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Door Supervising: The Low Profile Skills

 

 By Ronnie Gamble

All Rights Reserved

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means (photocopying or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems) without permission in writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

The amended and updated version of this work is now available in Door Supervising: The Low Profile Skills by Ronnie Gamble at Lulu.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

 Ronnie Gamble has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

 Gamble © 2008

 Warning

The techniques presented in work are for public information, entertainment and research purposes only.

This book is presented, subject to the following condition. The author will not be held responsible for the psychological, physiological or material results of the application of any techniques described and illustrated in this work.

 This work focuses on the Low Profile Skills and will not cover;

 The  Physical Skills

The Legal Limitations of Door Work

Emergency Evacuation

Basic Fire Fighting

Emergency First Aid

Civil and Criminal Law

Health and Safety at Work

Licensing Law

 

ISBN 978-1-4092-6619-8

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 Acknowledgements

 I am indebted to Graham Mulholland for his proofreading, feedback, and additions and also Diana Kirkpatrick and my daughter Rhonda Gamble. They all went to great pains to sort out my dreadful use of the English language.

 I would also like to thank Ben Ross and Chris Lowe for their feedback and corrections during the production of this work.

 And to all the incompetent and abusive people I encountered on the door. That includes the bar managers, security managers, bar staff, off duty bar and door staff and finally the small circle of abusive customers. They all gave me an insight into that dark and depressing side of working the door.  

And finally, to the other people I encountered who were in the majority, the customers, managers and staff who were a joy to work with. Without all of these diverse groups under my scrutiny I would have had little to write about.

 

Books by the same author

 The Coleraine Battery: The History of 6 Light Anti-Aircraft Battery RA (SR) 1939-1945, Causeway Museum Service, Coleraine, 2006

 Echo Company: The History of E Company 5^th Battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment, Regimental Association of the Ulster Defence Regiment, Coleraine Branch, Coleraine, 2007

 My Service Life (1939-1979): William ‘Bill’ Balmer, Causeway Museum Service, Coleraine, 2009  (in production)

 

 Contents

 

Acknowledgements                                                                                             3

 By the same author                                                                                            4

Preface                                                                                                                 6

 Chapter 1            The Low Profile Skills                                                           9       

Chapter 2            The Security World                                                               17  

The remaining chapters are available in the book, now on Amazon.

Chapter 3            Door Supervisor Profiles                                                       31

Chapter 4            Basic Duties                                                                           43         

Chapter 5            Searching                                                                              66

Chapter 6            Drug Awareness                                                                   77

Chapter 7            Intermediate Skills                                                               87

Chapter 8            People Profiles                                                                     105                                                                                                                        

Chapter 9            Verbal Conflict Management                                            123

Chapter 10          Stress, Fear and Violence                                                   135

Chapter 11          Tips and Tricks                                                                   151

Chapter 12          Non-Violent Incident Response Drills                              169        

Chapter 13          The Drunken Customer                                                    185

                               

Bibliography                                                                                                 195

 

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Preface

 The purpose of this work is to present the tactics I used during my time as a door supervisor and also explain my concept of the Low Profile Skills.

 Much of this material was updated at 2 o’clock in the morning after an arduous session on the door. The strong language I sometimes had to use and also experienced every night is reflected in this work.

 The theoretical material used in this book as well as the concept of the low profile skills have been derived from the psychology and behaviour modification research projects I conducted during my readings for a B.Sc. Honours degree in Social Psychology and Sociology.

 The practical material in this book has been derived from my experiences as a head door supervisor as well as the training notes and observations I made while training door supervisors.

 The training and operating procedures for door supervisors are going through a dynamic phase and the procedures set out in this work may conflict with the current training, culture and legislation in any particular country. This work must be read from that perspective.

 A further book is in preparation and focuses on the physical skills I found to be the most successful when my encounters went beyond the verbal.

 

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Chapter 1: The Low Profile Skills

Door supervisors are primarily tasked with maintaining the security, the safety and the good order at any venue at which they are employed. That includes looking after all the customers, all the staff and the property at their venue.

But there are limits to the degree of good order that any door supervisor can maintain. Some of these limits are created by environmental and social influences that remain outside the control of door supervisors. In these situations, door supervisors will inevitably find themselves responding to problems rather than controlling their venue. I will outline these environmental and social influences in this chapter, expand on them throughout this work and also offer my coping strategies.

 The Low Profile Skills

 Some of the key skills I applied in my time ‘on the door’ were modified from the psychology and behaviour modification research projects I conducted during my readings for a B.Sc. Honours degree in Social Psychology and Sociology. I have labelled these, the ‘Low Profile Skills’.

Low profile skills are the subtle physical and verbal techniques used by experienced door supervisors as they interact with and maintain the welfare and security of customers at their venues. These techniques include assertiveness, personal presentation, observation, psychological manipulation, physical manipulation, listening skills, body language, verbal conflict management, flexible and assertive negotiation, assertive arbitration, fear management, stress control and social interaction.

The low profile skills form a small part of the large repertoire of skills expected of the professional door supervisor. But in the general day-to-day running of venue security, the door supervisors who have developed their low profile skills will be able to reduce and manage the number of problems they have to deal with.

 The Main Social and Environmental Influences

 I have identified five main social interactions and environmental factors that influence customer and staff behaviour at licensed premises.

 

  1.       The Venue Influence. The structure, layout and management of the venue can create either positive or negative behaviours

 

  2.       Learned Behaviour. Customers and staff bring their social and cultural experiences to the venue

        3.       Customer Interaction. This takes place within and between all the different social groups at the venue

        4.       Staff Interaction. This takes place within and between the bar and door staff groups

        5.       General Interaction. This takes place between all those at the venue, the customers, the bar staff and the door staff

 

Diagram 1: The Influences on Customer Behaviour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This diagram represents how customer behaviour is dependent on these five factors. Everyone brings learned behaviour to the venue but the venue environment overshadows and influences each individual.  And finally, not only do the customers, the bar staff and the door staff interact within their three groups; interaction also takes place between these three main groups. These five influences will encourage specific customer behaviour.

What Are The Specific Factors That Influence Behaviour?

 In the next two tables I have listed in more detail elements from the first two factors, the venue influence and learned behaviour. These tables are based not only on my experiences as a door supervisor. They are also based on my interpretation of the sociological and psychological studies of the causal elements for customer behaviour on licensed premises.

Some of the elements appear to have been shoehorned into two categories just to make the presentation easy. For example, putting Stag and Hen parties in the low risk category on Table 2. But just because these groups force the bar and door staff to work hard it’s not in itself a good enough excuse to exclude these groups. The risk they pose is usually low and I have made a point throughout this study of not mistaking hard work for high risk.

 Table 1 contains many of the causal elements located in the venue that influence the behaviour of customers and staff. These are listed in the left hand column. The next two columns of this table show the high and low risk levels or indicators to expected behaviour.

 Table 2 contains the causal elements that customers and staff bring to the venue. Again, these causal elements are listed in the left hand column of the table with the high and low risk indicators in the next two columns. If an individual displays the high-risk elements from this table, they must not gain entry to your venue.

 Alcohol and Dysfunctional Behaviour

 The tables also show that alcohol may be only one of the causal elements responsible for violence and dysfunctional behaviour at licensed premises. There are other causal elements to consider for that behaviour.

That may be a difficult concept to accept but many studies claim to show that it is a cluster of elements coming together at licensed premises that leads to a higher risk of violence or dysfunctional behaviour. I will use the remainder of this work to explain in more detail the elements listed on the following two tables.

Table 1: How the Venue Influences the Customers and Staff

Subject	High Risk	Low Risk
Alcohol	Aggressive Promotion Fixed Measures Low Pricing Happy Hours Slow Service Irresponsible Serving	Alternatives to Alcohol Choice of Measures Food Served Higher Prices Quick Service Responsible Serving
Environment	Crowded Noisy Dark Hot Dirty Bar Dirty Toilets No Glass Collection Poor Decoration Trouble Spots No Family Areas	Crowd Control Relaxed Good Lighting Comfortable Clean Bar Clean Toilets Glass Collectors Well Decorated Revised Layouts Family Catering
Security	Poor Observation No Cameras No Radios No Incident Response Drills Poor Reputation Bottles and Glasses	Good Observation Well Placed CCTV Adequate Communication Incident Response Drills Fair Reputation More Plastic
Bar & Security Staff	Incompetent Management Low Numbers Poorly Trained Argumentative Aggressive Uncaring Aloof Scruffy Inarticulate Non Responsive No Customer Monitoring	Sound Management Up to Strength Skilled Assertive Polite Caring Approachable Well Dressed Articulate Pro Active & Pre Emptive Customer Monitoring
Time	Weekend 10 pm.-2 am	Mid Week Mid Day

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Table 2: How the Customers and Staff Influence the Venue

Subject	High Risk	Low Risk
Alcohol & Drugs	Taken Hidden	Sober
Weapons	Hidden	None
Personality Type	Psychotic Introvert Unstable Psychopath	Extrovert Gregarious
Appearance	Scruffy Work Clothes Street Clothes Gang Colours	Clean Tidy Best Dress
Reputation	Previously Cautioned Criminal	Well Behaved Caring
Mood & Attitude	Angry Sad Tense Arrogant	Happy Calm Relaxed
Social Origins	High Deprivation Abusive Family	Crime Free Caring Family
Cultural Expectation	Cultural Groupings Street Drinking Habits	All Same Culture Disciplined Home Life
Social Skills	Inarticulate Submissive Aggressive Under Age Habituation	Articulate Assertive
Social Grouping	Young Males Gangs Rival Team Supporters Strangers	Mixed Genders Mixed Age Group Stag & Hen Parties Young Families

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   Verbal Conflict Management

 Verbal conflict can be a precursor to physical conflict. That fact alone makes learning how to manage verbal conflict situations an essential skill.

 The Three Stages

 The management of verbal conflict has three stages,

 1.       Categorizing the Verbal Conflict

 2.       Selecting the Response

 3.       Reinforcing the Response

 The door supervisor has to categorize and then manage at least three types of verbal conflict. These categories are,

 1.       Complaining customers

 2.       Rule breakers

 3.       Customers who are arguing between themselves

 

Once the verbal conflict has been categorised it becomes much easier to select the ideal response and then reinforce that response. Complaining customers and rule breakers demand a personal response and customers who are arguing between themselves demand an intrusive response. Good and bad examples of negotiation and arbitration are provided throughout this work. Chapter 9 will deal in more depth with this terminology and the stages of verbal conflict management.

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Chapter 2: The Security World

Stewards and door supervisors are expected to manage, cater and care for the customers at their event. These tasks place a high demand on the individual’s social interaction and communication skills.  Door supervisors can be employed as stewards. The latter however, are not usually employed as door supervisors. This is because door supervisors have an edge on stewards, and it is this: door supervisors must have a proven track record for coping with both verbal aggression and physical violence. Not only must they be capable of detecting a potentially aggressive situation they must also be capable of pre-empting and defusing it. Not everybody has both the physical skill and the moral courage to carry out this onerous task.

 Where Are Door Supervisors Employed?

It is the responsibility of event organisers to provide a safe environment for all customers, artistes and staff, as far as reasonably practicable. Event organisers have to eliminate the risk of accidents and disasters. Every planned event must have crowd management procedures based on the event organiser’s risk assessment of that event. Therefore, there will always be a demand for the multi-skilled professional door supervisors.

Properly trained and qualified door supervisors are in great demand at indoor or outdoor venues where people have to be managed and stewarded. That includes Race Meetings, Soccer Matches, Rugby Matches, Firework Displays, Rock Concerts, Pop Festivals, Dirt Track Events and Government Committee meetings open to the public.      

The mere presence of door supervisors, whatever their ability, will help to deter theft, assault, property damage and other illegal activity at any venue. But, other than the mere deterrent value, the task now demands many professional qualities.

 The low profile skills have their own part to play in managing these events. But each of these events has a unique set of safety, security and crowd management problems. These problems are beyond the scope of the stereotypical or traditional door supervisor.

 How Dangerous is Door Work?

Compared to other occupations, door work is relatively safe when you operate in a professional manner. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (USA, 1995), who have their website at, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/homicide.html shows that homicide accounts for twelve percent of all deaths in the workplace. Top of the death list is the taxicab service followed by liquor store operatives and then filling station operatives. Security work is fourth in line. What the first three occupations have in common is the following,

        ·         The victims are usually working alone

  ·         The victims are responsible for handling cash

        ·         The victims work late into the small hours of the morning 

 

The Physical Injuries to Expect

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 will find themselves standing and praying that it will be a quiet night as they are suffering from some of these minor injuries.

 The Physical Demands on Door Supervisors

On a good quiet night the physical demands on door supervisors will be minimal. But when a physical confrontation takes place the physical demands are severe. If the confrontation 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 physical demands will be reduced if you develop your social interaction skills and learn to maintain a genuine attitude of care for the customers. 

Why Should You Become a Door Supervisor?

       ·         Many door supervisors enjoy meeting and watching different artistes and personalities

       ·         Many door supervisors prefer social interaction as opposed to vegetating in front of the TV

      ·         Some individuals use their wages to finance a hobby, yearly holidays or pay off their debts

       ·         Other door supervisors 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

       ·         'Doing the Door' is a first class remedy for constipation

 

Forget About Becoming a Door Supervisor

 

  ·         The public have a stereotypical view of door supervisors as thugs in Tuxedos.

 

  ·         The public is acquainted with the legal limitations on door supervisors and the more socially challenged customers will use this information to abuse door      supervisors

        ·         The wages for the average door supervisors are at or below legal minimum levels

        ·         Door supervisors’ work is totally unsocial. While customers are ‘winding down’ the door supervisors are definitely ‘winding up’

        ·         If you are doing the job properly, you will go home both physically and emotionally exhausted

        ·         The job is dangerous, screw up any risk assessment and your life is on the line

        ·         Try pre-emptive strikes with a security camera on you. Your justification and the prosecutor’s interpretation of the event are always diametrically opposed

        ·         Minimum force rules and self-defence rules are stood on their head. You have to face the problem without running away

        ·         You have to learn to cope with the long term anxiety, stress and the constant recall of abusive incidents

 

Six of The Best Reasons For Moving On

 

1.       When you feel like it

 

2.       When you do not have the support of the bar manager or security manager for your actions or decisions

 

3.       When you find out your 'Back Up' has a family, drink or drug problem or no balls

 

4.       When your employer has no form of insurance that covers your medical or legal fees

 

5.       When you have not been updated in your door supervisor skills by an accredited training team

 

6.       When drug dealers, thugs or paramilitaries take over your area

 

The Emotional Demands on Door Supervisors

 The most serious drain 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.

 At times the job of door supervisor can be viewed as thankless. Customers are enjoying themselves and 'winding down.’ You are not enjoying yourself and definitely 'winding up.’

As a door supervisor, there will be no shortages in 'wind up merchants' or situations to upset your emotional stability.

 

·             Bar staff may continually break the house rules and security precautions, leaving you to cope with irate bar managers

 

·             Customers will drink too much and use this as an excuse to infringe house rules or threaten you

 

·             Customers who question your abilities, age, experience and qualifications

 

·             Bar managers may infringe Health and Safety, Disability Legislation and Drink Laws, leaving you to cope with it

 

·             You screw up on the door in that someone bluffs his or her way into the venue and the rest of the team have to sort it out

 

·             You are always failing to stay one jump ahead of the bar manager and your head supervisor

 

When you lose your emotional stability, this will compound your problems. At times, it may prove difficult to control your emotions.

By remaining impersonal, assertive and non-argumentative, it is possible to maintain a professional cool. The emotional roller coaster of a demanding night will always leave you emotionally high. You will probably spend over an hour unwinding after the duty is finished.

 A Day In The Life of a Door Supervisor

 An average day would produce very little to write up. For me, the following type of day comes every fourth day on the job.

 8 - 5:00 pm   A normal day’s work at your full time employment.

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

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

7:30 pm   Clear the bar of drunks, barred individuals and under-age drinkers.

7:45 pm   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.

8:00 pm   Your partner is approached by one of the bar staff. They have pointed out 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 head 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.

 As a door supervisor, you must always take a couple of seconds to carry out a risk assessment before committing yourself. Sometimes acting immediately on either false or misleading information will set you up for a losing situation.

9:00 pm   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.

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

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

 Once you work at a bar for at least one month, and filtered all the under age drinkers, scum and street trash from the regular customers, you can virtually predict the general behaviour and noise levels of the crowd. The younger, and the more immature the crowd is, the quicker they will drink. This leads to a rapid loss of inhibitions and therefore more trouble. The noise levels peak much earlier with a younger crowd of customers. But, if you have removed all the rubbish, this noise level will not be as threatening to both you and other bar staff. In the bad old days, before you weeded the place out, this noise level was always a precursor to serious trouble.

11:00 pm   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.

11:15 pm   Last orders are called.

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

11:35 pm   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 customer has decided to smash a bottle across the forehead of his best friend and now there is blood flying in every direction.

By the time you reach the incident, the victim is getting help from his friends to staunch the flow of blood and the offender is still standing in a rage. Your partner starts to lead the offender to the door and you cover his back. He slips on the broken bottles and the offender seizes the opportunity to start an attack on him, you nail him to the wall with a horizontal elbow strike to the side of the neck below his ear, which cools him down.

At this stage his friend turns up and promises to escort him off the premises. When he reaches the door, the offender states he has left his mobile phone at the table. Your partner scuttles off to retrieve the item. The offender then starts pumping up on adrenaline again and decides to take you on. Despite being held back by a much heavier friend, they both pile into you. You go down below them.

You give the offender a bad day again by clamping your thumbs in below the ears at the jaw hinges, squeezing like mad and straightening out your arms. The offender is definitely having a bad day, so you lift your left foot and plant it near your right knee, pushing off and turning clockwise. This gives you the upper position. You break your legs free from the tangle of legs and the offender’s friend takes the subdued individual off the premises.

When things go ballistic, you must operate with back up 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 to escape from the hostile zone.

Sometimes, despite all your training and experience, you simply screw up. If you take your eyes off a troublemaker as he pumps up his adrenalin you will get hit. During the quiet periods of my life, I can remember most 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 offender 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. Always, even when the opposition is under restraint, maintain 'The Edge' by staying prepared to strike.

Using a defensive, passive or neutral mind set in a violent situation will get you killed. Always maintain an instrumental violence mind set, this will give you 'The Edge’ in any situation. I define instrumental violence as the use of controlled and reasonable force to achieve an objective. This will be covered in more detail in the next book ‘Door Supervising: The Physical Skills’.

11:40 pm   Offender and friend leave.

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

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

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

1:00 am    Bed. Staring at the ceiling again.

 2:00 am    Asleep

 A Year in the Life of a Door Supervisor

 The following table shows the number of incidents that door staff responded to over the period of one year. These incidents occurred at the weekends when the venue was covered, eventually, by three door supervisors. The average number of customers each night was 180. This varied from 420 at the start of the year to 150 per night at the end of the year.

The reductions in the number of customers and a massive reduction in serious incidents were achieved by applying the preventive measures to be discussed later.

 Table 3: A Year of Incidents Summary 

Type Of Incident	How Often
Arguments Stopped	23
Door Supervisors Attacked + Fights Stopped	45
Mob Attack on Door Supervisors	2
Free For All Fights	3
Door Supervisors Threatened + Insulted	Every Night
Barring Individuals For Serious House Rule Infringements	50
Drunks and Others Ejected	95
Under Age Drinkers or No ID Refused Entry	147
Drunks/Barred and the Improperly Dressed Refused Entry	70
Bar Damage Incidents	7
Closed The Doors For Overcrowding and Fights at the Door	5
Reported Health and Safety Problems to the Bar Manager	12

 A Quick Reality Check

 The following report is a true story of all that can and will go wrong for door supervisors. It sets out in detail the failure of a bar manager to carry out his duties in a professional manner and the failure of the security company to support their door staff. The end result was the resignation of all the door staff and the resignation of the bar manager.

Despite the high standards in behaviour and professionalism expected from door staff, those same high standards are not exercised enough by their employers, the bar and security managers.

On some occasions over the past forty years I found that the employers of door staff did behave as though they are only qualified in maintaining their high profits and exploiting their door staff.

 To. XXXX Security Ltd.

Report on the Door Security Staffing Problems at XXXX Bar

 The supply of regular door staff at XXXX has reached a crisis point for three main reasons.

1. The first reason concerns the bar managers incompetence.

2. The second reason concerns the rates of pay for door staff at XXXX Bar, as they are too low.

3. The third reason concerns XXXXX Security who have failed to react positively to this information.

Points of Contention

Manning Requirements.  At present, Saturday nights have proved to be very popular with the customers. Last year the peak figures on a Saturday night were 120-180. This year the attendance has started to peak at 350 and 400.

 There are only two door staff employed to cover three doors and two floors. This staffing level and customer care provision is criminally inadequate. Instead of being proactive and pre-emptive, the door staff are reduced to scurrying about from crisis to crisis.

Seating Capacity.  In the past four years, the bar managers have never answered this question, “What is the seating capacity of this bar?”

Harassment.  On many occasions duty bar managers will order door staff to throw out a customer for a minor misdemeanour without assessing either the risk to or the door staff priorities. Within two minutes the duty bar manager will approach the door staff again and enquire as to why the guy is still on the premises.

Radio Maintenance.  After the weekend, the bar manager has five days to service and charge the radio batteries. This is not happening and the door staff are continually caught out without a working radio.

Managerial Bias. When questioned about a decision that went against the door staff, the bar manager stipulated that he would always accept the word of and support his bar staff at all times. He continues to maintain and exercise this bias.

Weak Leadership.  It has always been impossible for the bar manager to adequately resolve security problems or problems between door staff, bar staff and off duty bar staff. This is possible with other junior bar managers but with the bar manager your approach was always stonewalled, a waste of time.

The bar manager continues to make security changes without informing the door staff.

The bar manager also freezes in the face of more serious problems. For example, on one occasion he ignored the two door staff standing at the door bleeding for three hours after a messy extraction.

The bar manager has tried to compromise the integrity of the door staff by engineering entrapment situations. For example, door staff have been left alone in the manager’s office for 10 minutes surrounded by the daily takings. The computer monitor that displayed the view from the office camera was switched off.  

Pay.  At £6 an hour, the rate of pay for the door staff at XXXX Bar is below the local area levels. This is set at £7.50. Most of the door staff who leave XXXX Bar do so to move to higher paid venues. 

Summary.  Other than low wages, the current crisis is not the result of deterioration in the working relationship between any of the door or bar staff. The current crisis was caused by the bar manager’s general incompetence and specific bias towards the door staff and your failure to react positively to this information. The door staff have always left because they no longer wanted to be victims of situations created by the bias and weak leadership of the bar manager. In the past XXXX Bar have employed good bar managers, hopefully….  There are only two door staff left on the duty rota with little prospect of those who have left of ever returning. 

 

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