Worse than getting drawn in though is the bad doorman, I was made head doorman at a new venue in Brighouse and on opening night we had 9 doormen, including our area manager working to keep the place safe. Brighouse isn't the nicest of areas to be honest and it was a sports bar so we expected to have our fair share of trouble, particularly until we'd worked out just who we did and didn't want inside.
Now our area manager used to be a doorman and in most people's opinions, a bad one, he wasn't that big but was overly aggressive and caused more problems than he sorted. He only became an area manager cos he was quite smart but was what I'd describe as a sneaky little shit! He was on the front door with another senior doorman and a regular doorman. I was a few metres down the road on the phone to another doorman arranging more staff for the following night as it was clearly going to be very busy. As I came back to the door the area manger was refusing a young girl, maybe 19, because she was too drunk. No problem with that except for the way he spoke to her, she was complaining sure but when he called her a silly little slag the guy standing behind her, her boyfriend, happened to hear that! He'd been standing quietly accepting the situation and even tolerating the way his girl was being spoken to but that was clearly too much and he stepped forwards demanding an apology. The area manager refused and when the lad stepped forwards again asking to speak to the manager he replied "I am" and pushed the lad back hard into his girl knocking her over!
All hell broke loose because the group behind this couple were with them, around twelve people in total began to move on us so I reached for the radio and transmitted "all doorstaff front door now! management get a police unit!"
The fighting started slowly with the girls boyfriend lunging for the area manager and one of the other doormen wrestling on the floor with one of his mates. The other senior doormen had already begun to help the area manager writhe his way free so I went to the doorman on the floor shouting who I was in his ear and pulling him back to his feet.
The inside doormen had started to arrive now so I shouted to form a wall in the entrance so we could protect ourselves better as we were outnumbered. The lad who'd been on the floor and the area manager were pushed inside as they were both hurt and needed attention. We had to retreat inside the front doors slightly and I remember at one point having my back to the group attacking us and feeling some nasty punches to my shoulders and upper back. We managed to form a wall at the front door and push people back some of whom started to disperse now as this had how on for maybe ten minutes at this point. Eventually the fighting stopped and we managed to calm down the girls boyfriend and get them to leave as the police still hadn't turned up!
Luckily no one was seriously hurt but that's out of total luck, thankfully I never actually saw that area manager again as 3 months later I was moved to run a door in Scunthorpe instead, and believe me it felt like a promotion!
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