Bouncers: a help or a hindrance?

Who in their right mind would become a bouncer? You’d spend your entire life sober, trying to control drunks. It’d be like herding cats, but you’d have 110 decibels of chart cheese pumping through your eardrums.

No wonder some of them are always so angry.

In a bid to find out what goes on behind the strong, confident exterior of a bouncer, The Tab interviewed some of our local ones.

First things first, don’t call them bouncers. They’re event managers. OK? Got that? Event managers. I don’t want to be controversial, but I can’t help but think the only function of this – frankly OTT – title is to make their job seem much more important when, at 5am on a Saturday morning, they’re pulling people out of their own sick and putting them in taxis home.

I’m told there are both good and bad students. One bouncer I talked told me he found “happy drunks the highlight of the night,” whilst “aggressive drunks and weepy drunks just ruin everyone’s night.”

The typical look

Nice as these bouncers are, I’m still not convinced they’re all good guys. Even when you’re sober, bouncers aren’t always nice. There’s always one that has to make your life as difficult as possible. You know him: bouncer bitch. My friends and I have encountered them many times. The shout of, “Both sets of ID out now!” is enough to strike fear into the heart of any student who frequently makes the all-too-common mistake of leaving their student ID on their desk.

And that’s without mentioning the unwanted physical contact us students often experience. My heart always goes out to the guy who doesn’t have his two IDs held together, and finds his arms being crashed together by the bouncers. It’s just not needed.

Happy and smiling… are they all that bad?

In an effort to be fair, I asked students what they thought about bouncers. The response was overwhelmingly negative. “Bouncers are pricks,” “Bouncers enjoy making us suffer,” and, “They’re just pissed off because we’re having fun,” are a few of the less offensive comments some students made.

Bouncers will never be liked by students – not while they refuse entry to those deemed “too drunk” and forbid banned students from re-entering the club. But, rest assured, you can always laugh at the ones who try to dance when they think no-one’s looking and they’ll probably share a chuckle with you.