They're like sheep I tell you!

A quote from a classic, Men in Black, 

"A person is smart, people are dumb, dangerous animals.." 

Never a truer phrase spoken when dealing with crowds of people, countless times over a doormans career he'll have to deal with groups of queuing people and very recently I was reminded about just how stupid crowds of people are, and dangerous.   

We had a relaunching of a popular student night at the nightclub I work at recently, as with all nightclubs we try to get as many people in as early as possible but inevitably large groups arrive at the same time creating a backlog of queues as people pay and check their jackets and handbags.  On this night thou it seemed as thou every student on the area decided to converge on us at the same time, I had only been at work around twenty minutes when I was called to the front door the help Marshall the queue forming, well formed really as our rope and metal barriers were full and the pavement was filled four or five people wide stretching a hundred yards to the entrance of the neighbouring bar!   At first people were moving steadily through but then started to bunch as more and more people joined the main queue to get in.  I was with another doorman watching for people carrying on when a surge happened as some idiots had decided to push people forwards, this of course creates a knock on affect and I could see a few people on the far side of the wall of people getting squashed against the railings on the street.  I forget his name as I've never worked with him before but he looked at me and said, " we're gonna have to get in the middle and create a break mate".  As he said this the fools pushing did it once again and more people looked to be stumbling and getting squeezed so we pushed out way into the centre of the queue shouting as we did for people to back off and stop moving forwards.   It's a dangerous situation as we're only two doormen standing lower than a massive crowd trying to stop them moving and crushing someone, not an easy task!   As someone at the back pushed again we steadied ourselves then I proper started shouting!   I must have looked like a lunatic having a go at the people at the back shouting if I saw anyone push anyone else id bar them for life cos they were gonna hurt someone etc etc!   But it seemed to work as the queue behind us started to thin and create some space so we waited, lord knows how long, holding this massive group of people back shouting at them to stop moving as they constantly kept edging forwards!   Eventually though enough space was created so we slowly let the rest of the queue move up and spread out not looking the most impressed of doormen! That was a potentially dangerous situation but not long after I was called to help deal with the other queue which was the "we're sold out so wait and see queue" even as the main queue emptied we were at capacity so it was a "one in, one out" situation.  Now you explain this to people and as we only ever let two to three people in at a time you'd think that if were in that queue and you saw two or three people going in you move slowly forwards and wait another five mins or so before doing the same, but oh no, as soon as anyone went into the club the entire queue moved as one bunching even closer to the door!  So straight in the middle I went and again the shouting began, this time thou it was irritated shouting as the queue was massively smaller so when I stood in the middle of a two person wide queue of around 30 people and some people went in behind me I couldn't believe when they all moved forwards towards me!   "Stop walking!"  I shouted, still they moved slowly forwards, "seriously what is wrong with you lot, where do you think you're moving to you can see there's no where to go will you stop walking!"  They did but all I can remember is 30 or so blank faces, dumb, dangerous animals.