Time, ladies & gentlemen, please
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense...” – one stanza later of Keats’s finest (Ode to a Nightingale) and the drinkers in the north London pub I worked in fled.
My style was more creative than that of my no-nonsense boss, Phil (not his real name), who had two lines of patter: “Oi you, home now! This ain’t a doss ’ouse!” Or, when he was feeling more jovial, rhyming couplets, such as: “Finish your rum and move your bum” – not a national poetry prize winner, but effective nonetheless.
Most pub workers have experienced at some point in their career customers who mistake their local for a “doss ’ouse”.
One manager I worked with would link arms with tarrying customers and, walking them to the door, sing: “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Soz...zled”. It didn’t scan and his voice was dreadful, but everyone laughed and the patrons left in a good-natured manner.
Martin Caffrey, operations director of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations (FLVA), believes that “humour is better than aggression, but, ultimately, if they just won’t leave, the only sanction you have is to call the police, though you might wait a long time.
“You could also get a reputation of possibly not being able to control your own house, if you call them too often,” he says.
Caffrey recalls one city-centre pub where the barman would vigorously sweep up a mountain of cigarette ash to create a cloud. “Choking customers rapidly left,” he says.
The licensee at another pub he knew would play the worst songs on the jukebox at top volume – primarily country & western.
Nick Stafford, general manager of the Hare & Hounds in Claygate, Surrey, a Star Pubs & Bars house, uses a gong bought from Amazon, which he bangs loudly if necessary.
He recalls the licensee of one pub he used to drink in who sang Danny Boy operatically. “When people wouldn’t leave she changed the last line to ‘please **** off’ in her beautiful singing voice and it worked.”
Anthony Ringer, director of ARC Licensed Trade Consultancy, once ran the Plough in Accrington, Lancashire, where he offered takeaway food such as chips and pizza at last orders. “It was a way to get them out of the pub.”
He recalls one consultancy client who played nursery rhymes at the end of the night. Ringer also remembers a former colleague who aimed a soda siphon at customers. “It never went down very well and raised more issues than it solved,” he says.
The BIIAB’s (British Institute of Innkeeping Awarding Body’s) Award in Customer and Drinks Service includes good advice [see panel] on how to close a bar. Its Award in Conflict Management covers issues such as how to signal non-aggression and how to communicate with people without winding them up.
Sam Livesey, BIIAB’s senior qualifications manager, explains, for example, that standing with hands open and in front of you is non-aggressive, but if your arms are folded it comes across as antagonistic.
Livesey says you need to know when to pull back and perhaps get doorstaff, if you have them, to intervene. She says, be aware of people’s personal space by not standing too close, pick up non-verbal signals from customers and listen to them.
“If someone is sobbing into their pint because their girlfriend’s just dumped them, empathise with that but still move them,” she says.
Livesey advises maintaining self-control at all times. “If someone starts to be insulting, don’t bite. Walk away, otherwise it will escalate and when people have been drinking they are more volatile.”
The FLVA’s Caffrey says a pub should always have a house policy. “Never get a new member of staff to try to get rid of people – that is perhaps asking for conflict,” he says.
“You would leave it to someone with experience to speak to them. It used to be a lady, but that doesn’t work as much anymore.”
One final ejection method before calling for back-up can be adapted from the movie Ghost in which Sam Wheat, played by the late Patrick Swayze, drives medium-cum-con artist Oda Mae Brown, played by Whoopi Goldberg, into submission with incessant refrains of I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am.
If that doesn’t work, you could always take a leaf out of my old boss Phil’s book.
Last orders and beyond
• Call last service 10 minutes before you want to close the bar
• Move staff away from the bar and begin clearing the floor
• Turn up ambient lighting and turn down background music
• Switch off amusement machines as people finish their games
• Turn off external signage and, lastly, behind the bar
• Leave the car park lighting on for safety.
Source: BIIAB
