21
A NEW GIRL ON THE DOOR
ANONYMOUS
I suppose, if I am really
honest, I was actually interested in getting into event security
rather than working on the doors. I always thought working the door
was an occupation for 20-something-stone tattooed giants with big
fists and little brains, and it wasn’t until I actually started on
my first door that this belief was blown straight out of the
water.
My interest in security was initially sparked by me
being rescued at a Take That concert by a burly steward, who
frantically pulled me over the pit barrier when I was being crushed
by what seemed like thousands of other girlie teenagers all trying
to catch a closer look at Robbie’s crotch. I was only 14 at the
time, and I looked up at my new hero with awe and respect as his
big hands grabbed my tiny waist and pulled me to safety. His shaven
head reflected the blues and reds from the stage, and his rough
goatee brushed up against my cheek as I held on tight. He was
probably old enough to be my dad’s dad, but to me he was my
conqueror, my hero, someone who I was sure I would spend the rest
of my life with – until he dumped me unceremoniously on the ground
and swiftly turned away to rescue another pre-pubescent damsel in
distress.
Shocked and upset, I ran off to the side of the
stage, where someone from the ambulance service rushed me to a
seat, asked me if I was all right and briefly checked me over. I
was dazed and a little winded, but otherwise I was fine. As I
stared back at my hero rescuing damsel upon damsel, and up at the
band strutting their gorgeous stuff on stage, deep down I somehow
knew that one day I would be doing the same job – saving people at
concerts and protecting gorgeous pop stars.
‘And what a job it will be,’ I thought to myself as
I struggled to hear the paramedic confirm that I wasn’t concussed
or injured. I would work all over the country, maybe even the
world. I might work at a pop concert one day and at a football
match or horse race the next – I loved horses. Perhaps I might work
at private parties, maybe even a Robbie Williams party, where I
would protect him from his fans. Of course, Robbie and I would
eventually become friends, and I would be invited to his
dressing-room so that he could thank me in person for keeping him
safe and secure. Yes, the security industry was definitely going to
be the one for me.
Years passed, and I was suddenly 19 and about to
leave school. Surprisingly, for a dizzy and fairly shy blonde, I
found that I did quite well at school and had three A Levels and
eight O Levels to my name. Although I considered myself fairly well
educated, I didn’t really have a direction. However, I did know
that I had had enough of sitting in boring classrooms, listening to
boring lectures, and I definitely did not want to go to university.
I wanted to get out into the world of work and make some money – my
parents had bought me a series of five driving lessons to start me
off, and I needed to earn some cash to pay for the rest.
I think my teenage lustful dream of following in
the footsteps of my heroic saviour faded a few days after the
concert, and at school I was preoccupied with more mundane teenage
things. I hadn’t really thought about security and the security
industry, and being a security guard didn’t really feature in the
lectures from the boring and extremely narrow-minded careers
officers. They focused mainly on professional careers, although I
never understood why security guards were always deemed to be so
lowly and unintelligent. Did they not look after property and
people? Were they not first on the scene in an emergency? Were they
not the fount of all knowledge in their place of work?
Just after my 19th birthday, I left school and went
into retail. I was a shop assistant in Top Shop, which was actually
surprisingly good fun for a while. I enjoyed serving people and
chatting about clothes and fashion – what teenage girl didn’t?
While working as a shop assistant, I got to know the security
guards and the undercover store detectives, which I think was the
spark that ignited new thoughts and feelings about the security
industry. I would quickly notice whenever the store detective or
security guard had spotted a shoplifter and always ask what the
outcome was. Were they arrested? Did they go to the police station?
Did they go to jail? After a while, I became more interested in the
security guards than doing my job serving the customers and putting
out and tidying stock.
On one occasion, I actually managed to follow a
shoplifter who had stolen a scarf out of the store. Once outside, I
gave chase and grabbed the culprit by the collar, before a security
guard arrived, who’d seen me chase someone out of the store. I was
so pleased with myself – I’d got the shoplifter and the goods – but
upon my triumphant return the manager flipped his lid and was
furious with me. He sternly reminded me that it wasn’t my role to
chase shoplifters. I expected a medal, but instead I got a
reprimand and a verbal warning. I knew then that it was time to
leave the shop.
After another few months, I handed in my notice and
left Top Shop. If I couldn’t chase criminals and shoplifters, I
didn’t want to work at the store at all. I applied and got an
office job at a stationery supply company shortly after quitting
the retail trade. My role was mainly filing and sorting
correspondence, dealing with orders, ordering stock, and doing
other mundane things, which I actually hated and which almost drove
me insane. It was so incredibly boring and stagnant that sometimes
I didn’t even leave the building for lunch, taking the half hour
allocated to eat my sandwich whilst sitting on a wooden box out in
the back corridor daydreaming. After just a few short months, I
handed in my notice. It had sent me stir crazy. The only good thing
about the job had been that once or twice a week I’d delivered
stationery orders to all sorts of people around the city centre,
and I’d really enjoyed meeting the customers. It was the only
contact I had with the outside world. On one occasion, I got
chatting to a security guard at an office I delivered copy paper
to. I thought the guard fancied me until I saw the wedding band on
his ring finger. Well, maybe he did still fancy me, but married men
were not really my cup of tea.
Anyway, I asked him a few questions about his job,
as I really wanted to do something for a living that I enjoyed and
that would motivate and inspire me, and not just live from weekend
to weekend, dreading every Monday morning and yearning for every
Friday evening. Surely there was more to life? He suggested I apply
for a position with his security company, and I scribbled down the
name and address of the company and promised to contact them over
the following few days.
However, as is so often the case, it actually took
me well over a year to contact the company, as I decided to take
some time off work to sort myself out once I’d left the boring
office job. What was initially meant to be just a few weeks off
work ended up being 18 long months on the dole. I went through a
few unpleasant personal events at that time, which had knocked me
for six, and I spent quite a while getting myself together and
sorting my life out. Because I was fairly young, I think that my
personal life affected me more severely than I had originally
realised. I had very little self-confidence or motivation and
thought myself pretty worthless, but I was still keen on getting
into the security industry.
It was 2005 and SIA licences had just been made
compulsory. I could barely afford to exist on benefits, let alone
afford the cost of a training course and the three-year licence
fee. Lots of security companies offered security-guard courses with
the promise of employment, but I knew I didn’t want to go down that
route. I wanted to do some proper training and eventually work in
event security looking after celebrities. I was told by a friend of
a friend that it would be much better for me if I got my
door-supervisors’ licence, which would enable me to work in a
normal guarding environment as well as in a more specific security
role. However, because event security work was not full time, most
security companies did not provide training and only tended to take
on those who were already licensed.
For the next few weeks, I spent hours searching the
Internet and eventually found on a forum for doormen a training
course for unemployed women wanting to get into the security
industry. The course was funded by the government and would be
provided free of charge – but I still needed to find the money for
the licence.
Apart from making a beeline for the security guards
almost everywhere I went – I think maybe I had a ‘thing’ for men in
uniform – I didn’t have any real experience of the security
industry, but I somehow knew it was going to be the one for me. I
called the company providing the training and was sent an
application pack, which I immediately completed and returned. It
was a four-day course, held about an hour’s underground journey
from my house.
On the morning of the first day of the course, I
was filled with trepidation and unease. I hadn’t studied since my A
levels, and I hadn’t worked for almost 18 months. Maybe it would be
too difficult for me, or maybe I wouldn’t get on with any of the
other women on the course, or maybe I would find that my desire to
work in security was unfounded and that it wasn’t the industry for
me after all. So many thoughts swirled around my head as I sat on
the underground making my way towards Wimbledon.
I had preconceived ideas about who would make a
good security guard, what sort of people they were, what they were
like and how they behaved, and after just a few hours’ training I
could honestly say that most of the women on the course were
definitely not the sort of people I would want to work with. Maybe
it was because it was a course specifically for women on the dole,
but I guess it would be fair to say that most were social
undesirables – misfits who couldn’t do much else with their lives.
There were a lot of butch bisexual women who felt bizarrely
compelled to boast about their physical prowess, fighting skills
and ability to knock people out. Maybe that was what being a butch
bisexual was. Or maybe they were trying to impress me a little,
because I was blonde and petite. Whatever the reason, I felt it was
a strange, immature and horrible attitude and certainly an approach
that the security industry, with its new licences and standardised
training, was striving to get rid of.
After four days of security training and first aid,
I took the multiple-choice exam and passed the course with flying
colours. I was a qualified security guard.
My first day on the doors wasn’t actually spent on
the doors at all; instead, I worked as a hospitality steward at the
Reading Festival. I was very excited but very nervous at the same
time, as I had obviously never actually done the job before. In
fact, I had never even been to Reading before, and I had never met
any of my colleagues, either. Yes, the thought of working at the
famous Reading Festival caused me a few sleepless nights.
I wasn’t big enough or confident enough to stand in
front of the stage, so I was used at the entrance to the site,
searching women and dealing with any female issues that my male
colleagues couldn’t handle or didn’t want to handle. I could still
hear the music loud and clear, even though I was nowhere near the
stage or the pop stars. There was no trouble, everyone seemed happy
and sane, and although the days were really long I had a wonderful
time.
My next job was at the cricket at Trent Bridge in
Nottingham. I applied for the position because my boyfriend
happened to be living in the city, and I thought it would be a
great idea to stay with him for a few days while I worked. Lots of
sunshine and lots of alcohol combined to make lots of rowdy
punters. From my position on the front gates, I watched with envy
as the four-man response team ran here, there and everywhere,
dealing with various incidents. During those few days, I witnessed
numerous fights and a few ejections, but nothing major. It was
generally just a case of over-the-top but light-hearted fun that
occasionally got out of hand.
Although I did thoroughly enjoy my job, I was
getting fed up with standing around all day doing very little, and
I really wanted to be part of the response team. I wanted some
action, but my manager laughed at my wishes, saying that an
eight-stone blonde could never do that kind of work. However, I was
determined to prove them wrong one day.
During my time in event security, I have witnessed
and been involved in a lot of incidents, especially as a steward at
Millwall Football Club, and especially working on the segregation
line in the Upper East stand. Whenever a goal was scored, the
entire stand would erupt, cheering and jeering and dancing and
singing, and we had to try to control the elated crowd and stop
them running behind our line. I certainly wasn’t prepared for it
when I experienced it for the first time, and I nearly fell down
the stairs as I tried to hold back two different people and get
them into the seating area where they should have been. I was
struggling to keep hold of them and at the time stop myself from
going arse over tit. It was scary but exhilarating, and after that
first day I was much better prepared.
As I slowly proved my worth to my boss, I was given
tougher and rougher roles and responsibilities, and one day I was
asked if I could handle being placed behind the turnstiles at a
football ground to grab anyone who jumped over and then kick them
out. ‘Of course I am capable,’ I almost screamed at my boss, who
was very hesitant about giving me my new role. I was put with
another guy who boasted about his fighting abilities and expertise
in martial arts. I wonder why security guards feel a need to boast
all the time, especially when most of them cannot match their
words. As my new partner ranted on and on about the various
escapades he had found himself sorting out over his few months as a
steward, I quickly understood that he was a complete dickhead. I
politely listened and nodded, but I was bored out of my brain and
hoped he would go and stand somewhere far away.
Suddenly, a big bloke jumped over the turnstiles,
and, assuming my colleague would be right behind me, I ran hell for
leather and apprehended him. It was only when I was really
struggling with this guy who was double my size that I realised I
had no back-up. In the end, two stewards from another company came
to my assistance. The dickhead ‘jacket filler’ just stood there
watching. ‘You couldn’t manage him on your own,’ he said, smirking.
I felt like smashing him square in the teeth.
I love my job as a steward and am currently looking
for a nightclub door to work. I also aim to start close protection
training as soon as I have saved enough money for a course. I
eventually want to work in every aspect of the security
industry.