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A Personal Approach to Door Supervising

Part 7 - Tips and Tricks

By Ronnie Gamble (c) 2001 2002

Mystery Guest Check List

Company executive staff, Local Council officials and Health and Safety inspectors all expect to be greeted at any venue by staff who have high standards in social skills, dress and behaviour. What follows in this section is a Check List/Report used by a national company specializing in the licensed trade. If you can meet these requirements, you will;

• Establish a good image on the door.
• Establish the Feel Good Factor for the venue.
• Have an easier time interacting with the patrons.

1. Were the door security staff polite and courteous on arrival?  
2. Did the door security staff open the door for you?  
3. Were the door security staff clean shaven, with no facial metal or medallions? 
4. Were the security staff dressed in the correct uniform? 
5. Were any of the security staff using mobile phones?
6. Were any of the security staff consuming drink or food within sight of the patrons?  
7. Were any of the security staff either smoking or chewing gum during your visit?  
8. Were any friends standing chatting to the security staff for prolonged periods?  
9. Were any of the security staff behind the bar serving themselves at any time?
10. Were the security staff properly distributed, posted and positioned around the venue? 
11. Were the security staff responding correctly to incidents? 
12. Were the security staff polite and courteous on your departure?  
13. Final Comments..............................................................................................

Lies and Replies

Twenty Questions to Die For

• Where are the VIP/Councilors/Artiste/Disabled Persons car parks?
• I represent the local council Health and Safety committee, how many people are in tonight?
• Where do I get change for my car park ticket?
• Can my friend bring her wheel chair in here?
• Where are the toilet facilities for the disabled?
• Where is the phone?
• Where is the cigarette machine?
• Give me the number of the taxi service.
• Where is the nearest bus stop?
• How do I get to the main road from here?
• Where is the drinking water?
• Where is the first aid post?
• I'm from the local Health and Safety Committee. What is your role in an emergency evacuation?
• I'm taking an anaphylactic attack where is the nearest hospital?
• Where are the toilets?
• What time are last orders?
• What are the meal times?
• Why am I barred?
• Are you qualified to do this job?
• Me and my six friends with the Mickey Mouse masks and the base ball bats want to know why my friend was thrown out last night.

Taxi Phone Numbers

Throughout the night, you will be asked for taxi cab numbers. Use a computer to run off a list of numbers, in extra large type. Cut this list into narrow strips for carrying in your jacket pocket. This prevents you having to constantly repeat  the numbers to a person who may be slightly drunk and  unable to string a couple of digits together. The individual can go on to tap in the numbers at their own pace, leaving you free to do more important things.

Large Venue Aide Memoir

• DS, cleaners, bar staff, medics and all other staff must be allocated different channels. This will help to prevent the DS going to Code Red (emotionally) every time the bar staff order Chicken Curry for table 40.  
• If you have to call the medics, switch to their channel and  report the incident. Once you have done this, switch back top your own channel and inform your controller or head supervisor about the situation. This procedure will ensure rapid deployment of the medics as opposed to a second relay of an important message.
• If you see any accident, however trivial, report this to the medics, even when the patron appears to be OK. Remember, they could be excited or intoxicated, this will mask their pain until after the event if they have injured their ligaments, tendons or muscles. Furthermore, someone else may fall victim to the same slip or trip hazard.
• Immediately after dealing with an accident, consider calling in the maintenance or cleaning staff to sort out the hazard.
• When you observe an accident and report it, you must complete an accident report for future reference in the event of  legal proceedings.
• Keep all radio messages short and clear.
• Ensure that your radio is never on permanent send, blocking out all other radio communications, including emergency messages.
• Constantly check that you are on the correct frequency, some radios can be accidentally switched off.
• When using your radio, try to eliminate background noise. This will help you to hear and also transmit clearly.

What Type of Person Becomes a DS?

How many categories are there? Generally speaking DS are usually from the skilled working classes. Once the rubbish, the psychopaths and the useless have been weeded out, you are left with a mentally stable individual who can think fast and move fast when presented with any form of  problem. The following categories are based on a review of individuals actively involved in DS work.

• Occupation   Skilled working class, for example…Painter & Decorator, Tyler, Timber Yard Worker, Baker, Store Manager, Auto Screen Repairer
• Marital Status   Married, Single, Separated, Divorced, Stable Relationship.
• Age Group   25 - 75.
• Personality Type   Extraverted, Gregarious, Cheerful, Pleasant, Articulate, Quick Thinking, Morally Strong, Caring.
• Body Type    Tall, Thin, Short, Fat, Muscular.
• Peccadillo’s   These individuals appear to have an insignificant number of financial problems, drug and drink dependence, sexual hang-ups, fetishes, religious quirks, political leanings, gender prejudices, disability phobias or other personality defects that stop them from interacting positively with all the patrons they are likely to meet.

The pay of the average DS hardly qualifies as pocket money. So, what induces a person to become a DS? It may be hard to believe but there are positive aspects to the task. 

• 'Doing the Door' is a first class remedy for constipation.
• Many DS enjoy meeting and watching different artiste and personalities.
• Many DS prefer social interaction as opposed to vegetating in front of the TV.
• Some individuals use the pay to finance a hobby, yearly holidays or pay off debts.
• Other DS enjoy meeting people from diverse cultures, races, creeds and interests.
• There are opportunities to be at the front line in news worthy or politically significant events.
• There is immense job satisfaction in being capable of managing and controlling dangerous situations.
• If someone has a dull 9-5 routine, then working two nights a week on the doors will give them a buzz.
• The diversity of the problems encountered is exciting. One night you are sorting out a 6ft. 6in. giant. The next night you are screaming in agony, a 5ft runt has his jaws clamped round your thumb with an enthusiasm that puts his closest relatives, the Arizona Gila monsters, to shame.

8 - 5:00pm   A normal days work at your full time employment.

5:30pm   A phone call from the head supervisor, telling you to be at The XXXXX Bar for 7:30pm till midnight. Within ten minutes you have this massive urge for a crap. That is the effect that some rough jobs have on your constitution.

7:15pm   Meet up at the bar with your partner for the night. You can smell the vomit on his breath.

7:30pm   Clear the bar of drunks, barred individuals and underage drinkers.

7:45pm   Your anxiety levels start to drop as you make your mark and start to work the crowd. As the evening goes on you continually talk to your partner about potential problems, people to watch and others that require talking to.

8:00pm   Your partner is approached by one of the bar staff. She has noticed someone who is drunk and causing trouble. Your partner approaches the individual and asks him to leave the bar as he appears to be too drunk. This individual was in reality just talking to his friends who now tell your partner to back off as they will look after him. Your partner has backed off, but you can see he has started to lose the plot. He is now standing rigid and staring at the group and you know that if one of them accidentally farts loudly he is going to rip their heads off. The group also note this and within ten minutes they approach him, shake hands and apologize. They also call a cab for their friend and the situation is resolved.

Note   As a DS, you must always take a few seconds to carry out a risk assessment before committing yourself. Sometimes acting immediately on either false or misleading information will set you up.

9:00pm   The crowd is now 380 strong. You feel easy because there is a good mix of male and female within each group. The average age within each group is in the 20's, so you feel confident about working this mature, well-dressed and stable crowd.

10:00pm   The crowd drops to 280, but the bar staff has difficulty in coping with them and are considering closing the doors.

Note   This is because, the crowd at 9:00pm were relatively sober. Despite the drop from 380 to 280, that extra hours drinking time gives you a much noisier and more abusive crowd. 

11:00pm   The crowd drops to 150 as everyone leaves for the local nightclubs after tanking up on cheap booze. You are now left with the hard core of serious drinkers.

11:15pm   Last orders are called.

11:30pm   You now have thirty minutes to clear the bar of the heavy drinkers.

11:35pm   Despite all your efforts to work the crowd and pre-empt problems, it goes ballistic on you. The bar staff draw your attention to the far end of the bar. At one of the quietest tables, a patron has decided to smash a bottle on the forehead of his best friend and now there is blood flying in every direction.

Note   When things go ballistic, you must operate with back up in order to reduce the personal threat. Fright leads to freeze, fight, flight or inappropriate behaviour. On this occasion my back up decided to retrieve a mobile phone in order to escape from the hostile zone.

Note   Sometimes, despite all your training and experience, you quite simply screw up. If you take your eyes off a perp while he is pumping up his adrenaline you will get hit. During the quiet periods of my life, I can remember the majority of my fights in great detail and even muse about the alternative openings I could have capitalised on. This fracas bugged me because the preceding fraction of a second before the pile up always came back to me as a blank spot in my memory of the incident. On this occasion, I had decided not to hit the perp because he was being held by his friend...bad mistake. I was caught out because I was using the wrong mind set for a violent situation. At all times, even when the opposition is under restraint, you have to maintain 'The Edge' by keeping the sanction of the strike in mind.

11:40pm    Perp and friend leave.

11:45pm    Police arrive but the victim refuses to make a statement. The police then leave.

Midnight   The bar has been cleared and the staff is cleaning up. We complete the incident book.

12:30am    Home, steeping blood stains out of the shirt and trying to wind down.

1:00am   Bed

2:00am   Asleep

These reductions in the number of patrons and a massive reduction in serious incidents was achieved through a combination of;

• Re-arranging or removing bar furniture to exclude specific groups from certain areas.
• Declaring trouble spots as Non Smoking areas
• Making the bar Family Friendly
• Raising the Bar Prices  well above the Off License prices
• Increasing the DS numbers
• Increasing the DS hours
• Barring all trouble makers for life
• Strictly enforcing the House Rules
• Keeping DS on the floor and door at all times

The Physical Demands on Door Supervisors

The physical demands on DS are minimal. When a physical confrontation takes place, the game plan is simple..... Move one of the parties involved to the exit as fast as possible. If this becomes a protracted operation, for whatever reason, the adrenalin rush will drain your strength reserves. Under these circumstances you are more likely to strike out or make a mistake.

The most common physical injuries you can experience will include cracked ribs, lost teeth, bouncers eye, bloody nose, black eyes, busted lips, broken tail bones and bursitis of the knees and elbows from ground fighting on the street, strained back from the sudden physical demands, bitten fingers and thumbs, minor scratches and finally, a bruised skull from collecting drunken bum punches on the top of the head.  There will be nights when the door staff are standing and praying that it will be a quiet night as they are suffering from some of these minor injuries.

The physical demands placed on the DS recede with every step forward you take in maintaining your attitude of care for the patrons and developing the social interaction skills, including conflict resolution.  The physical demands also recede further as your reputation at a venue increases.  Again, the physical demands recede even further as you approach dangerous situations with more door staff than necessary to handle the problem.

The most serious demand on your system is the emotional demand. This includes the anxiety  experienced long before you reach the venue. On some nights you can be left short handed because an individual caved in to this experience. The emotional roller coaster of a demanding night will also leave you emotionally high. You will probably spend an hour unwinding after the duty is finished.

Repetitive Tasks and Brain Fag

Devise novel methods of breaking this spell. Learn to carry out the simple task without becoming simple yourself. Head supervisors can help by constantly monitoring and if necessary, rotating the tasks more frequently. You can help yourself by modulating your voice or varying the terminology. Do anything that will break the closed loop of simple task - simple mind.

Restraints

If you move a subject to the nearest exit and they are conforming, do not stop the momentum in order to reinforce your crude hold with a technical arm lock. Once you stop the momentum, you lose control. If the subject is not actively resisting your escort, keep the subject in that frame of mind for as long as possible.   

There is a very  common injury in Sniper Training.  This occurs when  the soldier forgets to hold the rifle securely enough to stop the recoil from  bringing the brass rim of the sniper scope into sharp contact with the eye brow. The resulting half moon cut was known as 'Snipers Eye' .

A similar injury can occur in Door Work, if you wear metal rimmed spectacles. A sucker punch will embed the metal rim into your cheek bone and the bridge of your nose. You can call this condition  'Bouncers Eye'.  There are two solutions to this problem. Either take up a more relaxing past-time, such as wrestling with Polar Bears, or else buy spectacles with beveled plastic frames.

After you drop someone in a street fight or on the door, it will not necessarily follow that they are beaten and will submit to a restraint tactic. The fastest way down to their level is to collapse at the knees and finish the fight. This hard contact with the ground will play havoc with your knee caps. Training on dojo mats will not prepare you for this dilemma. The best solution would be to land on the opponent's thigh with one knee, at least. Landing anywhere else will either bust your knees or bust something in the opponent.

Friend or Foe?

When you are working on the door, other door staff are depending on you to carry out your duties in an impartial manner. Your support must lie with the team you are working with and not your friends. The worst enemy you can have at the door are your friends, neighbors, off duty bar staff and off duty door staff. These people either know you personally or else know everything about your job. After a couple of drinks, they will not be backward in telling you just what they think of you and how well are not doing your job.

If you turn a blind eye to their activities, such as allowing them to be boisterous or allowing them to stay on for ten extra minutes after last call, you will build up for yourself a whole mess of doggy do.

Start bending the rules and you start to loose control of the venue. No concessions  -- No  Surrender   - Keep Control!!!

When friends, off duty bar staff or off duty door staff start to mess around at your venue, let other DS deal with it without any fear or favor being shown. Sometimes local knowledge or familiarity can work to your advantage. Difficult situations can be diffused much easier by a familiar face.