Each Monday, our Money team speaks to someone from a different profession to discover what it’s really like. This week we chat to Stu Armstrong, who worked as a doorman for more than two decades…
People think the job is “look at me, I’m a big hardman”… and that every interaction is physical. But the physical part is really a last resort. It’s about talking to people, and building relationships before something happens.
I did a psychology degree… it came in really handy in the job.
A good woman on the door is better than 10 men… You get the biggest, nastiest, most violent person and if I go over they just want to kill me. But if a woman goes over and she is confident, most people back down from her.
I was on between £32-34 an hour… when I left seven years ago, working as a head doorman with a lot of experience. A normal doorman was on minimum wage. Most now are employed by security firms who subcontract them to pubs, so they take their cut out of the middle. If you worked directly for the venue, they wouldn’t have to pay that.
I would normally do seven hours on a Thursday night… eight on a Friday and eight on a Saturday. Every now and then I would work a few extra hours at a nightclub in town. This was alongside my day job, and as age started creeping on I started feeling it a lot more. It was the right time for me to come off.
It’s difficult to do it as a full-time job… Some do, but a lot of people do it as a second job when their kids are young.
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You get in other places for free… On a night off, if you’re in the same town, you can negotiate your way to the front of the queue – you then do the same for any doormen who come to your venue.
Read more of this series:
What it’s really like to be a… dentist
What it’s really like to be a… novelist
What it’s really like to be a… soldier
I got kneed in between my legs by a granny in her 80s… There was a big hen night. The lady who was getting married, her grandmother had to have been in her 80s. I had to Google some of the swear words she was using. And she had this huge whistle and was blowing it so loud. I asked her about four times to stop, and she just wouldn’t.
Iwent over a final time and she came out with all kinds of filthy stuff you wouldn’t believe from a little lady that age. And I went, “Look, either I take it off you or you are going to have to leave.” And she went, “Okay, take it off us then”, and held it in front of her. Like a fool I went to take it off her at the same time she kneed me between the legs with the force of 10 men. She dropped me like a pile of s*** in the middle of my own pub. The lads I was working with fell about laughing.
Most doormen now wear a stab vest… and Kevlar gloves so you can grab a knife without it cutting you. It is becoming more and more prevalent, especially with needles. You see a lot more problems now with drugs, especially cocaine, which makes them very brave and gives them the strength of 10 men. I have seen the smallest of blokes and it takes two of us to hold them down when they are on cocaine.
You used to have to be able to fight to be a doorman… but all that has changed for the better. It used to be, if you went to work on a Saturday night, you knew you would have four or five fights. But by the time I left, you would have maybe two violent altercations a month. But the level of violence and the weapons has gone massively up.
The qualifications you need don’t give you any understanding of what you’re going to face… You need to have an SIA (security industry authority) licence and for that, you need a level two in conflict management, and a separate course called physical intervention. Conflict management is classroom-based and takes you through all the different scenarios and touches on licensing laws and drugs.
Someone from the fire brigade comes in and talks to you, and someone from the ambulance. Then it is a multiple choice questionnaire at the end. I don’t understand how anybody could possibly fail it, I’ve seen people be half asleep and still pass the course. It’s horrendous.
