Rejection

There's no good way to tell someone they can't come in your club/bar. I've tried a million different ways to do it, and I've finally decided that there's never a sure-fire way to get someone that wants to come in to go away.

You see, telling someone they aren't good enough to come in the bar, which essentially you're saying when you say they're out of dress code or their ID sucks, never goes over well. People take it as an insult that you personally have thrown in their direction. It's even worse when all their friends are around. Nobody likes getting "disrespected" in front of their "crew". Which leads to them mouthing off like I, the door guy, pulled this random list of do's and don'ts out of my ass and handed it out to the first random jackass I see. I've tried being overly nice and telling people they can change clothes and come back and we'd "love to have them in here" but people see through that fairly easily. I'd hate to have them in here, to be honest, and I just want them to go the fuck away. The other end of the spectrum is pre-emptively blowing up at them and telling them to get the fuck out of the line before you rip their head off and stick it up their ass.

I've tried explaining my situation to the patron in question. "My manager makes the rules, not me, and if I let you in I'll get fired." Putting the blame on management helps sometimes, but other people call you on your shit sometimes. The truth is, as door guys, we have a lot of discretion in terms of who we let in and who we don't. Management has set the rules, but there is the understanding that we make the decisions on a nightly basis, for the most part. One day you might come in and get right in without any problems, have a great time and go home for the night. The next night you might catch me at a bad time and I call you on your baggy clothes and you don't get in. It all depends.

And then there's the ever-popular guys who get kicked out and then try to re-enter 20 minutes later like we don't possess a long-term memory. Great plan. Original, too. And then somehow it's our fault when we recognize you, reject you, so he tries to shove us and ends up with a bloody face. I just don't understand what the hell these people are thinking when they are rejected and then resort to violence. What are they trying to prove? If they beat us up then we'll let them in? If they beat us up then we'll know next time not to mess with them and let them in without question? The part that sucks for them is that when someone initiates a fight with the door guys over being rejected, you have just given us permission to release all the steam we've been keeping in over the past few hours at the door while dealing with fuckheads who say the same shit over and over again night after night. And in the end, it never solves anything for anyone.

I recognize that people feel slighted when they are kicked out or rejected so I try to do my best to help them save face or whatever, but this is an issue that just gets under my skin. More like it's a fucking thorn under my skin. Ugh.