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.
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…
