises of off-premises. Still, I tried having a word with the dealer, and this was the result:

"Dude, it's like... cool, ok? I'm friends with the boys here so it's all good"

I should hasten to point out that for some wannabes, 'the boys' refers to whoever is listed on the licence plaque at the top of the main entry to the premises as the manager, and whichever security staff the person in question is able to see the names of on their security tags. In what passes for their minds, remembering a couple of names associated with the venue is tantamount to 'knowing' or being 'friends' with said people. Unfortunately everybody name drops everybody else, so the entire concept loses value and any argument centred around name dropping becomes vacuous by default. But, in their world, where it counts (to them), they are entitled to unlimited perks, drink discounts and preferential treatment by security. I pointed out this folly in slightly more abrupt terms and was advised to 'chill out, it's all good'. I refrained from throwing him through the nearest window, but it was challenging.

2. A pilled up female insisting I dance with her and not taking no for an answer. Not wishing to hurt her feelings, I challenged her to stay quiet and still for 60 full seconds, then I would dance with her. Owing to the substance she was on, and the chemical imbalance this was creating in her brain, this was physically impossible for her. Somehow she got the message and stumbled off.

3. Finishing my shift, I walked along a street to get a taxi home (easier said than done). One group of three males were sat on the sidewalk street drinking. An unmarked police car pulled up, and in a vain attempt to conceal the crime they were caught red-handed committing - that of street drinking - one of them launched the bottle behind them, where it smashed into a wall and beer spilt onto the pavement. Boy Genius earnt himself two fines - one for street drinking and the second for criminal damage, since it would cost the council money to clean the pavement.

4. On the same street, about 50 metres up, were three incredibly attractive, stunning and intelligent females lying spreadeagled on the pavement. I do, of course, pepper the previous sentence with light sprinklings of sarcasm. Or coat it, depending on your point of view.

A taxi pulled up because a male unconnected with their party had flagged it down. One of the girls, exhibiting motor skills far beyond her level of intoxication, got up and staggered over to the taxi. She demanded that she and her three equally lovely friends be given a lift to wherever they wanted to go. When the taxi driver pointed out the obvious - that they were drunk and lying on the pavement, thus shooting to the top of the 'Cabbie's List Of Likely Problem Passengers', she shot back with:

"You're leaving three girls on the side of the street. That's disgusting. You're a fucking arsehole."

In my younger days, my blood would have boiled and I'd have given her a piece of my mind. Now, I've been overexposed to such drunken displays of egotism, deluded logic and utter lack of personal responsibility that I am used to it and am emotionally numb. Instead, the cabbie's new fare answered for me:

"If you didn't get yourselves so drunk, act like silly bitches and weren't so rude you'd probably be home by now. The problem comes back to you 'cos you can't handle your piss. Seeya!"

What he said.

Melbourne Cup 2007 - Here We Go Again

2007-11-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

Remember Melbourne Cup last year?

Here we go again. This time, I'm at the main racecourse, from which the steady stream of drunks who flooded the casino and caused all kinds of dramas last year will come.

I'm on fence-jumper duty, which involves patrolling a sector to deter and prevent people from effecting entry into the racecourse, and physically ejecting those who do. Although I'm hoping to instead be posted on a 'watchtower' of sorts where I can call up other people to do the running around instead!

The pay is fantastic - far better than I was on or would be on at the casino even with penalty rates, and I hope that they'll require people to stay on to help 'clean out' the remaining stragglers after the mass exodus to the casino and beyond - I could certainly use the money! Then I'll meet up with some people for beers in one of the quieter pubs and wrap up the day. Should be fun!

On other fronts, my venues have settled down and I'm regularly working the same two each week. There's a great team on each, the clientele are pretty decent and we don't get much trouble. And since my day job means I no longer need to work 5-6 nights a week for the money. So I can enjoy the work more now and won't risk burnout.

Stay tuned for a full write-up of one of Australia most popular sporting events... from an 'insider's' perspective!

Proving Manhood = Proving Idiocy And Insecurity

2007-08-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

Why I Don’t Like Changing Venues…

Our company picked up a new venue, and last night was the first night on it. I was pulled of my normal favourite wine bar for it, but it helped the boss and I didn’t mind really.

The place is generally pretty trendy, and the majority of the girls who attend are absolute stunners yet dress respectably. There were also far more girls than guys in the place – always a good sign that there probably won’t be much trouble.

And there wasn’t – just one fight and a couple of removals. In one, I was wearing my black leather gloves as I’d just come in from the door to assist and I was freezing outside.

Some know-it-all who said he worked as a glassie at a dodgy pub said “The bouncers at my club only wear gloves when they’re going to fuck someone up. This is my brother you’re going to remove, so if you’re going to fuck him up, I’m ready to party”. I communicated that this wasn’t a dodgy pub, I wasn’t going to fuck anyone up and to prove it I took the gloves off. He seemed almost disappointed and revved himself up further with some fighting talk I didn’t bother responding to.

Whilst this was going on his brother, very drunk, was making his way to the ‘back door’ (which really just opens onto the same street as the front door, just a bit further down the road). Glassie was excited that we were ‘taking him out the back’, because to him it proved that we were going to rough his brother up, and thus give him a chance to prove how much of a man he was by valiantly taking us all on. Classic example of confirmation bias – selecting evidence to prove your own view in spite of the big picture and what’s actually going on proving the opposite (to VERY simply state the psychological phenomenon).

We got out the door and Glassie said ‘Right, we’re out the back. Let’s go’. Puzzled, I pointed out we were on the same street as the front door, with regular police patrols going up and down. ‘So now what?’ asked Glassie.

‘That’s it. End of incident. I’m going back on the door’ replied I.

Glassie seemed disheartened. No fighting. No proving of manhood. No winding up the bouncer to provoke him into a fight.

Can’t please everyone I suppose. Would rather go home in one piece than make his day by sinking to his level.

Ah well, back to the wine bar next week. Suits me fine – I get on with the regular patrons and we have no trouble. If there’s any minor issues then management sort it out. It’s strange but the atmosphere there is not conducive to trouble even if troublemakers are in there.

One night we had a young bloke high on speed go crazy in the (small) toilet and kick the hand dryer off its mounting. The boss told him he had to leave. After a few seconds of blank starting, partly due to the drugs, he left without incident. Had it been anywhere else, I’m pretty sure it would have kicked off.

Might have been how the boss spoke to him or the very convivial atmosphere of the place, but one gets the impression that trying to prove manhood in a place like the wine bar would not garner any support or encouragement from the patronage to fuel the behaviour.

And rightly so.

Drunk on duty...

2007-08-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

... not me, I hasten to add. One of the people I share(d) the roster with has been 'removed' from duty due to numerous occasions in which they've turned up smashed. I know this is a cruisy, laid-back gig but turning up half-cut is never a good way to keep the job for long!

Was asked to go full-time in replacement. Turned it down - I've got too much going on. Am really getting into the copywriting side of things now (something I do on the side) and may even be able to negotiate a speaking arrangement in Malaysia in September on a niche area of Internet marketing that I'm gradually developing some expert knowledge in!

Getting a decent income for the moment - fingers crossed it stays that way for the moment. Need to have enough in the bank to make a dent in the debts in the UK I have to pay off still. And then there's the flights costs to pay upfront for the upcoming speaking events, which are likely to be re-imbursed when we make enough sales of IM products (and the guy I work for normally ALWAYS makes a good profit at each event).

With the AFL season coming to a close the availability of hours on weekends is likely to shift from the main stadium to another stadium as the football (read: soccer) season starts up. At this time of year there's enough events to keep people in guarding and crowd control jobs anyway. And no job I've worked before or since has compared to the mayhem of Melbourne Cup day. Thank God I won't have to deal with that one again - nowhere can be as bad as the casino on that day! Might end up working one of the racecourses dotted around the place - up in the VIP area with luck. Or maybe I'll be off in another country at a marketing seminar - will have to check the calendar...

Speaking of the old place, my new housemate had her head rammed through a glass window and then hit against a wall by a particularly angry patron one Saturday night a few weeks back. No wonder that place gets bad press for the sheer amount of trouble that goes on and the complete inability of their security team to stay on top of things. I keep going on about the place and sound bitter, but I just found it astounding that I was assaulted twice (relatively minor in both cases) in the police in nearly three years service, yet was assaulted at least once a month whilst working at the old place, and that was just in five months!

Security in an upmarket world...

2007-08-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well I've gone from dealing with the general dregs of society who frequent the casino to upmarket wine bars and high-profile events.

Thanks to a combined effort of two casual jobs plus copywriting work on the side, I'm earning far more than I would have done in the Air Force; double what I was on at the casino and with fewer hours and less risk.

Pressed charges against the idiot who assaulted me (wasn't connected and the threats never had anything in them).

I love the wine bar - it's a great place; excellent wine and decent people who go there. I've never had any trouble and have befriended some of the patrons, all of whom are well-to-do and very personable.

To keep my hands in the action I goto a nightclub in the main district after the wine bar. Even there the worst nights do not compare to the casino. Further, should any trouble arise we deal with them as required - up to and including chokeouts if worst comes to worst. I've only done a handful of physical removals there over a course of months (compared to the casino where it was at least one or two a night on a quiet night) and have been able to talk down most people. Saw one guy get tasered, which was quite amusing.

A more detailed blog over the weekend - pretty tired from standing on the door for a classical music concert. God it's hard work! :P

Updates?

2007-06-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, have been flat out the last month!

Just came back from holiday in Sydney - whilst the weather, on the whole, was pretty bad (though we got two days of sunshine which gave us false hope), it was a much-needed break!

I think I'll go back to the UK, as I've a pretty good job lined up for next September, which beats anything that the Aussie companies can offer me! It's not in security or policing either, which is a further bonus!

WA really isn't the place to try and settle down right now - it has some of, if not the highest, rental rates and house prices in Australia, without the wages or salaries to match. Sure the weather's great, but when you're working 50+ hours a week just to make ends meet, you don't get much time to go outside and enjoy it! This also means one is not able to afford a house, since the savings intended for a house deposit are instead spent on increasing rent prices, so that one doesn't end up on the street. Add to that a casualised labour market for most industries, and you don't know whether one week you'll be working full-time and the next you'll be ringing around the 5 or 6 companies you're on the books for, asking for hours!

For the next couple of months I'm financially comfortable, but should the landlord raise the rent if and when we renew the lease, then I don't know what position I'll be put in! Thus I'm taking any available hours that are going, in the hope that I'll have reserve savings should the worst happen. Meanwhile I'm putting money aside for my flight ticket and to get a bit of money behind me for when I return to the UK.

On the security front, I'm STILL doing nightclub work, but in different bars to the usual ones. I've now got a set routine of Friday and Saturday nights at an upmarket wine bar, with great staff, high-class clientele and not much trouble. During the week I'll fill in elsewhere, but have got permanent hours as in-house security on a well-known site. So that'll keep me going for at least a month, after which I'll see where I stand.

I had a run in with some gang members, or alleged gang members, or people who other people think might be associated with gang members, or people who people think might not be gang members at all. That's what I hate about this industry - too much 'word of mouth' and insufficient independent verification thereof. They tried to charge the door of a club I no longer work at, then assaulted me (twice) when I tried to stop one of them. No serious injuries, but an unpleasant experience nonetheless. One of their 'connections' then threatened me to drop proceedings when I got the police involved. Not going into too much detail as it is ongoing.

This incident has helped fuel my decision to return, since it proves that Perth isn't the safe, clean nirvana everyone who doesn't live here seems to think it is. Whilst the nighttime economy is small, it tends to attract a certain crowd to a certain style of music, who act in a certain way. To put it less cryptically - it attracts scam to crap music who act like idiots. I saw the worst excessess of it whilst working at the casino, and am seeing it to a lesser degree at other venues. Add to that the presence of the bikie gangs, or people who claim to be associated with them, and it makes for an uncomfortable city to go out in if you want to keep that sort of underground activity at arm's length. Regrettably, they've permeated most if not all night-time dealing, be it clubbing, pubbing etc. that one cannot avoid running into them or hearing about them. Even trendy restaurants in Subiaco have seen the ugly public manifestation of previously internal tensions.

Sydney, on the other hand, was different. I walked around Kings Cross, which would be their equivalent of Northbridge, and not once did I feel unsafe or threatened. Granted, I don't go there week after week and it was the middle of a terrible weather cycle, so I may well have caught the place on a good weekend. However not a night has gone by when I've found myself in Northbridge, by work or pleasure, that hasn't involved witnessing a fight or scuffle of some sort, which can often rope in unwilling bystanders.

I have a friend from the casino I used to work with moving in on Sunday, whom I also went to Sydney with. It should be good fun and I'm looking forward to it, since we hang out all the time anyway when one or the other of us isn't working. I think it works better that we are no longer at the same place of work, otherwise we'd have to work together, then live together, then hang out together, which is excessive no matter who you are.

Since the Sydney 'goal' has been achieved, I'm working now towards the 'UK' goal. It is a style of productivity that suits me well. If I set my own goal and have something to look forward to and work towards, I'll do better than if I'm merely 'drifting', and going along with the status quo, which a lot of people I know are normally content with. However, if the targets are arbitrary or I don't believe them necessary, it saps my motivation. Annoys the hell out of management, no doubt, but that's just who I am.

Right, off to pretend to do some work - can't surf the net and watch TV all day without doing a little bit of patrolling!

Friday night feralness

2007-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

Last night was an unusual one - there weren't that many people out, but the ones that were out qualfied to be included in a general population cull for the good of the rest of mankind.

Worked an upmarket bar, where normally nothing EVER happens - except for last night...

First up, a group of three doctors came in and drank far too much, causing one of their number to fall over onto a table, smashing a wine glass and getting wine shards into his hands. The bar manager came out after hearing the commotion, and identified the fallen male as one for whom another in the group had vouched for as having had 'only one drink'. This may have been a correct assertion had the 'one drink' been served in a two litre wine glass. The bar manager approached the doctor whom had 'vouched', who did not take kindly to being asked why this apparently incredibly sober male was now lying on the floor next to an upturned table and a broken wine glass. He pulled out his wallet and an identification card, that identified him as a doctor employed by the police academy. In this doctor's mind, this apparently granted him the sworn powers of a police officer, and qualified him to make judgement calls on licensing issues. He accused us of being overcrowded and breaching the licensing requirements, pulling out his mobile to phone someone as he did so. After hanging up, the phone conversation went like this:

Doctor: "You're only licensed for 123 people."
Bar manager: "Ummm.... it's actually 146."
Doctor: "Bullshit. It's 123, you're overcrowded and you're going to lose your licence."
Bar manager: "I'll go do a count." (wanders off)

Accusing the bar manager of kicking him out, when no such activity had occurred, he walked out of the bar on his phone. I followed him back to the door and stood there, watching as he mumbled something about 'overcrowding' to someone on the other end. Whoever he spoke to clearly didn't want to know, as he wandered off and didn't return. It was probably for the best, as had anyone turned up to follow up on the inquiry, the doctor would have had to account for why, when he was so adamant the place was in breach of its licensing obligations, he was so insistent on breaking the law by getting his intoxicated friend to remain on the premises.

Next, a group of three were cut off from the bar and became abusive towards staff. They left shortly after, but ended up getting back in as I didn't match up the description given with the people properly. Not to worry, they'd be in and out all night, it would seem. So, one by one, as they filtered out to the smoking area for a cigarette, they were politely but firmly denied re-entry. All but one objected, who wanted to go back in just to give his keys to his girlfriend. Knowing that he'd use this as an excuse to get inside then stay, I went with him. Sure enough, after handing the keys over he started an in-depth conversation with his better half. I interrupted and told him he had to leave, that I, by rights, should not have let him back in at all and was doing him a favour, and he had now fulfilled the task for which he was granted re-entry. He argued that he should be allowed to stay as he wasn't drinking anymore. I told him that wouldn't cut it, and that we were legally obliged to ensure people who were intoxicated did not remain on the premises, especially those who had been cut off from the bar! His girlfriend persuaded him to finish their conversation outside, and he went with her reluctantly. Had she not done that he would have been physically escorted out.

The bar closed and I jogged down to a club in the city centre's main clubbing district to pick up a couple of extra hours. Jogging in boots, trousers and jacket is far more tiring than jogging in sporting gear!

At the club, I was posted in their live band area. Within 15 minutes, a guy was acting up, jumping on stage and dancing. A colleague got him down, then, when his back was turned, the guy gave him the figure. This display of petulant arrogance would not go unchallenged, and I made my way across to my colleague to summon his help with removing the prat from the premises. Just then, another colleague arrived on scene, roving around. Telling him what had happened, he approached the prat and asked him to leave. Prat was refusing, and as my colleague went to take the prat's drink out of his hands to help effect the removal, prat threw the drink at my collaegue and swung at him. Well, that's it, noone starts on our boys or girls! Three of us jumped on him. He was a big bloke and was throwing himself around trying to get us off him. My colleague headlocked him, and prat grabbed the locking arm with his arm to try and get it off his neck. I grabbed prat's arm and fingerlocked him, pulling his arm up and behind his head. Prat threw his body forward to try and get free. Fuck it, we're going to have to floor him in front of several hundred people. We got him on the ground, but he rolled onto his front and tried to grab my leg and pull it out from under me. Lucky for him that I kept my balance, otherwise I would have collapsed my entire body weight on one knee, which was directly above his face. That would have hurt in the morning. He was endangering himself as well as us, and it shouldn't take three of us to restrain this guy. We get him on his back, one colleague pinned his leagues, the other his torso and arms and I place my knee on the side of his head and held it in place. He wasn't going anywhere now. Some of his mates tried to intervene, but were pushed back by colleagues who had arrived to assist. When the three of us decided that he wasn't going to struggle as much, we got him up. That is, we tried, as he was trying to be a dead weight Colleagues got one arm each and pulled him to his knees, but then he started violently thrashing about again. He ended up being dragged out with all four limbs carried by security. Afterwards, he apparently went around the front and start a fight at the front door. Dickhead.

At the end of the night, I was tasked with standing out the front of the club to ensure that no idiots went onto the road unncessarily. Personally I think some of them could do with being cleaned up by a taxi, but if someone gets hit it clogs the road up and causes delays, which means more drunken idiots hanging around for longer and not going home, getting agitated and starting fights. Some got on the road, others argued, one idiot told me to 'Fuck off and keep walking, cunt". I secretly hoped he'd either be hit by a car or one of the drunken aggressive idiots that dotted the street would see fit to king hit him. Sadly neither happened. That's the thing about this job - idiots like that wind you up, quite intensely, for a few minutes, then you forget it even happened just 5 or 10 minutes after.

Same bars tonight - let's hope there's not as many idiots out tonight.

Week in review part 2

2007-05-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Next was this shift just gone, at one of the venues which is a quieter bar. It has a smaller capacity, thus fewer guards. It also has an exceptionally lazy door policy, considering the area it's in. Here, 'knowing' door security is even more liberally interpreted!

Towards the end of the evening, I was stood in the beer garden when a guy, clearly intoxicated, jumped up on the ledge behind me and started shouting for his mate. I asked him to get down, give me a description of his mate and I'd go find him - wouldn't require much effort on my part and I wouldn't have to leave the fixie. He seemed to ignore me and kept on shouting. A colleague rounded the corner, approached the guy and asked him to get down. The guy got down, then squared up to my colleague, who pushed him back and advised him to stay back.

Sensing imminent trouble, I radioed for backup, opened the door to the rear of the garden, behind the venue, and joined my colleague. He again shoved the guy back with the complementary verbal instruction, and the male squared up to him again. Another shove, and this time the male swung at my colleague. I charged the male from the side into the wall, whilst my colleague grabbed him from the front. Struggling. Grappling. Yelling. Knee strikes to his side. Eventually we get him down. An old school security officer attends from front door, shoves my colleague back inside the venue and tries to calm the male down, after standing him up. The male calms down slightly but is still clearly aggressive. The police, summonsed by management whilst this was happening, are cancelled, as my colleague did not wish to press charges and the male no longer presented an immediate threat, although I disagreed with this.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, he's back, jumping up onto the ledge again and ignoring requests to get down. The mate he's after finally appears, with another mate, and I motion them out the venue to speak to the male. My colleague comes past on his rounds, the guy spots him and tries to charge him. My colleague retreats, the police are called again and the door supervisor tries to fob the job off. We all retreat inside the venue, and for some reason the two friends of the aggressive male are let back in, when they should have been advised to stay with the aggressive male, calm him down and get him home. Or, at the very least, kicked out with the aggressive male to send the message that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated and that we will take decisive action to ensure such undesirables are no longer welcome.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, aggressive male reappears out the front, wanting his mates again. He tries to enter the venue and is held back by another security officer. Now aggressive male starts to square up to him. I seriously consider knocking him unconscious and turning him over to police, when two patrol officers arrive just at that moment. They take the male down a street, and much to my dismay he is not arrested. Instead, his details are taken and he is released. The two officers wait a short while, then follow the male, who goes to another venue to try and get in!

The whole thing was handled badly. For a start, my colleague should have pressed charges for the threats and behaviour of this male towards him. Failing that, the police should not have been cancelled the first time around and he should have been arrested as soon as the police arrived, as it was clear he was a continuing threat, was aggressive and physically violent and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon whilst his mates were still inside. Finally, the door supervisor should not have let the aggressivemale's two friends back in the venue - it only caused an incentive for aggressive male to keep hanging around.

Upshot of it all - the next security officer to deal with this male has been set up, since both supervision and the police did not take decisive action against the male, he'll have it in (what passes for) his mind that he can do it again to someone else and pretty much get away with it!

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

2007-05-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

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...

Jeff Farmer - poster boy for all that's wrong with binge drinking!

2007-04-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Jeff Farmer has hit the headlines again, this time for punching a security officer at Paramount nightclub. For those of you who don't know, Jeff Farmer is an AFL player for the Fremantle Football Club (also known the Dockers), and the Paramount is a nightclub in the dodgy nightspot of Northbridge in Perth. The latest in a long line of incidents for the man...

About two or three months ago, roundabout six-ish in the morning, a colleague and I at the casino were alerted via cleaning staff that a male was passed out in one of the toilets on the main gaming floor. Upon entering the toilets, we witnessed an Aboriginal male in his late 20s rolling around on the floor, mumbling incoherently. He was surrounded by two or three people. When we asked them what was going on, they said 'He's Jeff Farmer - he's had too much to drunk'. This was pretty obvious, since nobody in their right mind would roll around on a toilet floor, in a casino, early in the morning, if they could help it.

We told them Mr. Farmer would have to leave, and leave now. They requested that we take him out the side entrance, opposite the Irish pub, rather than the main entrance. This was, they said, to avoid embarrassment or negative publicity being brought upon the AFL player. Resisting the temptation to argue that any embarrassment would be wholly self-inflicted, we acquiesced and started to 'guide' Mr. Farmer towards the exit.

This became an ordeal in itself - Farmer couldn't walk straight, stumbled all over the place and seemed quite insistent on trying to play on every electronic gaming machine he walked past, a lack of coinage seemingly not a hinderace to his efforts.

At a set of steps that led up to a raised section of the floor in front of the entrance, Farmer took one of his shoes off and planted it slap bang in the middle of the floor. He took a few steps back, crossed his arms, stared at the shoe and went 'Nup', or something equally incomprehensible. I encouraged him to put his shoe back on, but it appeared as though he was lining up to kick the improvised footy through an imaginary set of goal posts. Eventually, through short but frustrating negotiation, we persuaded him to put his shoe back on, and continued our slow trek towards the entrance, now about 20 metres away.

Just as we were about to walk through the entrance, Farmer darted off to the left, down a bank of electronic gaming machines. Again, he tried to play the machines, and again we had to repeat our requests for him to leave. His mates finally coaxed him out of the casino. We informed them and Farmer that he was barred for 24 hours, and informed our base to this effect. Farmer and co. sat on the steps of the Irish pub nearby, and that was where we left them.

Now, from what I hear, Farmer put in an appearance at the casino's nightclub on the same night of the ill-fated incident at Paramount this weekend gone. Whilst the exact time is not confirmed, what is known is that security staff approached Farmer and asked him to leave due to his clear intoxication. Allegedly, he then attempted to run away from security staff. You can't take people anywhere these days!

Moving on now - nightclubs

2007-04-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

Started my second week of work with an agency that provides door staff/crowd controllers/bouncers (depending on where you are in the world, they are called different things) to nightclubs and bars here. I've negotiated a very good pay rate with them and have got some decent venues, on the whole.

Most of it involves standing in fixed positions, monitoring the crowd and signalling up fights or intoxicated people, then dealing with them. There's the odd push or shove between people here and there, but nothing amounting to the brawls; bottlings and general mayhem of the nightclub attached to the casino in which I used to work.

One of the upmarket bars loved me on my first night, and requested that I be placed there each weekend, which suits me fine.

Worked a cruisy venue last night, which, towards the end, was the host of an amusing little scene. It is a large venue, with some areas being closed off since it wouldn't be economical to put staff there and run the area. One of the guys was 'roving' around when he happened to stick his head through into one of the closed areas to make sure nobody was there. What he saw tickled him, and he called a few of us over to have a look. In a sofa in a dark corner were two shilloutes, one of whom was giving the other a headjob. After a few seconds of laughing at this classy display of affection between two close and deeply intimate people, we switched on the lights adn kicked them out. The walk of shame for the couple was accompanied by a guard of honour of door staff - maybe now they'll acquire a bit of decorum and find a toilet cubicle instead. Believe me, it's a step up for these people!

A strange phenomenon...

2007-04-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

Can anyone please tell me why, in some of the more downmarket clubs, do some of the guys tend to turn up their collars (or, in some cases, what passes for them) after they've had a few drinks? Are they trying to imitate an Elvis outfit, think it looks suave, or what?

Never quite understood it and I think it makes them look ridiculously pathetic - too 'try-hard', if you will.

Any light that could be shed on this would be much appreciated!

Incredibly short-staffed!

2007-04-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

I hear from my sources that last night, ten Security Officers called in sick to the casino, leaving them incredibly understaffed.

Whilst the majority of these cases were genuine illnesses, some with the potential to affect the officer's ability to work for at least the next week or so, others were sickies thrown 'on the spur'. Like any place that operates on a Saturday night then...

The Operations Manager, who is acting up in situ following their bosses temporary departure, phoned a contract company desperate to get staff to work on the areas that aren't classified as the gaming floor, presumably in an effort to free up licensed staff for boxes; urgent chip runs; dealing with main gaming floor incidents and other such matters. Because of the short notice and that this company had just finished up a big job elsewhere that night, nobody volunteered to work.

How I would have loved to have been at the casino last night! They're short-staffed at the best of times, but I wonder how soon it will be until this situation repeats itself. If they didn't fire people left, right and centre for the slightest reason, they wouldn't have this issue...

Still around! A LONG rant...

2007-04-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings to anyone who still reads this blog! Well, I'm still here, and still working in the security industry, but not for much longer! I have a very good job lined up outside of the industry, and can't wait to start! I no longer work at the casino. If you still haven't worked out which one it was, trust me, it isn't difficult!

As readers could probably tell from this blog, I was not particularly happy working there and intended to leave, especially after being injured! Unfortunately, thanks to their penalty system, the pay was very good, which was the only reason I stayed for as long as I did. It is time and a half on Saturdays and double-time on Sundays. There was also plenty of overtime going as well, which pays at double-time for the entire period you work. This overtime was abundant due to the casino being extremely short-staffed in terms of Security Officers. Few if any of the teams are at full strength, and a lot of the part-timers are university students, so aren't always available during the week. However I've recently learnt that, since they've gone way over budget in regards to overtime, management are reluctant to get people in on overtime unless they're desperately short. One day shift, for example, had eight (count that, eight) Security Officers parading on during one shift I was there, which was to last the whole twelve hours! Now, eight barely covers the minimum legal requitements for casino security, so they had to bring in people at short notice and keep other staff on for a bit longer. Fantastic logistics and rostering if you ask me!

The reason that they're short-staffed is that nobody wants to work at the casino in Security anymore! As one ex-officer put it to me: "A few years ago, people in the industry would have walked over broken glass to work Security there. Now, they can't get far enough away from it!" The reasons why have become abundantly clear in recent months.

First, is the nature of the patrons. As long as people meet the (token) dress standards, have minimum acceptable ID and aren't falling over drunk, they can get in. I often sympathised and agreed with more well-to-do folk who entered the casino through whichever door I was on, spent five minutes in the place and left in disgust. Dress code standards are almost non-existent. As long as you haven't got exceptionally visible rips in your clothes, a singlet or beach thongs, you're in! The place is full of the sort of people you often see hanging out at your local Centrelink, and cross the road to avoid. Remnants of the primordial gene pool would be a concise and fairly accurate description for them. Drunk; smelly; low-life; abusive; unhygenic; dole-bludging; feral and exceedingly unintelligent would be a few choice adjectives to elaborate, applying equally to both male and female patrons. I could categorise them into amusing archetypes, and I may well do if I can be bothered, in a later post. Why deal with these idiots and the low level incidents they cause, day in, night out, when one can do another security job in a safer, more upmarket area in a safer, more upmarket role?

An increasing number of ‘gangs’, official and otherwise, have started frequenting the casino of late. Sometimes, their disputes with each other will come with them and play out on the property. At one stage, officers running from the nightclub to restrain a male hurling bottles at a car found themselves under attack from a several bottle missiles hurled through the air from the car in their general direction. The incident wasn’t reported, even though there was the potential for serious injury.

Patrons come in because the place is open 24 hours, the majority of Security Officers won't or can't be bothered to discriminate unless it is exceedingly obvious that they should not be allowed in (partly due to lack of training, addressed below), and the bars are open late. The patrons are too stupid to realise that it is not a happy, jovial place where fun and frolics can be had. A casino exists for the sole purpose of increasing the profits of its owners, achieved through fleecing people's money in every conceivable fashion and squeezing every last dollar out of them, from over-inflated alcohol prices down to the $2.50 gaming tables, whilst projecting the illusion that to engage in this is somehow enjoyable. Plying the patrons with alcohol serves to both numb the brain to the irrationality of gambling and makes losing money more acceptable, since it helps the patron delude themselves that they may win their money back. I feel sorry for the staff too, as many are lured to work in the casino with the promise of working in a luxurious, dynamic environment where they'll be serving beautiful people out for a good time, and quickly become disillusioned when they're dealing with the same paralytic redneck white trash and vacuous indigenous troublemakers day in, day out in a gaming floor that is positively dangerous for all concerned on a weekend night.

Drunk, broke and down on their luck, the proles take it out on each other, on staff and (occasionally) on property. Blaming the casino (and not their own idiocy) for their predicament, an increasing number are refusing to go quietly when asked. Most people are kicked out with a standard (and unwritten) 24 hour ban. No details are taken, and they’re back the next day, to (eventually) be kicked out again. It is an endless struggle against a virtually limitless number of troublemakers. In serious incidents, some people are barred under a separate power for up to two years, but this is equally ineffective, as will be seen later. It was getting to the stage when I left that at least one Security Officer would be assaulted a week. I have it on good authority that it's happening more often now. Bottle attacks in one form or another and headbutts against Security staff there seem to be fairly regular occurrences now. In the night club, there’s usually at least one patron attacked with a bottle per Friday and Saturday night. Thus, whilst they’re well paid in comparison to other work, Security Officers at the casino are facing an escalation in the likelihood of being assaulted in some form or another. Indeed, it is at the stage where, if a report of a fight between patrons comes up, a large number of officers will not bother making haste to the location. This wouldn’t be so bad if management backed up their staff, trained them and had a team of experienced professionals. This, however, is most definitely not the case.

Because the casino operates under different legislation to the rest of the universe, it can get away with pretty much whatever it wants. I’m convinced there could be a murder at the casino and it still wouldn’t lose its licence even if it was found to be at fault in every conceivable way. It simply brings in too much money for the government. A practical manifestation of this is that Security Officers need not have a security licence to work there, unlike the majority of other security jobs and roles in the State. Instead, they need only have a casino gaming licence, which requires no formal training or accreditation to obtain. To obtain a security licence, one needs to undertake a security course. Albeit basic, it covers legislation in regards to applicable powers, rights and responsibilities of security officers; restraint techniques and general guidelines on how to perform the role of a Security Officer or Crowd Controller (bouncer). This ensures that people with a security licence have at least a basic grounding in what is required and expected of them. This is not so at the casino. Indeed, an increasing number of Security Officers who work there have no security licence and no previous security experience. It is entirely possible that the casino is pivoting the Security Department towards a more customer-focused role, and is hiring people with customer service experience, but this not mitigate the lack of training in legislation, roles, requirements and suchlike that would be possessed by those with a security licence. Indeed, on several occasions, Security Officers with no previous experience or qualifications were hired and placed in the midst of the mayhem on a Friday night as their first shift, with no introduction to the company, their job or their teams at all! Meanwhile, a large number of new starters in the department have, in fact, been internal transfers from other departments of the casino and its operating company. This may indicate the casino’s lack of success in hiring people from outside (read qualified and experienced Security Officers). Some of the new starters lack confidence, and this shows when dealing with confrontational situations. In several cases I did not feel I could rely on colleagues for backup, either in presence or physical restraint.

This leads on to the lack of training provided by the casino. In the entire time I was there, I received no formal training, accredited or otherwise. That’s right, no Responsible Service of Alcohol; Responsible Service of Gaming, education on applicable legislation or anything. I shadowed people for the first four shifts and was shown how to do things, but received no follow-up on whether or not I understood the procedures or could perform the properly. No performance review in the entire time I was there, even though there was mean to be one every three months. No training in dealing with non-compliant; aggressive or violent patrons, and god forbid you try and restrain them using techniques you were taught elsewhere! Instruction consisted of shift briefs in which we were told the latest things we couldn’t do. It’s not just Security – some bar staff, lacking experience anyway, receive no training in RSA, thus leaving Security to pick up the pieces when the intoxicated patrons are finally cut off from the bar, when they could have been merrily sent on their way several pints earlier, with a happier ending for all. One bar supervisor telling their bar staff not to cut people off unless absolutely necessary, because it’s more hassle for the supervisor, certainly doesn’t help matters and is hardly in the spirit of RSA. Bars serving until quite literally the last legally permissible limit, without any ‘last orders’ period ties up Security Officers who could be deployed elsewhere in overseeing people who purchased a full pint at 0300 hours, bang on closing time, and (quite rightly) expect a reasonable amount of time to be able to drink up.

So, thus far, we have the problem of Security Officers not being licensed, experienced, qualified or trained, dealing with drunk and aggressive pond scum packed into a casino that encourages excess (but they’ll never admit it). What more could one want?

How about unsupportive management? From the first day, one is instilled with an unease and distrust of management. Old wives tales of previous officers who were ‘screwed over’ by management for seemingly innocuous acts pervade the first few shifts of a new Officer who, enthusiastic and giddy with this new role and environment, will happily dismiss such stories. Indeed, I was warned by several people before starting that management will not back you up, and that many people have left prior to me because of this. I didn’t believe them. However, it soon becomes apparent that if management are unhappy with something you have done, your job is on the line, even if you haven’t been trained or shown what to do, can fully justify what you did or are backed up by colleagues. Oftentimes, the Surveillance Department keep a watchful eye on Security Officers, reporting their infractions and violations of protocol, no matter how slight, to management for actioning. Even before an investigation is carried out, officers are suspended, threatened with dismissal and intimidated into feeling guilty, even if they are subsequently cleared. If there’s an incident in which there is no patron, staff or managerial complaint, and thus no case to answer, Surveillance will still take it upon themselves to alert management, at which stage a presumption of guilt of the employee is made. The employee is invited to a meeting, with or without immediate suspension. This meeting is a chance for them to try and argue their case. Meanwhile, a case is prepared against them, including the collation of surveillance footage, witness statements and anything else that may be used in the casino’s efforts to get rid of the employee. Something as innocuous as allegations that an officer refused to perform a requested chip run has lead to threatening letters and investigations in the past, even when hotly contested by the officer concerned, and with evidence supporting the officer’s side in abundance. This demoralises other Officers, for an overzealous disciplinary procedure, vitriolic Surveillance and draconian managers combine to serve as a disincentive for using one’s initiative, going above and beyond their job description or role, or generally acting in the interests of the casino. Serving officers are well advised to avoid fostering a bond of loyalty with the casino, as the casino, through management, will recognise no such loyalty and will act accordingly. Long serving officers have been suspended in the past for dealing with patrons in accordance with casino policy and even their training. When that patron has complained and filed their own civil or criminal matter against that officer (if you don’t work in the industry, it happens more often than you think), management becomes paranoid about vicarious liability. In an attempt to avoid it, they will suspend the employee concerned with a view to dismissal, presumably to distance themselves from the employee, their actions and, thus, liability. This compounds the stress, psychological impact and detriment the employee suffers. The casino does not and will not stand by its employees, especially if there’s the possibility of any legal action, media involvement or negative publicity. Which leads on to the casino’s obsession with positive image at the expense of all else.

It is an unofficial assumption amongst Security Officers that the casino will sack them in a heartbeat should they do anything that could be construed as tarnishing the casino’s image. This includes defending themselves against an attack by a patron or preventing a further attack, if the manner in which they defend themselves doesn’t ‘look good’. A recent incident, in which an employee was suspended and subsequently resigned for attempting to restrain a violent patron who had assaulted both patrons and a staff member and was continuing to resist efforts to be restrained, illustrates this point nicely. If Officers haven’t been trained in the ‘approved’ techniques by management and trainers, they risk dismissal if they use anything else. Therefore, it beggars belief that the casino has, in several cases, hired Security Officers with no previous experience, qualifications, licence or accreditation, placed them on the floor on a Friday night as their first ever shift with no previous introduction to the job, and exposes them to confrontational and often violent situations.

The culture imposed on Security Officers by security management of ‘talk them down no matter what’, whilst well-intentioned and a sensible first resort policy for any organisation, is taken too far in the casino’s instance. Indeed one manager was telling staff that ‘if you have to talk to them until the end of your shift, do so.’ In a culture shift from previous years and managerial regimes, physical removals of aggressive, abusive or passively resistant patrons is discouraged, again out of managerial paranoia of image and potential liability. Thus casino patrons, well-to-do and otherwise, are treated to the oft-repeated scenario of three or four Security Officers standing around a patron who is drunk and screaming their head off at anyone in particular, using every obscenity imaginable and casting aspersions on every aspect of the Security Officer; staff member; other patrons or the casino. Whereas, in most places, people would reasonably expect that this sort of behaviour not be tolerated, and the person making a scene and hurling abuse be quickly physically removed from the premises, in the casino, this can go on for (sometimes) tens of minutes without any action on Security’s part, making Security look weak, indecisive and most certainly unable to control the situation, which can and does dissuade some people from frequenting the casino (amongst the long list of many other reasons not go there). Patrons high on drink and drugs are, in some cases, systematically incapable of responding to reason and logic, whilst others will simply refuse to co-operate because they refuse to recognise the authority of Security Officers. In such cases, there is no other option but to physically remove them.

Finally, the ‘barring notice’, or the ability, provided by law, to ban people from the casino or the entire resort for a period of time, whilst nice in theory, is unworkable in practice. There are so many people barred at any one time, that it is physically impossible to keep track of them all with the antiquated paper-based system used by the casino to maintain its barring records. Unless the barred person is repeatedly caught in the casino, most officers won’t know if someone is barred or not, especially if the person was barred before the Security Officer commenced work there (and, with the turnover so high at the moment, anyone barred over a year ago is unlikely to be recognised by a large number of Security Officers). Furthermore, enforcement action taken by management when a barred person is caught is often laughable. Whilst theoretically open to prosecution or an infringement notice administered by Government Inspectors, many barred people are hauled into the office, reminded they are barred and politely (or not so politely) told to leave and not return. It is an inefficient system because of the antiquated filing method, reliance on observation of barred people in order to be effective and because so little is done when barred people are caught that many simply ignore the notice and continue to frequent the casino, often successfully until they are eventually caught, if caught at all! It is, at best, a token effort to maintain some semblance of patron control over a long period of time. Whilst some are starting to use their own initiative and maintain intelligence files of regular troublemakers, the majority do not. On a Saturday night, when there are thousands of people on the floor and an already overstretched Security department is under the pump, one cannot hope to identify every barred person or deal with those who have re-entered.

So there you have it, a long and detailed list of reasons why the casino is in such shit state; Security staff are demoralised, demotivated and leaving in droves, and why very few people actually want to work in the department. There are more I can write, but this will do for the moment. If you are on a night out, for the love of God, go ANYWHERE else. If you are thinking of working there, then on your own head be it. You won’t last long – you’ll either get assaulted and be unable to work, or feel the wrath of management eventually. What's worse is that with the casino having a monopoly on state gambling (it's the only one), management can be arrogant and do pretty much whatever they want. Why? Because people can't go anywhere else for another casino!

Injured

2006-12-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

Not been posting for a while as nothing particularly eventful happened - Friday nights have been as feral as always, have been fighting with drunks and carrying on as usual with zero motivation and looking for better jobs. In the interim, I went to a couple of staff and Christmas parties with free drinks, where I remembered that, even though the job itself is driving me insance, the people I work with on the whole are a pretty good bunch. However, one can't stay where one is just for the people.

This particular Friday, however, I managed to obtain a series of injuries that will see me off on full pay for at least a week.

Came on at 6pm and there was already a fight in one of the more notorious pubs. We attended, threw people out and all was well. Managerial wisdom, however, held that, even though it was the Friday before Christmas, there would be no changes to officers on fixed positions. Meaning that this notorious pub, already full to bursting and having gone off very early in the day, would not have any dedicated officers on the doors or inside the pub roving around. Thus it fell to a colleague who was also free for that hour, a manager in on overtime and I to help look after the place. In the short space of forty minutes or so, we threw about six people out, prevented a whole load more from re-entering, and re-removed several who did get past us when we weren't looking. Fantastic - fire-fighting security on one of the busiest weekends of the year.

An hour or so later, a huge guy standing at around 6ft 8 decided that he wasn't going to listen to a colleague's request to leave an entrance he had been refused entry to. He eventually turned towards the door, but then snapped back and assaulted the officer. He was floored, eventually, by about 6 of us, and was still putting up one hell of a struggle. We got him up and tried to get him to the office, which he made as difficult as possible. When finally inside the main entrance and near the office, he gripped the handrails and refused to let go. Then, when we finally got him away from that, he dragged himself into a corner between the security office and one of the entry doors. Those who were on him were having trouble moving him, so I grabbed the top of his head via his hair and manipulated his head to help effect his movement towards the office. Where the head goes, the body follows, so it helped move him. Unfortunately, the boss wasn't too happy, as it looked like I was pulling his hair. Well, had he not refused to leave, not assaulted staff and made it extremely difficult to move him, the move would not have been necessary.

After that, we were requested to attend the same notorious pub as before, following reports of aggressive males. Since company policy dictates, fairly reasonably, that we need at least three officers per person to remove, we had to wait for additional officers to turn up. Whilst waiting, yet another fight broke out in the pub. Personally I wasn't surprised - they pack the place to the rafters, ply them with booze and we operate no sort of crowd control system in terms of taking account of numbers or capacity. Oh, apologies, we do - we click people in and out. Yeah, that makes it ok. Or, if it's clearly spilling out with people, we might have a 'one in, one out' policy way after it is plainly apparent that it is too full, instead of maintaining a decent control policy from the start.

We run into the pub, and see at least three or four blokes fully at it, fists and all. We try to separate them, with difficulty. Unfortunately, because of the managerial obssession (and indeed paranoia) about image and presentation, we wear nothing that clearly identifies us as security, save for an earpiece and a credit card-sized ID badge. So, if you're fighting, and you find yourself being pulled away, you won't know it's security unless you already know who security are/look like. When it's dimly lit, like this pub is, it's merely dark shapes attempting to forecefully dissuade you from effecting your just desserts on people. A colleague and I got one male off the others, and nearly had to throw him against a wall to get him away. He was very, very violent, lashing out and throwing himself around. We flanked him on each side and attempted to get him out the door, with him doing his level best to make it difficult for us, throwing us from side to side if he could. The side of my head hit a wooden door frame quite hard, then a few steps later I fel my right knee go, and suddenly walking became extremely difficult and painful. Luckily we were nearly outside the pub, so I used every last ounce of energy left to get the violent male out the door and down the steps, shove him backwards to create space and collapse on the floor, no longer able to put any weight on my left leg. A crowd of patrons had gathered as they'd heard or seen the commotion, so to collapse in front of them probably didn't look good. However, by that stage image was the last thing on my mind. Fortunately, my colleagues called for one of our in-house medics, qualified industrial paramedics, to attend, and assisted with getting me to the office in a wheelchair, where an ambulance was called and I was carted off to hospital.

The upshot of it all is that, after many X-rays, I have soft tissue damage to my head, a strained knee ligament and a possible bone displacement or fracture that may need surgery fairly soon. I'm off for at least one week, with that being reviewed after attending another consultation late next week. I'm on crutches and wear a big padded leg splint.

Eight hours in the waiting room saw me witnessing scenes which further reinforced my view that, if I run the world, I will be re-introducing Prohibition but would do a better job of enforcing it than the US did. I also saw a police officer admitted who had been spat blood in the face by a 'client', that client likely being infected. One patient started boasting about the door staff he'd taken down with him whilst sustaining his injuries.

I also had plenty of time to contemplate why the hell I've bothered serving in the police and, now, in private security, getting paid poor money (or not at all) to regularly encounter dangerous situations and people, with very little gratitude or appreciation shown by either the general public, management or the people we 'save' other people from. Often, we get the opposite of gratitude and are chided for doing our jobs. Or not doing them, depending on your point of view. Once again, I've wound up in hospital with injuries and am likely to be off for a while. Holistically speaking, neither the money nor the kudos it puts on my CV and on job application forms make it worthwhile anymore. It is simply too much of a risk to my long-term health and life prospects for a remuneration level that is laughable. Croupiers/dealers get paid significantly more than us! The 'serving people' motivation has long since died, to be replaced by a cynical desire to attempt to keep the morons that make everyone else's lives a misery. Since that is a losing battle as well, I keep trying to find reasons why I still turn up to work. It used to be the money, as weekend penalty rates were half decent, but after being injured, even that's not enough now.

The place I work at is becoming increasingly dangerous, and it's not just the usual Christmas silly season. The corporate paranoia over image and liability takes precedence over practical job delivery. It is now at the stage that I no longer feel safe when at work, owing to short staffing, ineffective rostering, nonsensical policies and a lack of personal protective equipment and any sort of training. I don't feel management will back me up if I use my discretion or interpret guidelines/policy against how they believe it to be interpreted or if I should face any action outside of work for anything I do inside work. For someone to say this after serving in the police in a city with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the UK is certainly something. If the company wants us to deal with violent patrons and extremely hostile situations, where we are often outnumbered, without breaching 'image', which directly impacts on our level of personal safety because 'image' dictates how we approach situations and deal with people, then I'm increasingly of the view they can do so without my efforts.

Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this blog. Fortunately, I no longer have to work Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day night, so I shall spend it with my family, leg elevated and in a splint.

Disillusionment - it doesn't take long!

2006-12-02T23:54:00.000-08:00

In the course of one night, my enthusiasm for the job managed to dwindle to zero. I'm now looking for other work.

Here's a few reasons why:

Western Australia, being backward to the rest of the civilised world, only recently decided to join everyone else and introduce daylight saving on a trial basis, starting from 2am (3am) this morning. It was decried by those who claimed abuse of democratic process, on the grounds that, 16 years ago, people voted against it in a referendum. 16 years ago, society existed in a different state and a whole generation of people were unable to exercise their say in the matter. But apparently, the decision should never be reviewed again. However, I digress.

When the clocks were moved forward from 2am to 3am, we would, in effect, lose an hour's pay. This was something I could live with, but it also meant the licensed premises, specifically the bars and nightclub, would stay open to between 4 and 5.30am. Clearly, security management didn't anticipate or plan for this, resulting in a panic when, at 3am, they realised that they didn't have anybody standing on the doors. It thus fell to us poor shmucks to take up the slack. Normally, we rotate between one hour's 'roving', in which we also take our breaks, and one hour on a fixed point, usually a door to one of the various establishments. I had the extraordinary honour of being given four hours of consecutive fixed points. Commencing from my completion of an hour's 'roving' in a fixed location, which is essentially a fixed point with a little more mobility (contradictory as that may sound) in a themed pub, I was then placed on the door of said pub. An hour later, I was asked to go to a somewhat distant location to relieve an officer so he could take his break. Thanks to the travelling time for all involved, I ended up standing on the door for forty minutes. Whilst on the way back, I was told to take a break before my next scheduled 'fixie'. Again, thanks to travelling time, this translated into a ten minute break. Had I taken my full fifteen minute entitlement, I would have been late for that fixie, which would have resulted in whoever I was to relieve complaining that they were relieved late. Towards the end of that fixie, I was informed that I had to stay on the other door of the themed pub from which I had stood before. So, in reality, it was more like five hours, if one counts the hour of 'fixed roving' in the themed pub. When I asked why this hadn't been anticipated in advance, I was greeted with indifference and answers of "It's always like this", "Tough" and "There aren't enough staff". Fantastic - nice to know the issues are being tackled.

This series of events compounded the frustration I was enduring from an incident that had occurred earlier in the night. A group of four males, rejected from the themed pub due to being intoxicated and aggressive, attempted to get in the secondary casino entrance, and had been knocked back from there. Abusing the staff and threatening to charge the door, they moved to the main entrance of the casino, on which I was stood. One of them then decided to stroll through the door, hoping that, since it wasn't the same officers as had been on the other doors, we would not recognise him. He had not accounted for several thousand surveillance cameras or a radio network in which the doors inform each other as to who they'd knocked back and who to look out for.

We asked him to stop, and he carried on. As he was committing the offence of trespass, since we had withdrawn his right to remain in the premises, we took hold of him to stop him from entering further. He began to arc up, pushing against my colleague. Two more officers turned up, dragged him out and shoved him against the door, where they pinned him until he calmed down. Meanwhile, his three other mates came in to try and confront the officers, and were advised to stay back by reinforcements who had arrived. He calmed down and was removed, and was told to stay outside and not enter any part of the building. I was relieved from the door, but remained in the area should he try and come back. A few minutes later, he returned. This time there were two female officers on the door. I approached the male, who was pretending to read a sign next to the door. My suspicions were aroused when he deliberately looked over or around me as I approached him, even though I was straight in front of him. Either he was on drugs, or he knew damn well he shouldn't be there and was trying to see how much he could get away with. I told him that he had been knocked back several times, had tried to charge the door and had been explicitly told he could not be in the area. I asked him to leave through the door, gesticularting accordingly for the benefit of surveillance. He refused to leave. I tried several times, fully explaining why I was asking him to leave, each time to no avail. Eventually he moved to near the glass doors inside the main entrance, next to two shallow steps down. He again refused to leave, and started to become aggressive, stepping up to me and challenging me. Given what had happened before, I feared for my safety and, since he had been uncooperative, needed to both get him out and create space between him and I. I gave him a palm heel strike to move him back, accompanied by me shouting at him to stay back and leave the area immediately. He stepped back and down a step, still on his feet. He left. Job done. A few minutes later I was called in to see the boss - apparently surveillance complained that they thought I had been too heavy handed. My justifications fell on deaf ears and I was told off.

Last time I checked, surveillance weren't my bosses. They sit in an office high above the gaming floor and only see, not hear, what is happening. They have no idea of context or what is actually happening at the time, yet see fit to pass judgements about things they have no experience of themselves. They're also clearly not on the side of the employees, something that was reinforced by both other security officers and croupiers who had dealt with surveillance whilst trying to solve gaming disputes.

Once again, management show they are too spineless to actually allow us to get on with the job of performing security duties. Whilst, in the majority of cases, most people can be spoken to and persuaded to do things, there are instances in which they will not comply, are aggressive and threatening and can cause an officer to fear for their safety. It would seem, however, that management do not condone us using any force on patrons, unless it is the 'approved' techniques which I have not yet been taught. The reason for this is simple - they are scared. They are scared of being sued, as if initiation of legal action against the employer means that the employer has lost by default, when it should instead be viewed as the opportunity to present, justify, explain and defend one's actions. Most likely they fear court action because of negative PR. It therefore logically follows that they would rather we be seen to have no control of the situation, including risking being junured, than to be seen to gain control of the situation even though it doesn't 'look good'. This was something that was implicitly imparted to me, and is a style of working that I do not agree with and cannot work under. Screw them, I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

If I am placed in a position in which I have to regularly deal with drunk, aggressive, abusive and physical patrons, I should be afforded the discretion to deal with the situation in a way that is justified and proportionate, and to be able to be supported by my colleagues and managers accordingly. This is obviously not the case at this place of work, and it has been made clear by management that if any action arises from anything we do, and the matter is taken further, we are left to fight it on our own. This complete lack of support removes any incentive or motivation to perform the job, care about the patrons we protect and/or deal with or go above and beyond what is required of us. Instead, as mere drones expected to blindly comply with prescriptive policy irrespective of circumstance, we are expendable. At the same time, I also expect to be damned if I do and damned if I don't.

Case in point - earlier that evening, a senior gaming officer followed a female out of the main door, pointed her out to be and said that she had assaulted a male who was now bleeding. Pending finding the male and ascertaining whether or not he wanted to press charges, I asked her to accompany me to the security office whilst we investigated the matter, which she did of her own accord. It became quickly clear that it was a domestic and that, when we found the male, he didn't want to press charges. I was then told off by one of the managers for bringing her into the office. Instead, I should have tried to ascertain what had happened by taking her to one side outside the main entrance before taking her in. Quite aside from the fact that questioning someone about a criminal offence in a public place is hardly the best way of conducting an initial investigation, there was every chance that she could have complained of the indignity of doing so, and I would have been told off for not bringing her in the office. Furthermore, had she decided to leave and the male wanted to press charges, I would have been told off for not detaining her.

I get the distinct impression management exist only to screw us, which, combined with the constant ignoring of any justifications or explanations for actions as well as not receiving ANY formal training on how to do the job, as well as a complete lack of support, has completely destroyed any interest I have in the job. From now on, I shall simply act in a completely detached and uninvolved manner. No longer caring about the patrons, only intervening in fights if colleagues are threatened and blindly following procedure without question. I shall become the unthinking drone that they desire, until I am able to find something better. Which, with my background and experience, won't take long. It is, believe it or not, even worse here than it was in the police in the UK. I am getting the impression that I think too much and am too independent to work in this increasingly over-prescriptive and unncessarily procedurally standardised industry unless I am in management. If I do stay in, I will no longer be working in an environment in which I am expected to deal with dangerous situations but management go out of their way to prevent me from doing so effectively.

What some people will try with ID and doors.

2006-11-20T04:10:00.000-08:00

Our policy on the doors, for the casino or anywhere else, is:

1. ONLY a valid Australian Driver's License, valid passport or valid State Proof of Age Card will be accepted.
2. There are no exceptions to Rule 1.

I don't care if the photo clearly resembles you in every conceivable manner. If it's not valid ID, you won't be coming on, and there really isn't much scope for debate or discussion on the matter. It's both managerial policy and, in many cases, the law, and I am in no position to voluntarily afford discretion at all.

If you're male, it doesn't matter how much you try and intimidate me. If you're female, it doesn't matter how attractive you are or how low cut your top is. Arguing your case, bribing me, threatening me or promising sexual favours will not influence or dissuade me from doing my job, and you'll simply further reinforce my decision not to let you in. . Trying to charge the door or attacking me doesn't work either, because I simply call for backup, physically restrain you using reasonable force, which is directly proportionate to your efforts and methods you use in your attempt to assault or get past me, and you'll not only be refused entry tonight, but for perpetuity. So it's really not worth it. I've seen it all before, and whatever you've got is nothing new!

Even if you do get past me or injure me, do you really think we'll just let you saunter into the club, buy some drinks and start dancing? You'll be found and dragged out, very quickly and very publicly, to face the police, criminal charges and a conviction. It's not worth it for something as minor as being knocked back and trying to save face.

It's also immaterial that you are out for a works do, xxth birthday, wedding, anniversary, awards night or stamp club outing. To me, you're all 'patrons', the only discriminating factors being whether you meet the dress standards, whether you're sober enough to let in and whether you're ID is sufficient or not.

So far, I've had:

People presenting me with passports or other ID that are three years expired. They then complain when I don't accept them.

People with international driving licenses, who then protest that because the license is valid in their country, we should accept it as valid ID here. There's a big sign outside all our doors that indicate otherwise. For some reason, people accept written information as more authoritative than the same information conveyed verbally.

Those with expired ID that are out by a couple of weeks. No, I'm not prepared to afford discretion and let you in, because to do so would not incentivise you to renew your licence like you damn well should do. The date of expiry is clearly printed on the ID and in the accompanying counterpart, so there's no excuse that you're 'only just realised' that it was expired!

Idiots who, with duplicate IDs, try and blag their mates in by giving them the duplicate to present to me 30 seconds after they've shown me the original one. Do they really think I'm not switched on enough to recognise it, or at least get a sense of Deja Vu?

Patrons presenting ID cards in which they've 'altered', usually through scratching, their dates of birth, so 1988 looks like 1986. Running my thumb over the printed numbers on a card, as I normally do, quickly reveals this, and they usually have little defence, other than 'oh, it got scratched'. Pretty bloody convenient place for the scratching to occur, especially in a very isolated manner.

People who flash the ID card at me as they try and hurry past. I can think of nothing else more likely to arouse my suspicions. Stop, come back and let's look at that properly. Ah, yes, you're a male and you've presented me with your older sister's ID card. Thankyou and goodnight.

The 'do you know who I am' people, who attempt to name drop or imply status, reputation and/or repercussions in an attempt to persuade me to change my decision. I know who you are, you are a person who is not geting in. Who do I think I am? I think I'm the person who is not letting you in. I have status as well, insofar as I have status as an agent of the licencee and thus responsible for enforcing legislation and policy in regards to admittance and responsible service of alcohol. I have influence derived from said status, and the repercussions of me not letting you in are that you have to go somewhere else. Oh, and don't worry, I know people too. They wear blue and are part of the biggest gang in the world. I'll call on them to assist me if need be, likewise you would your 'mates' who subsequently fail to appear.

Any more 'types'?

A poem for dealers

2006-11-14T02:29:00.000-08:00

Putting coins in drop boxes, from patrons wages
Causes headaches for Security when it takes ages
To pick them up from off the floor
Several hours into a shift or more
When changing boxes, so please take note
And perhaps display this poem I wrote
Advise patrons who wish to pay with gold
To goto the main cage, from which chips are sold.

Skating on thin ice and emergency calls

2006-11-11T02:10:00.000-08:00

Regrettably, I now hold anybody who gets drunk at work in disdain, because more often than not, they make life difficult for us. They also get me in trouble!

What I didn't mention in the Melbourne Cup post was that, when dragging the drug addled guy into the office, his brother pulled me off him and started on me. A colleague headlocked him, which in itself is not allowed, but he was still significantly struggling and kicking out. I tried to sweep kick him, as taught in my Security Operations course, but screwed it up. I then went to punch him, something that, in hindsight, I can't really justify. On Thursday night I was called into the office, and advised that, under no circumstances, can I strike patrons. That includes punching and kicking. Fair enough, I didn't know that, and won't do that in future. Shouldn't have punched the guy anyway, but I stand behind my kick (or at least the attempt) and the justification behind it, as I had situations in the police where I had someone handcuffed and restrained, was standing behind them and they kicked backwards, taking my kneecap out. Nonetheless, I will need to be careful for a bit.

It was the reasoning in that previous sentence that prevented me from being further involved in a serious incident of disorder outside the main casino entrance last night. Aside from a fight early in the night, it was pretty cruisy until about 3am. It was about this time that we removed two groups of idiots from Diamond Lounge, who were intent on fighting each other. Outside, a couple of them started fighting with the shift manager, and threatening the shift supervisor, who was wound up to the extent that he wanted to punch them. Since I was on 'careful, you don't want to get fired just yet' mode, I didn't intervene. We stayed inside the main entrance and were writing up our notebooks, when a request for surveillance to 'copy' the main entrance came over the radio. Unofficially, this means that if you're not a fixed point or otherwise tied up, you should make the area, as it's likely to be a troublesome person. The call is made so that surveillance actively monitor the area and can call for more people if they deem it necessary. Therefore, if you make the area anyway, you're helping both your colleagues and surveillance.

Three of the males had returned, and one, who was not let in, was not happy at all. Claiming that we were discriminating against him, and that he had, in fact, assisted us in stopping the fight in the bar previously, he took issue with one particular security officer. When that officer made a tactical withdrawal, the patron was incensed and attempted to charge the door. This triggers, for most security officers with any experience, the internal alarm that this person is one step away from assaulting the security officers, for if they are willing to charge the door, they will be willing to injure anyone who gets in their way, having already consciously decided to ignore the authority or orders of any uniformed personnel requesting them to desist. The other officers who were already at the door ran forward and took the limbs of the male and started to restrain him by pinning him on the floor. I tried to grab a leg, but then remembered that, as had happened on Melbourne Cup Day, it was likely that this guy's mates, seeing what was happening, would try and intervene, so people needed to be free to deal with them. Sure enough, one of the mates made a half hearted attempt at intervening. I gently eased him away and advised him not to get involved.

Meanwhile, two more, also related to the group, had run in and were clawing at the officers restraining the original male. It had the potential to turn into a free-for-all, very quickly, and with the potential for people on all sides to suffer serious injury. I shouted up that an emergency was occurring and we required all available officers to assist at the main casino entrance. More officers had arrived and were attempting to restrain the other two, whilst the original male was putting up one hell of a fight even though three people were on him. A crowd had gathered and were watching. They risked getting in the way or coming up with the idea of playing hero and intevening. I advised them to get back.

The original male was nearly at the glass doors and risked taking officers headfirst through the glass. I ran over to him. Dropped down. Grabbed his two legs. Pinned them to the floor. Still struggling. Nearly through the glass. I pushed one of the doors open. Luckily the door next to it still hadn't been replaced from when it had been smashed the week before. Now he was down. Pinned his legs. Still screaming and shouting. More people were gathering. Get back. No, NOW. He was down, not moving. Threat subsided. I stood up and saw a large crowd at the main door looking at the commotion. Things were loud, messy and all over the place. The guard at the door was also watching, probably oblivious to the crowd behind her. "Do crowd control!" I shouted, whilst the supervisor, who had now arrived, ordered her to close the main doors. By now all but one were down and restrained. The last one still had an arm tucked under him. I ran over, dropped down and tried to help free his arm. Pressure point pain compliance does NOT work on people who are heavily intoxicated, and it required sheer brute force, along with shouting directly in his ear, before it was free.

Through all this, the police had been summoned as an emergency call. They were on the way, so my colleagues started moving the males, still putting up a fight, into the nearby security office. I was not involved in restraining them, so there was no need for me to go in there as well. I stayed outside, writing up my notebook. Then there was a commotion in the main gaming floor, as three separate patrons decided to start on each other. They were quickly fired off. I asked the boss when we'd be getting a water cannon to deal with these people. Police arrived and dealt with the other three.

The final incident occurred when we turfed everyone out of one of the smoking terraces into another. By this time of the morning, the only ones that remain are staff just finishing shift, or deadweights that live at the casino and will quite happily spend every last penny on drink, cigarettes and gambling, yet have no social status in life and cannot afford the money, which would and should have been spent on such things as basic subsistience. It's a reverse hedonism of sorts. Half an hour later, one of the patrons, once again an indigenous fellow, was causing problems, throwing ashtrays and bins around. On getting in there, it became clear, through incessant reptition of the same phrase, that a man was unhappy with a woman. "SHE STOLE MY BEER!" he yelled to anyone who would listen, which, after the first one hundred times, was very few. He alternated between physically threatening and simply letting off hot air. We eventually persuaded him to leave the casino, and he spent the next hour alternating between the main and second casino entrances, whinging "SHE STOLE MY BEER" and accusing us of doing nothing about it. In that respect, he was correct. Eventually, he got bored and left, but not before he'd sealed the catchphrase for the next few weeks amongst the team who were on that night.

Another ten hour shift awaits tonight and Sunday night. Deep joy. I wonder how long I'll go before my 'low profile' way of working goes out the window...

Funniest drunk I've ever seen...

2006-11-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

...was on Sunday night, before the Melbourne Cup but worthy of a post all of his own!

I was on the door of one of the casino entrances, when this drunk stumbled up, oblivious to our presence, and wondered over to the nearby pub, trying to get in, and rattling the door handles when he realised it was closed. My shouts of "Hey mate, you can't get in there at this hour" were ignored and he instead started talking to the life size statue of the person the pub is named after, located outside the doors! Clearly, the statue had more useful knowledge to impart than I.

The guy wondered up to us, and the conversation went like this:

Drunk Dude: "I'm looking for the back. Where's the back?"
Me: "What back?"
DD: "My mum and cousin said they're at the back and I should meet them there. Where is it?"
Me: "Where's what?"
DD: "The back?"
Me: "The back of what and where exactly?"
DD: "The back of the back?"
Me (giving up): "It's behind the front."
DD: "Thankyou!" *wanders off*

Mr. Intoxico then wondered over to an ATM, spent about five minutes trying to work out how to press the buttons, drew out $200 and stuck it straight into the bin next to it! My colleague and I were nearly doubled up with laughter by now, which was only worsened when the guy stared angrily at the bin and shouted "WHY HAVE YOU STOLEN MY MONEY!?" at it.

The fun wore off when he nearly fell over his own feet down an escalator, and we had to get colleagues to show him the whole 'one foot in front of the other' concept towards the door!

Melbourne Cup 2006 (long)

2006-11-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

Melbourne Cup Day 2006 precipitated carnage and feral activity hitherto witnessed on a scale only matched by the England v Paraguay match some months ago!

For those who aren't aware of it, Melbourne Cup is a horse race. A vastly overblown one. It sparks pomp, events and work absences worthy of a World Cup final. Yet, all it ultimately boils down to is a pack of horses racing against each other for two and a half minutes, and is one of several at the race track that day. You would, however, be forgiven for thinking that Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday (which it isn't), if you were to visit many parts of Australia on this day. People use any excuse to skip work and get pissed.

At work, they decided to host a 'spectacular'. This meant that the horse race itself is filled on either side by several hours of drinking and eating, vacuous fashion parades and trite competitions. People were encouraged to overspend on costumes they will never wear again; pretend to know more about horse racing than they actually do, with most people probably never watching another horse race for the rest of the year; get ridiculously drunk and watch the free-to-air broadcasted race on a big television in a big room filled with equally egotistical 'socialites' and well-to-dos. Everyone was charged lots of money for the privilege. Then, they joined the general rabble from nearby racecourses to descend upon the casino.

I am, of course, being grossly unkind and exceptionally cynical. Most people were generally well-behaved, had a few drinks and enjoyed themselves. Unfortunately, I am required to deal with those who are badly behaved, have had far too much to drink and are intent on ruining the enjoyment for everyone else. That therefore has the tendancy to trigger the involuntary psychological effect of me tarnishing everyone with the same brush. It's not the case, of course.

Management slipped up, in my opinion, by take the opposite line to what they should have done on a day like this. We normally have a fairly strict 'intox' policy, whereby those who are displaying signs of being intoxicated are knocked back without question. Today, however, we were told that, unless people were 'staggering and unable to stand up', they were to be let in. The logic for this, of course, was to enable people to come in and, having already got the gambling bug from having had a flutter on a horse race, would proceed to spend (sorry, lose) vast quantities of money on our table and electronic games. People who had been to our 'spectacular' would also rightly expect to spend a bit of time in the casino after having a few drinks as well, so I can understand management's desire that we relax the standards a bit to allow for those who had chosen to come to our 'spectacular' out of several others hosted that day to be given freedom of the complex. However, as I predicted early in the day, this was to cause significant problems.

For a start, if someone's already drunk and we let them in, then the first thing they'll do before gambling is drink some more, because losing your money on games in which the odds are vastly stacked against you makes much more sense and is far easier to swallow and justify when you're pissed. This means they'll go from 'drunk but not staggering' to 'legless' in a short space of time. From a security perspective, this makes our job harder, because they then cause problems, get cut off and (usually) complain, and we have to kick them out. It's also a duty of care issue, but it's something I'm not likely to be sued on so I don't worry too much about that.

Furthermore, it means that we're letting the other 'spectaculars' and racecourses get their punters pissed then offload them on to us for the inevitable consequences and 'cleaning up', both figuratively and literally. For one reason or another, a lot of people choose to end their days or nights at the casino. Instead, we should have taken a very strong line and knocked back anyone who was intoxicated to the point where it was noticeable, apologise for the inconvenience and suggest they continue the party at home, or the beach, or somewhere that isn't our property. Still, I did as I was told, and joined the rest of the gang in damage control mode when the inevitable flood of problems started.

First was a guy, drugged up, who hit out at one of our officers when refused entry. I was near the door just as he hit out, and tried to assist dragging him to the security office, as he was still violently resisting even though three officers were on him. However, his brother then kicked off at us and tried pulling us away, so more of us had to jump on him as well. Since, for some silly reason, none of us had handcuffs, this led to the scene of a significant number of officers tied up in pinning these two idiots to the floor in the security room when it was extremely busy outside. Had we had handcuffs they could have been restrained and let off as much steam as they liked without hurting themselves or us.

They both calmed down, but the male originally restrained then kicked off again and we had to floor him. I sat on his arm for a while and inadvertendly cut off circulation. Got it going again but couldn't release pressure as he was still exceptionally agitated. He was arrested by the police who arrived and continued to throw himself around in the paddy wagon.

Next was a guy who was bottled on the head by a girl in the nightclub. I wasn't sure of the exact story on this one, but it wasn't a particularly serious injury and the girl ended up being released whilst the bottling victim was detained by police, so he must have started it. Was pretty tame as far as assaults go.

I spent some time in the nightclub, stood on the stage overlooking the crowd, and formed the decision in my head within 10 seconds that I would never be venturing in there outside of work duties again. The place has that 'smell' to it, the wooden floor is sticky with spilt alcohol, and the place is full of people who are consuming too much alcohol. So, like any licensed premises in the world then.

I left the club to help colleagues with a guy who was refusing to leave from the downstairs food/bar area. We put on the usual show for the cameras, which involves over-exaggerated hand signals in the direction of the door and defensive 'palms out' gestures, and it became quickly apparent that he wasn't going to leave through being asked nicely. My colleagues grabbed an arm each and started to move him, at which point one of his mates started on my boss. We both shoved him back, and he grabbed the boss's throat, shoved me back and threatened to stab him. Another officer arrived and started struggling with this second guy, whilst I tried to shout up on the radio for backup. Unfortunately, the shove had knocked my radio and somehow turned it off. I jumped in and tried kneeing the guy to floor him, but it didn't work.

It's worth pointing out at this stage that the usual defensive tactics and restraints don't work on junkies. I could break their arm and they still wouldn't feel it. Instead, it requires sheer brute force and overpowerment to restrain them, no matter how big or small they are.

We removed them both out of the nightclub exit and tried to close it so they couldn't come back. Several times they charged the doors. We shoved them back, they charged the doors again. It was when one of them grabbed another colleague that we all decided enough was enough. By now, more officers had arrived, so we slammed the doors open, floored one guy and shoved the other against a wall. For some reason, a wristlock worked on the guy we had against the wall. Tempted as I was to break his wrist outright, I instead applied pressure until the pain registered, then told him to calm down or it would increase. It may have been that, but more likely seeing the futility of restraining with 6 people pinning him against a wall, but he calmed down. His mate, however, had not, and was still lashing out. He went limp when we overpowered him and started to drag him back from the office, so we grabbed a limb each and walked him back. Once in the office, we again pinned him until he calmed down. They were both released without charged, after consultation with police.

Next we had three women who drank far too much and objected, in ear-deafening pitch, to being rejected from both casino entrances. Their logic was that, because they weren't directly physically hurting anyone, they should be allowed in and to drink as much as they wanted. Responsible Service of Alcohol laws and Harm Minimisation policy explanations were lost on them, and a temptation to invent and cite the Drunken Idiots Act 2006 at them wouldn't have gone down well, so we simply told them that nothing they could say or do that would allow them entry. They left, and we thought that was the end of it. Nope! An hour later, the hotel cocktail lounge called up to ask us to remove three female 'intoxes' who had been cut off. Surprise, surprise, it was the Little Women again. They followed us all the way back to the casino after we escorted them from the cocktail bar, and wouldn't even accept the explanation from the police, who turned up shortly after, that there was no way on earth any staff member in the resort worth their salt would let them drink any more that day. I prayed they would kick off and get locked up, thus alleviating headaches for all concerned, but sadly they did not. They hung around and abused us until they got bored and left. Throughout the night we removed many, many drunks who were starting to cause problems.

That was more or less it for my involvement in the night, apart from racing all over the casino floor to a phantom fight that was called up in the wrong location. 'Feral' would not even begin to describe the idiots or incidents I came across, and the fact that the casino was full to bursting and one had to cut a swathe through the crowd even to get from the office to the canteen reinforced the fact that this was, as my boss pointed out later, one of the worst days/nights of the year!

Saturday night fever

2006-11-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Was manic from start to finish tonight!

Whereas on Friday night the fights and 'incidents' started around midnight, tonight they commenced from around ten! My first encounter, whilst assisting two colleagues with waking up a sleeping 'patron', was an allegation by bar staff that a guy trying to get into a taxi had poured water over his head. The bar staff wanted him barred, so I approached the taxi with a colleague to try and bring him back to the security office. The guy was maggoted, his older brother kept getting in my way and preventing me from speaking to him, and eventually he decided to make a run for it. Still in cop mode, I gave chase, and was unable to shout up on the radio as people were hogging it. The idiot then fell over his own two feet a short distance away, with me nearly tripping over him! I jumped back and pinned him to the ground, in a horrible and not very textbook maneouvre that my UDT instructors would have cringed at, but which worked nonetheless. He calms down, we get him up and he is barred for two years, with some nice grazes from his self-inflicted injury to show for it!

Next is a drunk young lady who randomly kicks patrons. Figuring that the next person she kicks will be a 6"7 and 6ft wide drunk bloke who will then turn around and pound her into the ground, I physically hustle her forward and away from unsuspecting victims. Her friend shrieks that security have no right to touch people whilst the girl involved starts abusing me. I skip the legal explanation and tell her I don't give a shit what she thinks. She ends up back in the attached nightclub somehow a few minutes later, kicking people and abusing me. She's out the door again, this time she doesn't come back. Thank goodness!

Finally, one of our lovely indigenous folk decides the place is cursed, yet won't leave. By this point I'd had enough, so whilst my colleagues had endless patience in listening to her ramble on and not leave, I ended up shouting at her to get out, that I didn't give a flying toss about whatever she was talking about and I'd be inflicting my own curse upon her if she didn't leave straight away.

They'd be the most interesting points of a shift that generally consistent of an unreleting stream of general underclass and Great Unwashed streaming through the doors. The best part was, ironically, the quietest part, where I was stood guarding the hotel entrance and only letting house guests in. There I was greeting and chatting with newlyweds, award winners from various industry award nights, and general well-to-doers with more sense than to waste their money in a casino. A far cry from the bottom of the gene pool that inhabits the Main Gaming Floor just 100 metres away!

"White man wouldn't give me no job", and other stories...

2006-10-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

The sort of idiocy I used to witness as a police officer has once again come to the fore, this time with a different accent.

There's a large amount of indigenous people who frequent the casino. Most of them get on with the business of losing money in vast quantities, which is why most people goto a casino. Some, however, lacking such qualities as personal hygeine, manners and etiquette, cause us a few headaches.

One woman decided to assault another woman after having a fair few drinks. This was done, cleverly, in full view of two of our security officers on the door of one of the casino entrances. They shouted it up, as they can't leave the doors, and a couple of us sprinted across the casino floor to where it had happened. I was one of them, and arrived to see a woman, absolutely sloshed, slumped against one of the marble walls. Another woman yelled "She hit me", pointing at said drunk woman, who slurred "Yesh I hit her, but I ain't movin' from this spot". Indicating that she'd better start walking to the security officer or we were gonna drag her, she mumbled "Drag me then". So we did. I took hold of her upper arm (wearing gloves, as I try and avoid touching patrons without some sort of protective gear if I can avoid it), whilst my colleague took hold of her other arm, and we start walking her. En route, she started flailing her arm around wildly on my side. I told her to cut it out or I'd be armlocking her, but she ignored me and carried on. So I grabbed her lower arm, shoved it behind her back, locked my arm in place and forced her forward.

In the office she tried playing the sympathy card, claiming that nobody would be able to look after her kids. She didn't take kindly to me telling her the nobody might as well look after her kids if she was responsible for their care, what with drinking to excess, assaulting someone and generally acting like a degenerate idiot. Fortunately I didn't have to endure her company long, pending police arrival, before I was relieved by a colleague to go and do boxes.

Another person, also indigenous, caused problems a little later, when we suspected his ID was dodgy, and that he'd already given it to someone else to use to enter the club. When we confiscated the ID and detained him pending police arrival, he wasn't too happy. He started coming out with every 'the whole world is racist against me' cliche under the sun, which I'd heard before in my previous capacity and wasn't particularly amused by. The conversation between him and a colleague went something like this:

"Stop whinging. You got a job?"
"Nah. I tried."
"Well you didn't try hard enough did you?"
"White man wouldn't give me no job."
"Oh, well that explains it. It's everybody else's fault but yours isn't it?"
"Yeah. You lot are racist and you're doing this 'cos I'm Abo"
"No, we're doing this 'cos you've got dodgy ID."
"Whatever"

Sunday day shift was a bit quieter, though I witnessed one of the single biggest examples of idiocy I've seen in a long while. Namely, a guy walking up the stairs to the casino entrance with a small child. I was on the door, and my colleague and I looked at each other disbelievingly. My colleague said to the man "You know you can't bring children in here, don't you?" The man actually looked taken aback and inquired as to why. Rather than enter into a detailed explanation about licensing and gaming laws; the safety issues of bringing small children into an environment of large amounts of people, alcohol and gaming tables and the absolute lack of common sense anyone would have to even consider such an attempt, we simply told him that we were merely complying with the same age requirement laws that every other casino on Planet Earth has to comply with. As he walked off he mumbled "Maybe next time". Yeah, maybe next time when the child is 18.

Use of force

2006-10-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

Officially, up until my shift today I was 'buddied up', meaning that I am supposed to work at all times with another, more experienced, security officer. However, as I picked up the basics of the job within a shift or two, I ended up walking around on my own a lot and getting on with it, on the condition that I played it safe and reported things and awaited backup before intervening. Furthermore, I was advised to be careful about restraining people until I had completed a casino approved course on 'appropriate' restraints. For that, you may correctly infer that said restraints are of the sort that 'look good' to the all-seeing CCTV cameras and to punters. Personally I disgaree with the 'softly softly' approach, advocated heavily by the casino.

That said, it was advocated to some degree in the police in the UK as well. My own view is that, as security officers, we should be both seen and heard. The suits certainly help us fit in with the surroundings, however if we are dealing with someone, either verbally or physically, we should be high-profile, both verbally and physically. This achieves two desired benefits:

1. It assures those who patronise the casino that security are on top of matters, will deal with people who cause problems and are intent on creating a safe environment in which people can enjoy themselves.

2. It sends a clear message out to idiots and potential idiots that they will not be tolerated, and will be dealt with, publicly and noisily, if the play up.

I have no issue with the 'talk first, act only if talking fails' approach - it's something I'm very good at after several years in the police and talking down everyone from distressed mothers losing their kids to drunk and drugged up idiots wielding knives they intend to use on me. There are times, however, when talking, no matter how systematically structured and delivered so as to ensure maximum compliance from somebody, will not work. By law we are perfectly entitled to use reasonable force to defend ourselves, detain someone or eject them from the premises (under one of three pieces of legislation, depending on which area it's at) and I have no qualms about resorting to force if I can justify it. I may end up having clashes with some managers about this, we shall have to see how it goes. I need to know what the official policy is.

"Think of the cameras"!

2006-10-29T02:26:00.000-08:00

The sort of idiocy I used to witness as a police officer has once again come to the fore, this time with a different accent.

Officially, up until my shift today I was 'buddied up', meaning that I am supposed to work at all times with another, more experienced, security officer. However, as I picked up the basics of the job within a shift or two, I ended up walking around on my own a lot and getting on with it, on the condition that I played it safe and reported things and awaited backup before intervening. Furthermore, I was advised to be careful about restraining people until I had completed a casino approved course on 'appropriate' restraints. For that, you may correctly infer that said restraints are of the sort that 'look good' to the all-seeing CCTV cameras and to punters. Personally I disgaree with the 'softly softly' approach, advocated heavily by the casino.

That said, it was advocated to some degree in the police in the UK as well. My own view is that, as security officers, we should be both seen and heard. The suits certainly help us fit in with the surroundings, however if we are dealing with someone, either verbally or physically, we should be high-profile, both verbally and physically. This achieves two desired benefits:

1. It assures those who patronise the casino that security are on top of matters, will deal with people who cause problems and are intent on creating a safe environment in which people can enjoy themselves.

2. It sends a clear message out to idiots and potential idiots that they will not be tolerated, and will be dealt with, publicly and noisily, if the play up.

I have no issue with the 'talk first, act only if talking fails' approach - it's something I'm very good at after several years in the police and talking down everyone from distressed mothers losing their kids to drunk and drugged up idiots wielding knives they intend to use on me. There are times, however, when talking, no matter how systematically structured and delivered so as to ensure maximum compliance from somebody, will not work. By law we are perfectly entitled to use reasonable force to defend ourselves, detain someone or eject them from the premises (under one of three pieces of legislation, depending on which area it's at) and I have no qualms about resorting to force if I can justify it. I may end up having clashes with some managers about this, we shall have to see how it goes. I need to know what the official policy is.

First three shifts...

2006-10-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Wednesday day, Thursday and Friday night. Pretty interesting and enjoyable so far. Also, I've now finally quit my other job, so the hotel/casino security job is now my main job!

For the first few shifts, we are "buddied up", theoretically meaning that we're paired up for someone and can't do any jobs on our own. In reality, there wasn't enough going on during the day to be paired up for the whole shift, so I ended up walking around on my own a lot getting a feel for the place. The idea is that, through on-the-job training, we learn what is required of us, in preparation for doing the job individually.

Jobs during the day, when things are quiet, generally involve patrols; escorting people with cash; doing 'chip runs' which involve filling up floats on the gaming tables; fire door checks and standing on the main casino entrance doors.

Night shift jobs involve fills; doors; dealing with drunks and suchlike, and it's generally busier than during the day. Thursday night was pretty busy, with one of the pubs attached to the hotel having a couple of incidents.

Last night, I was roaming on my own for most of the night. I came across a fight in one of the bars and called it up. Apparently we're supposed to wait until at least two more arrive before intervening, but as the two were reigning blows on each others heads, I didn't want to be caught on camera observing as one potentially inflicited life threatening injuries. So I shouted for the two to stop fighting, which failed to work. I then pulled one of them apart and tried to place myself in between the two warring factions. The guy I pulled apart from the group decided to try and start fighting with me, until he realised I was security, then stopped. He apologised, said it was cool then tried punching the guy again. I first put him in a restraining hold, which he struggled out of, then I placed him in an armlock. Finally, my colleagues arrived and he was escorted out.

Apparently I've not been taught the 'company's way' of restraining people. Well, until then, I'm using what I was taught in the police.

It would seem that, in Australia, most companies are more concerned about image than anything else, including maintaining effective security. In spite of the fact that we are fully entitled to use reasonable force to do our job, the companies I've worked for and seen that prefer non-intervention over intervention, for reasons of image and liability-prevention alone, is staggering. It seems that people are more concerned about not getting sued than getting the job done properly. I have a feeling I'll be rubbing people up the wrong way, as I still operate along the lines of 'If they shouldn't be here or doing what they're doing, they're going, either voluntarily or by force'. I've talked people down who have drawn knives and knuckle dusters on me before, and am always of the view that people should try to be talked out of something first, but unlike a lot of companies here, I don't hesitate to use force if that fails. And I don't mind doing paperwork for it either if necessary. The contrary prevailing attitude seems to be the case here. It looks like I'll have to put up with it.

Induction is over, now to get some actual work done!

2006-10-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

Have got my shifts for the week at other-soon-to-be-main job. Tomorrow, 0545-1600 (now THAT'S an early start!), Thursday 2000-0600, same on Friday and Sunday 0545-1600 again.

Had a talk from the boss, and it looks like this place sees the whole range of incidents from fights to glassings and stabbings. Looks like I'll be right at home then! The work seems quite varied too, with rotation of duties every hour and plenty to be getting on with. Unlike the other company I worked for last week, they're not expecting me to buy several hundred dollars worth of equipment at my own expense which, in effect, amounted to me paying for the privelige to work for them.

Interesting new job...

2006-10-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday night at the hotel was pretty busy. Room service were flat out so spent the best part of an hour running food up to guests. It wasn't all bad - I managed to amount a fair few tips, which I wouldn't have received from purely performing security duties.

A ball with a fair few people and live performers provided a lively distraction for the evening.

Today I started my induction/training at my other security job, at a large entertainment/hotel complex. I've been waiting to work for this company for a while now, so unlike most other jobs I've done, I'm very positive and enthusiastic about the company and the work, which has been reinforced by speaking to both experienced and new security guards, who bestow praise upon the organisation and speak highly of the work involved. For once I might finally have a job I don't have reason to be exceptionally cynical about!

It also transpires that there's more than enough hours to do full-time and then some, so I might end up making this job go through a transition from other to the job! I shall be doing plenty of shifts this week, so watch this blog for updates!

Working bus security...

2006-10-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

Since I didn't have too many hours this week, and to get some money in until I start my other hotel/casino security job, I worked for a company that provides security for the bus networks. For all that I whinge about my current job, it made me appreciate it more!

First shift was ten hours in a bus port that looked like it had been designed by someone who really hated architecture. Functional to the point of depressing, with no atmosphere whatsoever, the station clock often looked like it was going backwards, such was the nature of the work. A large number of people who both use the buses and loiter around the bus port can be described as inbred at best and abominations of the human race at the worst. The job simply involved walking around, standing next to a bus that came in as people got on and off, and then walk around some more.

The only interesting highlight, if it can be called that, occurred towards the end of the shift, when a bus driver pulled in and wanted a group of people, sat at the back of the bus, removed for causing trouble. I could smell them before I even boarded the bus, and knew before even sighting them that they'd be 'clients' that weren't too dissimilar to the gene pool leftovers that I used to deal with back when I used to be in the police. As expected, they were a group of our unwashed; unenlightened and uncouth non-reflective cousins. Initially they refused to get off the bus, but a bit of skilfull verbal gymnastics persuaded them to get off of their own free will. Some of them then tried to outstare me until I finished my shift.

Wednesday I was walking around the capital city's main bus station, on my own. Nothing happened. It was after this shift that I thanked the Great Architect of the Universe that I wasn't going to be doing this job for longer than a week!

Friday night I worked on mobile bus patrol. This involved riding on the bus to certain stops, with a patrol car following behind, then going back in the car to follow another bus. Halfway through one of the bus trips, a driver radioed up that there was a fight on his bus, and wanted the security officers based at one of the bus stations to meet him there. We radioed up and said we'd backup, and I alighted from the bus and got into the patrol car.

En route, the driver said that three people were attacking one person. The plan, at least initially, was for the bus to pull into the bus station, our guys to get on and see if anyone wanted to press charges, and detain the aggressors (we were equipped with handcuffs for this purpose). A few seconds later, the person who had been attacked had a knife. This was according to the driver. Rather than confirm whether or not a weapon had been seen, something the radio operator should have done instinctively, the police were called out after consultation with the security supervisor. Now, on our pay rate, with bugger all workers compo and the potential for a lot of paperwork, there was no way I'd even attempt to restrain someone who had a blade. However, I did wonder what the security officers at the station would end up doing. A short while later, the bus driver radioed up again, this time to say that the male had threatened to draw a knife, contradicting his previous message that the male actually had a knife. This put an entirely different light on the job, and hurtled it towards the 'ball of shit' bin I tended to categorise these jobs as - i.e no substance and nothing like it is described as on the radio, usually with nothing but paperwork and headaches for those who turn up to deal with the job. The bus depot, meanwhile, told the driver, via radio, to drop off the people involved and clear the depot straight away. From our point of view, this would remove any objective witnesses. So, as we pulled into the bus port, we saw the bus pull away.

We saw two security officers and one male. As we approached them, I could see the male wasn't quite all there - constantly twitching, repeating himself over and over, constant increase and decrease in volume and generally displaying behaviour and mannerisms that were in line with someone suffering from a condition and had not taken their medication. As soon as it was established that there was no knife in play whatsoever, we tried to cancel the police, but they were pulling in just as we were on the radio to cancel them.

It turned out that three people had got on the bus, walked past this male we were speaking to, and shot him a dirty look. He turned around and looked back at them, and they made a remark that was particularly disparaging about his mother. The male then went up to one of them, punched and kicked them, then threatened to stab them. The other two offered to hit him for his troubles, flatlining the confrontation into aggressive verbals until the bus pulled into the bus station. None of the security officers who greeted the bus asked if anyone wanted to press charges, leaving one agitated male, no details of anyone else, no witnesses, no knife and thus nothing at all for police. Had the driver properly informed us whether or not there was a knife, we need not have involved the police. Doh!

Still, back at the hotel tonight for a 7pm-2am. I shall certainly welcome the far more sedate atmosphere, and clients who do not resemble the sort that you would ordinarily cross to the other side of the road to avoid!

Missed out on the bar fun!

2006-10-14T20:27:00.000-07:00

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!

"Why is the bar closed at this ridiculous hour anyway?"

2006-10-08T02:39:00.000-07:00

This was the exclamation directed at me from a pissed attendee of a function in one of our larger hotel function rooms last night after I thwarted his plan to fix himself a tipple at the hotel's expense. It arose as a result of about 150 people stumbling out of an event held in one of the function rooms to find the main lobby bar closed. Some took it better than others.

The event had been going, quite loudly, for about four hours, with the last two hours consisting of entertainment provided by a live band, who were quite good as far as cover bands go. The attendees, a mixture of ages, were quite drunk and enjoying themselves. This is fine, and certainly something we don't want to discourage. But when the function finished at 12, we didn't want the clear desire of the revellers to continue enjoy themselves conflicting with the reasonable expectation of hotel guests to get a good night's sleep in rooms they'd forked out a fair bit of money for. Since the downstairs bar closed early (even though it was licensed till 2am), that left the main lobby bar as the only source of alcohol in the hotel, apart from the guest room minibars (but who in their right mind would pay for the extortinately-priced alcohol in those?) The noise would carry, guests would complain and we'd lose money. So, after chatting with the duty manager, the decision was made to close the main lobby bar at half midnight, just before the attendees started coming out. Since most guests were asleep in their beds and there were only one or two stragglers left behind, this wasn't too much of a problem for those already in the bar.

Most left the function room and went straight out to get a taxi, whilst those staying in the hotel staggered upstairs. Some, however, were determined to get a drink. When I told them that all hotel bars were closed, and pointed them in the direction of the city's (lacklustre) nightspots, most of them decided to call it a night. One idiot, however, decided to march behind the unmanned and insecure main lobby bar and start trying to open the locked cupboards! Incredulous at this guy's blatant idiocy, I yelled at him to get the bloody hell out from behind the bar. Indignant that I had the audacity to stop him from pouring a drink of his choice, he shot a look at me and opined "Why is the bar closed at this ridiculous hour anyway?"

I quietly pointed out that at one o clock in the morning, most main lobby bars in hotels in the city would be closed, he was drunk so we wouldn't have served him anyway, and that he'd be best off getting a drink elsewhere if he felt so inclined. I couldn't resist adding, under my breath, that ideally that 'somewhere' would be several miles from the hotel. Unhappy that we were more concerned about our guests than pissed up hotel visitors, he left.

Dealing with hotel guests who are drunk is a bit easier than dealing with drunk visitors, because at least with hotel guests they can be threatened with eviction from their rooms and/or extra charges being put on to cover any damage they may cause, assuming they don't heed our warnings or requests. Visitors, however, are difficult, because they aren't staying at the hotel and thus don't feel any particular sense of obligation towards us to behave properly. So a bit of skillful communication, and occasionally verbal coercion, is required instead. If nothing else, it's amusing to listen to their self-believing justifications for their behaviour or situation, which make no sense to anyone who's drunk less than five pints of beer.

Soap operas

2006-10-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

Every shift seems to have a soap opera, in which Security end up as extras, not of their own volition, I hasten to add. The cast tends to alternate - one shift the employees will feature, other shifts it'll be the guests.

I recall one Friday night late shift (3pm-11pm) in which two guests checked in early afternoon, and by early evening a rather excited young lady rang room service to order a particularly expensive champagne as she had just been proposed to. Three hours later, and after many, many drinks over a couple of meals, this young bride-to-be was in our conservatory bar seeking another drink. The barman had had enough and cut her off, which she did not take kindly, and flew into a rage. Management approached her, having asked us to stay back and observe should anything happen.

My personal rule of thumb for soap operas is to have as little as possible to do with them. They're never over when you think they are, and can fuel 'spot incidents' for days, weeks or months afterwards, especially if they're employee ones and can have a tendancy to entangle you in the inextricable web of sides; emotion; heartache and paperwork they create, of which paperwork is the most frightening because you can't switch off to it. In this case, I felt that the woman showing her true colours in front of her fiancee, as well as her need for anger management classes, would probably be punishment enough for her. This turned out to come truer than I expected when, after failing to pacify the lady and convince her to return to her room, the duty manager approached the fiancee, who was sat on his own nearby enjoying a drink he had purchased earlier. He apologised to management for the incident, approached his future wife and uttered:

"If you don't shut up, calm down and get back to your room, I'm taking that fucking ring back"

I resisted the urge to applaud the man for using one of the best pieces of leverage against a woman wrapped up in love - the denial of the white wedding. It worked a charm, and she was back in her room very quickly!

Today, on a 7am-3pm shift which was a back-to-back, I was exceptionally tired and in no mood to deal with any unnecessary incidents. Sods law that it would be one of the busiest shifts in a while. This time it would be a double bill, with both guests and employees taking centre stage.

Act I: Mum comes down to inform us that her 7 year old son has gone walkabout. I stupidly assume she's done a thorough check of her hotel room, inform duty management and we start scouring the hotel. Mum is pacing the lobby, clearly worried. She goes back up to her room to grab something, and finds her son hiding under the bed.

Act II: I'm enjoying a well-earned break in the staff canteen when I hear screaming deeper within the bowels of the hotel. I go in the direction of the noise and see staff restraining another member of staff who had wreaked havoc in an office. Nobody was telling me anything coherent, but the mention of spouses of managers being involved and the clear distress the woman was in made the background to the incident almost instantly recongisable. The old adage 'don't screw the crew' came to mind. That employees of all levels sometimes prefer to interact each other sans lower body clothing is often if not the biggest cause of such incidents. Fortunately I managed to turn up after the main storyline had unfolded and the action sequence was in progress, so was able to stay out of the politics and submitted a pretty neutral report of what I witnessed when I turned up. Management will probably keep it internal anyway.

Employee and guest perceptions of Security Officers

2006-10-02T01:44:00.000-07:00

As a Security Officer, you are a necessary evil. Senior management would rather not have you around because you cost money, yet they cannot afford the inevitable cost of losses that would follow from what would happen if there was no such thing as a security presence. So, to reach a compromise, they pay a Security Officer a salary but give them no clearly defined role, so that they can do whatever management want them to do, unlike, say, front desk or Concierge, who have clearly defined remits.

Eventually, you work out that as long as certain things are done, such as lockups or unlocks, a couple of restaurant audits and the key audit once a week, you can be pretty much left to do whatever the hell you want, which usually means being at the mercy of an often fickle manager. Thus when given a 'task' with no given time limit, the task must be completed thoroughly; without interruption and will be done when it is done, if you catch my drift. Usually, this means stretching out a key audit to take a couple of hours extra due to 'complications', or being 'waylaid' by guest requests on a patrol. Since most managers are clueless on the nitty gritty of security work, most security officers can get away with doing whatever they see fit through justifying whatever they happen to be doing or want to do (such as a rooftop patrol on a warm summer's night with a panoramic view of the city) on the grounds of being 'in the interests of security'.

Employees are wary of you, because whilst they may get on with you and have a laugh, deep inside they know that you'll be the one searching their bags, questioning them or reporting them to management should it be necessary. Some interactions between some employees and the security officer are therefore conducted on a pretext of mutual suspicion. Others may be more trusting, but the existence of a remote chance of being called to action a fellow employee will never leave anyone's mind.

Most employees, and indeed management, will only contact Security if they want us to do something, whereas when we contact them, it usually means we need something from them, which means paperwork and being taken away from the task at hand. Thus people are quite happy to leave us be save for a social chat when doing our rounds.

For guests, we are either in the background if they have no reason to talk to us, or an utter pain in the arse if we knock on their door at 3am to tell them to quieten down. It's quite black and white - we either don't exist when not dealing with them, or are perceived to be in their face when we do deal with them. Of course, any time we act against their interests, even when it is to their benefit, such as asking them to goto their room so that they don't get intoxicated to the point of tripping over their own feet and drowning in the fountain or falling down the escalator, we are automatically rude, unprofessional and out to ruin their enjoyment. Hell it might as well be implied in our employment contract.

As you can see, it's a 'can't live with but can't live without' position, and quite a curious one too.

16 hour service, 6 days a week.

2006-10-02T01:37:00.000-07:00

The hotel I currently work security for is 5 star. I don't know how the award system works, because when you're behind-the-scenes, you often wonder if it's simply a loosely-conferred title or 'comes with the brand' by default. Admittedly, most of it is that which guests would not be aware of but which ultimately affects them.

For example, one would imagine that a 5 star hotel might have at least one handyman or engineer on call 24 hours, because equipment doesn't schedule its malfunctions to conicide with the shift roster. So, between 3pm-11pm yesterday and 7am-3pm today (I'm asking myself why and how I ended up doing a back-to-back shift), I had to report a malfunctioning air conditioner in a guests room (which made a fair amount of noise); a broken window bracket and the main restaurant's glass washer breaking down in the middle of breakfast. Lo and behold, the handyman last night finished at 9pm when it should have been 11pm, and the next one was due on at 10am. God forbid had the boilers broken down, because I doubt the guests would have been too sympathetic to the 'we can't get the staff' excuse after a cold shower at 7am.

When I rocked up to work at 6.30am, there was no concierge, and the on duty security guard was doubling as night porter. If I were a guest, then I'd imagine that after a long flight and an extensive taxi ride, I would like nothing more than to be greeted at the taxi by a helpful porter who is able to take care of my heavy bags whilst I try to fight the jetlag enough to remember my check-in details. Instead, it was done by the lone security officer, who also had to unlock doors and turn lights off before finishing his shift, which is difficult when you're not physically inside the security office.

Finally, the safe opening machine didn't work. It's a device which sends an 'Emergency Open' signal to the digitally-operated safe. This time, it sent no signal, and there was no reason for it not to. I presented the faulty machine to the duty manager, who had no idea what to do with it, and helpfully suggested that I locate a security officer who was in the hotel to attend a wedding reception, and ask him how to work it. Yeah, sure, I'll just go and pull my colleague out of a wedding reception, on his day off and after he's had a few drinks with friends and family, and ask him a simple question which duty management ought to know. Yeah that'll really be the highlight of his evening. Maybe we shouldn't switch off on this job, and should be always available any time of the day or night (which is more than can be said for the handyman) in case something goes wrong.

5 star? How does that work then?

2006-10-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

I work security at a hotel, and will be taking up employment with another hotel soon, which will run concurrently. This blog will therefore serve as an interesting insight into the hotel industry from a security perspective. It's got everything you could want: short staffed departments since nobody wants to work in hospitality anymore; cynicism; harsh reality; weird and wonderful guests; employee soap operas; plenty of office politics; managerial incompetence, all the ingredients for a good read!

What does a security officer do? Bloody everything it would seem. As well as doing the garden variety cash transit/handling work; key audits; door unlocking and locking; patrolling and first aid, we tend also to assist any other department which might be short staffed and is being hammered.

The purpose of this blog is to inform and entertain, and perhaps change your perspective as to what happens and why in the hotel industry. Please feel free to leave any comments, and I'll reply when I'm able to. Enjoy!