I moved to Waltham this week and was bored Thursday night (9/3) so I decided to take a walk down to this Moody St that everyone told me to check out. I walked up and down the street a few times and finally decided that I'd check out the Skellig because the scene in there looked like it was at that nice medium in between dead and busy.
The doorguy was flirting with some chick who looked a little bit too young to be at a bar and in any case was way out of his league. It was a little awkward when I walked up to the door and he gave me a strange look so I asked; "The bar is still open right?" to break the ice a little as I reached for my ID, even though I knew the answer.
"Yeah it is but you're good for tonight," he told me.
"You mean you don't need to see my ID?"
"No, I'm not letting you in," he told me.
"Are you serious?" I asked, "Why?"
"Just making a judgment call."
This didn't make any sense to me. Bear in mind that I'm not a big dude at all, and I dress pretty normally. I was stone cold sober and could not have been perceived as threatening in any way.
I have worked in bars, cafes, and restaurants for the past five years and I know how these systems work and I know when people should be refused service. I have never in my life been refused service ANYWHERE or have been refused entrance to a bar. I took this as a very serious personal insult.
I explained to him that I had just moved to town and he was giving me a very bad first impression but he didn't seem to give much of a shit and in fact flexed his muscles even further by telling me that my two choices were to "walk away or he'd put me on the next cruiser that came by."
I started to get pretty angry and began to demand a reason to be refused entrance.
"Is it because I'm by myself?" I asked him.
"Yeah that's it man I'm prejudice," he replied smugly. Which was obviously true, he was prejudice against something.
I kept demanding a reason and he kept refusing to give me one and repeated "just walk away" over and over as if he was some wise sage.
I asked to see his manager and he told me that he was the manager; an obvious lie. Door guys are never managers.
Finally he said; "It's the state of Massachusetts, I don't have to give you any reason to not let you in." I decided to finally take the gorilla's advice and "walk away" before my mouth started writing checks that my fists wouldn't be able to cash.
Ok. We have determined that this guy is an asshole. Maybe he wanted to show off in front of the underage girl. Maybe he's bitter because he failed the police academy. Maybe he was insecure because I'm about 600 times better looking than him. Doesn't matter at this point.
I'm over being insulted and all that but the real problem and question on my mind now is WHY ON EARTH would the owner of this bar choose this type of person to represent his business? Is the owner that clueless or does he just not care? Does he share the same attitude as this employee?
Putting this neanderthal at the door is a horrible business decision and leads me to believe that if the owner can't even hire a good door guy, then there's no way in hell that this bar can be any good.
In any case, this was a very disheartening and unwelcoming first impression of downtown Waltham. As I mentioned before I have never been treated in a way even close to this before and it was incerdibly insulting.
Maybe the owner will come to his senses and fire this gorilla; or maybe karma will come around and someone will break his legs :)
