God, I hate Friday, because for me, it’s just the second time on Thursday that I see daylight.  It’s the joy of working two jobs, one of which goes from 9 AM until 6 PM, the second of which mirrors that in the night.  There’s just enough time between the two to grab a bite to eat and a shower, and contemplate the idea of catching a little sleep, before having to head out the door to one or the other.  Thankfully, daylight (or the lack thereof) keeps me from accidentally going to the wrong one.

There’s a very different mindset required for the two.  By day, I’m by and large left to my own devices, and so I spent most of my day under headphones, writing white papers or code, another cog in a corporate wheel, Mr. Antisocial… By night, though, I emerge from my shell (mostly, at least until the end of the night), becoming outgoing, as friendly as I can manage, a non-stop ball of energy making things smooth as much as I can.  Oh, and I’m a little bit on the … how do you say paranoid without the mental health questions?

There’s an interesting bit in the Boston Herald about acts of violence committed by doormen on the unsuspecting public, and Rob comments for the other side. I’ve seen a fair share of doormen that took things too far, in fairness; honestly, most of the doormen and bouncers that I know — not to mention bartenders, barbacks, managers, etc. — are a little on the edgy-leaning-toward-hoping-for-a-fight side.  I think on the one hand that that’s also true of most Southern men (maybe men in general) in the 21-30 age range; I think on the other that you have to be in touch with your inner animalistic tendencies to work in this business.  Bouncers, by definition, are going to deal with violence on some level; doormen and bartenders catch grief day in and day out, from words to fists to worse.  It’s the nature of the bar business beast.

But fights that get taken outside of the boundaries of the place of employment are classified as assault, and fairly so; our job and responsibility is to remove the offending patrons from our bar.  Once they’re outside, on the sidewalk, they become someone else’s problem.  And I’ve seen some people get a little roughed up between the stage and the door because they took a cheap shot, physical or verbal.  I’ve seen people get badly hurt because they resisted the motion to the door and fell into a pool table or a table covered with beer bottles.

I’ve also seen people taken out into a parking lot and beaten to a pulp while waiting for the police.  I’ve seen acts of violence that you wouldn’t normally witness in a public place between two people who have, at best, a passing familiarity with each other.  And those acts are validated or justified by the position or title that the bouncer or doorman or bartender holds.

Not to place the blame on my peers, at least not entirely.  Rob’s right; you people are far from angels.  You get loaded up on alcohol, coked up, iced, or dusted.  You call us names, make inane requests and get mad when we don’t comply, insult our friends and regulars, throw glasses and bottles, break our pool cues, punch our jukeboxes.  You hit us.  You hit your friends, your fellow frat brothers, the hippie that is minding his own business, your girlfriend.

In that last case, I applaud whatever brutality comes your way, in or outside of the bar. Punch your girl — any girl — hard enough that everyone in the place stops at the noise, and I don’t care what happens to you from that point on; it’s all too good for you, even if it requires plastic surgery later, or ends with your head between a workboot and asphalt.

Not that I’ve ever seen this happen before.  At least, not that you can prove.  Or remember.

Dead sober but into my 30th hour awake.  You decide how much of that last bit is the bouncer and bartender in me, and how much is just me wanting to see a better world without people like that in it.