What is the situation with bouncers these days?

GGizmo

GGizmo

GGizmo

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I was watching the LBC video earlier and listened to stories of bouncers strangling women, beating them up, and choking them.

We're living in a time were the work is highly regulated, unlike when I was going to nightclubs were people with criminal backgrounds could work as a bouncer.

Though I never had an issue I know people who did. But I thought these days all those problems had gone.

So what are the bouncers like these days?

youtu.be

LBC callers share their bouncer horror stories | LBC

After a shocking video shows a 14-year-old girl was put in a chokehold by a bouncer at an under-18 event, Shelagh Fogarty asks 'how unsafe' British nightlife...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
I do know the SIA are trying to dumb down the requirements for entry to become bouncers and regulated as such.

Bouncers claim its a high risk and high stress job in unsociable hours, which I get, but I dont think they typically have the skills to deal with heavy amounts of stress which is why they tend to become a bit over aggressive/violent.
 
We had a team of doormen when I was working in o'neils in Swindon. I've never met a bunch of more professional doorstaff ever!!.
We very rarely had any issues, Nothing heavy handed. Very polite. They also provided a Roaming member to help police the area during the week that would walk the town centre and help out any pubs that had any trouble...

A far cry from the 80's and 90's
 
For the most part bouncers are fine, imo. But you’re always going to get the odd thug/faux hard man doing the job who just want to rough people up. Having worked as a barman in pubs and clubs many years ago I’ve met both the good and the bad. Sadly bouncers are a necessary evil when it comes the drunken public.
 
mattyg said:
We had a team of doormen when I was working in o'neils in Swindon. I've never met a bunch of more professional doorstaff ever!!.
We very rarely had any issues, Nothing heavy handed. Very polite. They also provided a Roaming member to help police the area during the week that would walk the town centre and help out any pubs that had any trouble...

A far cry from the 80's and 90's
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This is how the company I worked for worked, the owner employed polite, intellegent people. A lot of the guys i worked with were teachers/youth workers/social workers.
Yes you might have had to get a bit hands on every now and again but 99% of the time we were known for being incredibly pleasant and professional and were generally very well regarded by all the local venues.

The SIA are pretty worthless though in terms of actually cleaning the job up, or they were back then anyway. It was an expensive tick box exercise or you'd get put on the course and given your licence for free through the job centre and then be a complete shirt filler waste of time.

As with everything there's always going to be bad apples and they're the ones people hear about.
 
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The more premium nightclubs (expensive entry fee and very expensive drinks) expect their bouncers (they call themselves 'door supervisors' now) to have a sense of decorum and be polite, not smoke/vape on the job etc, they are sometimes people whose main job is close protection for celebrities or political figures or other professional security work and they do a bit of nightclub work on the side, often very professional and would not do anything to jeopardise their more lucrative close protection work.

The nightclubs on the other end of the scale mostly don't care, they will hire anyone with an SIA licence, and those are pretty easy to get with minimal training. Plenty of people who are essentially thugs looking to hurt people and get away with it apply, often after failing to get into the police force or the military. Those who work in areas or at specific clubs with high rates of drug use also become accustomed to getting physical with punters because often they have legitimate reason/need to do so for the safety of others, but that often to leads to them being too quick to resort to physical restraint in cases where it isn't really necessary. What confuses me is why more of them aren't prosecuted for assault or ABH when one of these incidents happens.

I'm speaking from my experience working behind bar in various nightclubs in my late teens, around 15 years ago. From what I've seen in my more recent (but infrequent) visits to nightclubs nothing has changed.
 
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I was a "door supervisor" (iirc this was the correct term when i was doing it) in the early/mid noughties for a few years, just as the SIA badge was brought in. it was ok, sort of. like has been said there's good apples and bad apples, mostly good though ime. a lot depended on the venue you were working at, some were great and almost no trouble, others not so good. there's quite a bit of drug use among staff or was back then but certainly not everybody. 95% of the time it was easy money, 5% it was unpleasant. i never actually had a proper fisticuffs with anyone thankfully, had quite a bit of having to man handle drunken customers out of the premises who were causing trouble etc and wouldn't leave but it never really went beyond that, i was lucky, some doormen i've known have been properly beaten up. i've seen 1 being stabbed, i went to crown court over the incident acting as a prosecution witness for him.
 
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Highly variable... drug use is pretty common in UK nightlife and while owners of bars/clubs don't want to lose their licences they (certain types of club owners especially) don't want to alienate their customers completely by cracking down too much.

End result seems to be security turning a blind eye to some drug dealers while cracking down on others - lots of potential for corruption/organised crime involvement there.

That strangling video is perhaps more the result of a security team mostly used to working in a rough venue in some chavvy town/city and one of their guys being thick as mince/not applying any common sense re: the change in working environment... it's a teen disco not the slug and lettuce at a month end after Universal Credit payments have just dropped.
 
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I've always found you get 9/10 who seem decent then that 1 in 10 who is a problem (usually really thick and/or there wanting to hurt people, etc. etc.) - there is a video of one of the bouncers from the town I work in instigating a street fight outside the venue he worked for and coming off worse - I'd seen him in the past grabbing people in a headlock and throwing them physically through and out the side doors just because they accidentally brushed past him when drunk, etc. etc. ended up fired which was well deserved.
 
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Like anything, you only really hear about the horror stories or, if it's positive, the ones where people have really gone out of their way to help someone.

The vast majority of bouncers I've met are polite and friendly; the bald, roided-up types also seem to be on the decline.

It must be stressful, though, in major towns and cities or at events where you know a good number of people are tooled up and under the influence of coke.

It can definitely go the other way like what happened with @Vidar I think it was?
 
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Ayahuasca said:
It can definitely go the other way like what happened with @Vidar I think it was?
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It's definitely a dangerous job if you come across the wrong nutcase.

Couple of the guys I worked with had stared down the barrel of a gun and we'd quite often find various weapons during searches. Obviously depends on the venues you work but it's certainly not as low risk as some people think.
 
I suspect that a number of dubious characters tried to become legit when the regulations came in.

When I was going to nightclubs regularly in the 90s and early 00s, I'm a memorable looking guy and was on personal terms with the guy who run the doors across North Manchester.

I know there were some rough guys back then but a bouncer beating up a woman would have found himself grabbed by the other bouncers.

On a side note what as happened to the dress policy these days? On these walkabout videos people are wearing jeans and sometimes trainers and are let in. Though interestingly a lot of places look like bars more than nightclubs these days
 
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I've been on both sides of the 'velvet rope' in my late teens and early 20s. I went out a lot as a student, but at the same time paid my way through uni by working the doors on the other nights I wasn't going out. It was a mixed bag experience that I'll probably never fully digest.

I was invited to work at a late night club unofficially cash in hand after my regular venue closed, and saw the 'deputy head doorman' there grab a guy who was obviously worse for wear but not doing any harm. He pulled him in to a fire escape stairwell and it sounded like a battering was going on. I don't know for sure if that bouncer filled in a defenceless guy who was in no state to defend himself, but heard enough stories to strongly suspect it.

The weirdest bouncer I ever encountered was female. Back then female door supervisors were a rarity. This one almost looked like a normal mid-late 20s lass, but was absolutely unhinged, ready and willing to assault anyone in the blink of an eye and obviously loved it, along with being a master of dishing out verbal abuse. I'm certain she only got away with it due to how startling being attacked by her was (and the fact her targets were too confused to really respond and chose to retreat), and the fact she always had multiple male bouncers right behind her. Her style obviously worked as she became head doorsupervisor at a large night club, which subsequently lost its license some years later because of a) murders by the public, and b) a murder or two by the door supervisors.

There were multiple other non-violent but obviously psychiatrically disordered types I met during my time as a door supervisor, including sociopaths who were masters of gossip and lies, some to the point of pathological lying. Disturbingly these were often the types that can really charm the public and the right 'high value targets' in the night club industry.

On the other side of the coin there were a bunch of guys and girls I worked with who were perfectly 'normal', stable, sociable, helpful, and nice but not a walkover. They treated the public probably better than they deserved and had no love of violence. One thing I learnt is not to judge door supervisors by their appearance, both male and female, as it often defies expectations finding out who are the sane ones versus who are not.
 
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I had an experience a month or so back with two bouncers who were far more patient than they had to be with a mate who was determined to have a go.

Mind you, if I hadn't restrained him myself, it may have been different...
 
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