» Nightclubs

David and Goliath
I've been lurking on here for ages waiting until I had a story worth telling. So here goes my cherry i guess... **POP**
I spent a good few years working in nightclubs a while back and this question has brought the memories flooding back (some which I wish had remained hidden!).

One such tale happened while I was working behind the bar of one of Preston's finest* late night drinking establishments.
This night in particular happened to be bank holiday Sunday, one of the busiest nights of the year.

The average punter would have spent the bulk of the day lounging in the pub beer garden getting slowly sozzled, then headed out in the evening to the bars in town. Then finally when they were booted out at closing time, despite lacking the ability to walk straight or speak without slurring, they decide they've not consumed enough alcohol yet (besides, they have a day off work tomorrow) they all pile into our club.

The place was rammed to the hilt with rowdy, pissed up, obnoxious customers. With so many people crammed into one place this place was HOT! I don’t mean hot in "it's so hot right now!" kinda way, I mean like it was tropical jungle hot! Now when it's hot there's nothing better than an ice cold beer! (Mmmm... beer!) So you head to the bar only to find that the other 1500 people in the club have had the exact same idea!

Due to the managements tightness we were staffed at the bare minimum levels and so we were absolutely rushed off our feet, literally running up and down the bar serving punters. However, despite our best efforts the bar was still 5 deep with thirsty punters. Needless to say tempers were beginning to get frayed in front of and behind the bar!

When you are working on a bar this busy you have little time to stop and think. You're faced with literally hundreds of customers all crammed up against the bar, crying for your attention. You have absolutely no chance of telling "who got there first". The fairest thing to do is to divide the bar up into sections. Each barman then works his section from one end to the other, serving each person sequentially until you reach the end, then go back to the beginning and start again. That way it's at least fair and people tend to get served in the right order.

This night I was working with a good friend of mine called Simon. Simon was a skinny guy from Northern Ireland who was about 5'5" and couldn't have weighed much more than an Ethiopian refugee.

One guy waiting at the bar started getting a bit agitated at having to wait to be served and decided to take matters into his own hands...

First came the finger clicking... click, click, click. You ignore it so he starts clicking in your face... fucking cunt!

Next comes the money waving... Lord knows what he’s hoping to achieve with that. Does he expect to fall to my knees and start bowing at the sheer majesty of it!? "Oooh, a whole ten English pounds! I've never beheld such a princely sum!"

When this fails he resorts to shouting...
"HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!" repeat ad nauseum until Simon finally acknowledged him.
S: "What?"
C: "Two pints of Stella"
S: "I'm busy serving someone"
C: "Yeah but I've been waiting ages!"
S: So has everyone else I’m afraid. I'm working as fast as I can."
C: "Serve me now!"
S: "Look, I already told you I'm serving someone else. I'm working my way from one end of the bar to the other. I'll serve you when it's your turn!"
C: "But I've been waiting longer than everybody else!"
S: "Ok then mate, if you can tell me the exact order that everyone arrived at this bar then I'll serve you next"
C: "Don’t you know who I am?"
S: "No and I don’t care"
C: "I play rugby for *****"
S: "Sorry, you'll still have to wait your turn"

Simon carries on working and the guy just stands there looking cheesed off. Then he decided on a crafty little scheme... he grabbed an empty pint pot from the bar top and proceeded to reach behind the bar and starts pouring himself a pint. Simon clocks this and grabs the pint pot out of his hand and tells him if he tries that again he will be unceremoniously launched from the building.

The guy is getting angrier and angrier. He continues his shouting for attention (how after all this he would ever get served I don’t know!).
Finally he snaps! He reaches out over the bar, grabs Simon's tie and attempts to pull him over the bar while yelling "YOU WILL FUCKING SERVE ME NEXT!"
Simon looking completely unflustered looks him dead in the eye and utters "If you fucking touch me again I will slit your fucking throat, so help me god!"
The guy releases Simon and we carry on working.
All of a sudden the guy picks up a glass from the bar top and hurls it at Simon. The glass whistles past Simon's head and smashes into a large mirror behind the bar sending shards of glass flying everywhere.

It's amazing how even in a busy nightclub the bar seemed to go completely quiet at that point.

Simon stops, turns around to face the guy and yells "RIGHT! THATS FUCKING IT!", then he reaches into the bottle skip, pulls out an empty bottle of bud then smashes the bottom of the bottle off on the bar. He turns to the guy and goes "Come here you cunt!!!" and then lunges at the guy. The guy leapt back through the crowd screaming like a girl, crying "He's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me!"

Suddenly aware of a commotion the doormen rushed over and the guy practically clambered into his arms still screaming "He's trying to kill me!". The doorman suddenly started sniffing then looked at the guy in disgust and uttered "Ergh! Have you shit yourself you dirty bastard??”
The 6'6" rugby player had indeed shat himself in fear!

Simon was promptly marched into the manager’s office at that point and made to explain himself. He recounts the whole story to the notoriously nasty boss, fully expecting to be fired for this. After he finished the story the manager simply laughed and said "why don’t you go get yourself a drink then chill out in here for a bit before going back out there." That was it; the incident was never mentioned again.

The night went smoothly after that, the customers were bizarrely polite and tipped highly. One guy gave us a twenty to split and said it was one of the funniest things he'd seen in ages and the guy was a cock and deserved it!


I have many other tales which I’ll try to post if I get the time. I promise I’ll try to keep it shorter next time, but I felt this one needed to be told in all its full glory.

Here's to you Si, you're a fucking legend!

Cheers,
K

Apologies for length but it was my first time and once I started I couldn’t stop!

*It was a shithole but alas it had a monopoly
(Fri 10th Apr 2009, 3:10, More)

» Nightclubs

Tales from the other side of the bar
A few years back i had the (mis)fortune to find myself in the position of manager at one of Preston's finest* night spots. During my time here I witnessed more than my fair share of sex, drugs, debauchery and violence. This tale is of the latter variety (I promise i'll get onto the smut soon!).

Every bank holiday monday we would host a hip hop night. There nights were usually pretty fun to work. Mostly because it was a change from the usual cheesy dross we played (hip hop had yet to sell out completely by this point) and there were a higher than usual amount of sexy laydees present.

The thing with Preston is that its situated about equal distance between Manchester and Liverpool. This made it an ideal location for the gangsters and drug dealers of these respective cities to enjoy a night out away from their own territories without the fear of reprisals.
For this night only an unofficial cease fire was called between these rival factions in the name of hip hop, honeys, henessy and of course the herb (sweet, sweet stinky weed in case you couldn't guess)

Now on these nights everyone was smoking weed. When i say everyone, i mean everyone! Security couldn't do anything about it except for to turn a blind eye. If they throw one person out then they'd have to throw everyone out. Besides, we've already established the type of clientele we had on these nights and throwing them out was not the smartest move!
I remember 3 large rastas stood at one of the bars at the bottom of the stairs. This bar was directly below where most of the doormen stood as it gave them an excellent vantage point with which to spot trouble brewing on the main dancefloor. These 3 rastas were stood there rolling the biggest joint I had ever seen (it was roughly the size and shape of my forearm and would have taken at least 2 people to hold). The head of security saunters up to the gentlemen and politely advises them "Erm, excuse me gents... I dont mind you smoking weed in here, but if you look above you you'll notice there is a camera pointing directly at your construction site."
"Unfortunately this camera can be monitored remotely by our head office. So if you wouldn't mind, could you skin up somewhere else?"

"no problem man!" replied the rastas who promply moved 3 inches down the bar!

It was frankly hilarious to see the entire group of 20st musclebound doormen at the end of the night giggling like school girls uncontrollably and muttering that they were "fucking starving for some reason". They disappeared next door to the pizza shop and returned with around 30 pizzas and kebabs.

Anyway, I digress...
Later on in the night at another area of the club, one of the bar staff was serving a customer with a large number of brandy and cokes. When he he came to present the guy with the bill the following conversation occurred.
B: "That'll be £££ please"
C: "No it wont!"
B: "Erm, yes it will!"
C: pulling up his shirt to display a gun tucked neatly in the waist of his jeans "No. It. Wont!"

The barman quite rightly bricks himself and hits the panic alarm. Cue 20 large doormen charging through the club knocking people, drinks and furniture flying like skittles in a bowling alley.
The doormen all congregate around this man and attempt to calm him down and avoid the threat of serious violence. At some point in the negotiations one of the doormen (a big dopey bastard who was pretty much harmless) said some thing which offended the guy with the gun. The guy retaliates by pulling out his gun and pistol whipping the doorman! An extremely unwise scuffle breaks out and luckily the doormen manage to relieve the man of his gun. The bouncers pick up the guy and charge him out of the back doors of the club using his head as a battering ram.
Once outside they discovered that the gun the guy had wasn't loaded. Rather than get the police involved and cause a load of unwanted publicity they decided to teach him a lesson and promptly kicked the living shit out of him and dumped him on the street.

However, this guy decided he wasn't done yet and proceeded to try and break down the fire doors in a cocaine induced rage. He didn't manage to get back in, however, he did manage to punch through inch thick security glass complete with reinforcing steel wires cris-crossing through the middle of it.

The next day we arrived at the club to count the money and survey the damage from the previous nights revelries when we were accosted by an extremely small, extremely angry west indian lady. This lady was absolutely irate and was spitting pure unadulterated fury at us, threatening with police action due to the fact that we had assaulted her son the previous night and stolen his property (a jacket).
It soon became apparent that the "victim" of our brutality was none other than mr pistolwhipper from the previous night. Needless to say that she found it hard to believe that her darling Clarence** would never do anything to deserve such a beating.
It was at this point that we decided it was time to enlighten her on her sons escapades from the night before, showing her the bloody hold which he had punched through the window at the back of the club. She still wasn't having any of it!
We fetched her sons jacket and she reached into the pockets to check their content. She then pulled out a rather sizeable bag of Peruvian marching powder and her expression changed. A look of disbelief washed over her face briefly only to be replaced by the now familiar rage. She turned on her heel and marched back to her car, opened the passenger door and proceeded to beat the living shit out of her beloved Clarence (who had been stealthily hiding in the car the whole time) with her purse.
"Clarence, i told you... smack... Never..."

Sending your mother to finish a fight you started (and lost) and retrieve the drugs you left behind surely has to be one of the lowest points you can sink to as a man!

Cheers,
K


Length? It was as big as your forearm!


*for those of you old/cool enough to remember this club was the legendary club (sadly now defunct) which hosted "Hitman and her" with the legendary Pete Waterman.

**it may not have been clarence but it was something equally shit and embarrassing!
(Fri 10th Apr 2009, 14:35, More)

» Nightclubs

Don't be a hero!
This is the final one from me this week (I promise).

I tried to block this one out of my mind but one of my awesome (shitty) friends reminded me of this last night. As it happens it took place exactly 5 years ago today.

We'd spent a glorious afternoon down the park drinking, smoking and generally having a dick about. As day turned to night we decided that we weren't quite ready to call it a day yet, so we decided to head out the local club.

We continued to party on into the wee hours of the morning, steadilly becoming more and more inebriated.

Then out of the smoke and flashing lights she appeared. A vision of beauty so divine it would have made even god cry (milky tears from his one eyed trouser snake).

Gemma (name changed to protect the innocent) had started working in the call centre I was employed in 2 months earlier. The daughter of an italian father and a malaysian mother; Gemma had beautiful soft olive skin, long flowing black hair, deep hypnotic brown eyes and curves in all the right places. Needless to say I was smitten at first sight.

Surely, you might say, I made it my mission in life to woo this girl and make her mine... alas, you would be wrong.
I was so completely dumbstruck by her beauty that I was rendered absolutely useless in her presence.
I was unable to form coherent sentences and my jaw usually hung somewhere around my knees.

In fact, in 2 months I had said exactly 3 (yes, three) words to her.

Now my friends knew about my obsession and they took advantage of my reduced inhibitions to goad me into action. After several minutes heated discussion between us I had run out of excuses.

I stood up, took a deep breath, puffed out my chest and then strode across the room towards her in the most manly manner I could. Then just as I was about to reach her I veered off at a right angle and marched straight up to the welcoming safety of the bar.

A shot (or two) of dutch courage was just what I needed to prepare myself for the task at hand.

I slammed back my drink and turned round to see the object of my affections being chatted up by another man.
My heart sank to the floor and I cursed my lack of bravery. I was just about to slink back to my friends with my tail between my legs when I spied something...could it be?

Yes! My prayers had been answered.
The gentleman suiter's advances had been sharply rejected (judging by the ferocity of the slap he recieved). Not only that but he was persisting to try it on with her and she was evidently becoming more distressed by the situation.

This was it!

My chance to be a hero... The knight in shining armour ready to rescue the princess from the evil ogre.

She would love me for sure once i'd saved her!

Now i'm a lover not a fighter... In fact I've not had a fight since school. But this was different, I had to take action!

I marched over to her with a new-found sense of purpose.
I grabbed the guy by the shoulder and spun him round.
"what the fuck do you think you're playing at? Look, she's not interested in you so why dont you just fuck off!" I bellowed in my toughest voice.
Then something dawned on me... This guy was a hell of a lot bigger than he had looked from across the room. There was now a very good chance that I was about to get an absolute pasting at the hands of this neanderthal!

The guy squared up to me and then pulled back slightly... I knew what was coming, he was about to destroy my nose with his forehead!

Then right at the critical moment he stopped. His expression changed suddenly from one of rage to something else entirely.

Then the unthinkable happened... Instead of the bony forehead i was expecting, a golden stream of Stella Artois flavored vomit flew in an arc from his mouth and straight into my face!

For the briefest of moments I was stunned, then i smacked back into reality with a bump.

The mixture of a days worth of alcohol consumption, the stress of the situation and the fact that i was now covered from head to toe with vomit pushed me over the edge.

I started to wretch and struggled to keep my lunch down as i panicked and tried to figure out how to get out of this situation.

Unfortunately I didn't think quick enough and the inevitable happened. As the contents of my stomach travelled rapidly up my oesophagus i clamped my hand over my mouth in a vain attempt to stop it from flying everywhere.
This worked for the first heave, but the second was too much to contain and vomit squeezed through my fingers and proceeded to cover everybody within a 5 feet radius liberally with my vomit!

Suddenly very, very sober, i looked to my right.
The love of my life was standing there gobsmacked, soaked in a mixture of mine and the other guys vomit.
There she remained motionless for what seemed like an age while she processed what had just happened. Then the inevitable happened... She started to cry unconsolably. Then she turned round and ran from the club and into the night.

I never spoke to her again after that night. In fact every time we saw each other after that, embarrassed glances were exchanged and we quickly headed in opposite directions.
She left work shortly after that.

The moral of the story? Dont try to be a hero because more often than not it'll come back to bite you in the ass!

... That and dont be a pussy!

Cheers,
K
(Mon 13th Apr 2009, 16:52, More)

» Nightclubs

Footballers are tossers!
Apart from a football pitch, the place you are most likely to find a footballer is of course in a nightclub! (okay, maybe a strip club. But they're kinda the same thing.)

In my time i have had a fair few run-ins with these "professional" athletes. With the exception of a select few (Nobby Solano, you are a true gent!) they fully live up to their reputations of being a bunch of over-paid, over-rated twats.

I'm quite proud to say that I personally banned Steven Gerrard from every single club (300ish venues) in our company because he got his personal bodyguard (too much of a pussy to do it himself!) to drag a member of staff over the bar and punch him repeatedly. The barmans crime? Refusing to serve him a drink which we did not have in stock!

But the gold medal for twattery must go to Robbie Fowler...

On one of my rare nights off, a few mates and I decided to frequent a few of the delightful drinking establishments in Southport. We were in one bar which was absolutely packed and as such we were waiting (im)patiently at the bar to be served.
In off the street walks Robbie Fowler, who marches straight up to the bar and proclaims at the top of his voice "Oy! I'm next!"
The guy stood right next to him was quite rightly peeved and replied "No your fucking not mate! I was here before you, i'm next!"
At this point Robbie Fowler reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, opens it and retrieves a crisp new £50 note, then proceeds to set it on fire with his lighter, waves it in front of the mans face and says "When you can do that, then you're next!"
Adding insult to injury he then proclaims at the top of his voice "Everyone in this bar can have a drink on me... Except for this guy!"

What a tool!

...I still took his free drink though!

Cheers,
K
(Sat 11th Apr 2009, 20:22, More)

» Schadenfreude

Failed Indiana Jones-esque move
Bombs post below reminded me of the time I had just gotten onto the tube and the door closing sound started to go off.
On the platform I saw some guy running full pelt at the train desperate to get on before the doors closed. As the doors started closing he jumped on and turned sideways to slip through the ever narrowing gap in an Indiana Jones style move... however, unlike Indiana Jones he completely mistimed this move and the door closed on him when he was halfway through.
This guy was now trapped with one leg on and one leg off the tube. Instead of doing the sensible thing and pushing the door he just kind of panicked and started wiggling to get through. This caused him to lose his footing and he slid to the floor of the tube, still with one leg on each side of the door, and became firmly wedged against between the pneumatic door and the door frame by his balls.
I just stood there in shock for a couple of seconds as his face turned slowly redder before i realised what was going on and pushed the door open so he could make his escape.
He gingerly made his way to a seat much to the amusement of the rest of the carriage and proptly departed at the next stop out of sheer embarrasment.
To this day it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen but for some reason I was completely unable to laugh at the time, which I was highly disappointed about.

true story
(Thu 17th Dec 2009, 12:31, More)