The responsibility for having to refuse service is something that I try and encourage all of my staff to participate in. It is part of the education process, particularly for the young staff that I have coming in, that they are a part of each step of the process.

If staff are familiar with your locals then they are more confident in letting them know when it’s time that they should be slowing down or when it’s time that they should in fact be leaving, but we also have at my venue a large Friday night when we can have a capacity crowd of 1,000 people and you don’t know every face, and you don’t have quite so long to observe people, and sometimes decisions might even be made that somebody’s intoxicated by one of the members of staff and on further observation I might feel that they’re not so intoxicated or they’re not intoxicated at all, and the staff have been a bit zealous in how they’ve made that judgement, but our absolute number one rule within the venue is that you back up whatever decision is made, so if the security want to refuse someone entry or refuse them service or ask them to leave, no matter what I think of that decision at the time, we back each other up. I back the security, the security back me. We back up a staff member if they have made that decision, and even to the point where I might explain to the patron that the decision has been made, we’re not going back on it, this is the behaviour we’ve observed, if they claim that it is because of a different reason then so long as they leave immediately without a problem they’re welcome back next time but the rules and the legislation mean that we have to follow through on what we’ve observed at that time, so backing each other up is very, very important.

From our perspective it’s always we treat the customer with the three key words: dignity, courtesy and respect. From my experience in working as a licensee for many years and working in security as well, you let them have their dignity, so you don’t want to embarrass the customer in front of their friends or in front of anybody else, so when you speak to them you try and speak to them—looking them in the eye, speaking to them in a fairly serious and monotone voice, you try not to raise your voice, you try to do it away from other people, and you try and explain the laws, you try and take away the responsibility or the onus that it’s you making the decision but rather that you have to make the decision as a result of the law and more often than not I think you’ll find that people tend to listen and as long as you give them their dignity, courtesy and respect they’re more than happy to leave the premises or discontinue drinking.

The other point is you never let it get or you attempt not to let it get to that pivotal situation where it’s going erupt, so by your constant monitoring you’re noticing that their behaviour and demeanour is gradually changing, so instead of dealing with the issue when it’s at fire point, when they are intoxicated and they are making poor judgement and are behaving aggressively, you’re getting them before they get to that point.

It’s a difficult one. Any student, any young person coming into the business, and even some who have been in the business for a while, will worry about it, because it raises the potential of a confrontation and of course we’re in the hospitality business, so we’re there to offer hospitality, we’re there to say ‘welcome to our hotel, how are you today?’—direct eye contact, nice smile, our staff are always well dressed, well groomed and encouraged to make eye contact and to greet the customers as they come up with a ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ and also to say ‘farewell’ on the way out if they’ve seen them come in. So all this is hospitality. Then all of a sudden we’re refusing, or asking someone to leave potentially, or suggesting that they’ve had enough to drink.

Now without a doubt the best way to do that for a manager is to go face to face with a customer on their side of the bar. Now it is different for a bar person because they’re already on the bar, they’ve got people to serve, and their position is behind the bar and the customer is on the other side. The barrier of the bar, no matter what the structure of the bar is, is a potential problem in my experience, so this is an ideal job for a manager to handle and this is why I think a high ratio of managers to staff is a very important way to control what’s going on in your venue, and to come up with successful and responsible service of alcohol.

My successful technique is to go outside and to talk to the customer out of hearing of anyone else if you can do that, and that might be by just catching them on the way to the bar or even on the way from the bar if you think that’s the last one they should have. The last thing you want is a confrontation.