Someone had asked this elsewhere but then deleted their own post and I don’t know why! I was meaning to come back to it and read it, so rest assured that I won’t delete this one as there were some really interesting stories of unconventional ways people landed their work.
TL;DR: I got headhunted after directly emailing dozens of people and pitching myself as an available, on-call substitute in my line of work, instead of submitting job applications traditionally.
As for me, I cold-pitched myself via Google Maps and other searches as an available substitute to those in my skilled trade (upon moving to a different region) in basically a 50-mile radius, and eventually word of my availability reached a large, overarching institution that connected me with an organization that had a full-time opening. It took me probably 4-5 months from the move to the job offer.
Edit: My story is actually a little more complicated than that, now that I recall the details from years ago; there wasn’t actually a full-time opening at my now-workplace at the time, haha. What happened was that I was briefly interviewed and quickly hired as an assistant to an overwhelmed director who ended up getting massively sick and nearly died from COVID, so I subbed as the director. They had been having interpersonal problems with her and I rapidly noticed them in the weeks before she got sick and warned them of her. While I wasn’t trying to take her place, the higher-ups said they were aware of her shortcomings (she had basically said “Shut up” to another director higher than her rank, to give you one of many examples of how bad it was, and she must have been in her 50s if not 60s).
Nearly everyone at the org apparently loved my work while I subbed for her for nearly a full month, and they eventually fired her and made me her replacement after another interview. It was definitely unusual…
Well, my first real job, meaning not a temporary thing in fast food with plans to GTFO ASAP, was as a nurse’s assistant.
My high soul school had a class for health care work prep. I had the goal then of being an RN. So I figured some of the basics might be nice ahead of time. Medical terminology, chances to have professionals in various branches of healthcare do talks, etc.
The last year, the program allowed you to take the state test to be an NA, and if you passed at over 95%, you could get the certification no matter your age. It involved also doing clinicals, at a wide range of facilities. One of the facilities was a nursing home, and it turned out that not only was I physically right for carrying patients, but I had a knack for helping the worst off patients cope with being helped. A lot of dementia patients can’t process what’s going on at all.
For whatever reason, I could kinda slip through their confusion and talk to them, and they’d be less combative, or more able to cooperate with what was going on. By the time clinicals at that facility was over, the director of nursing had contacted the instructor and I had a job waiting as soon as the state processed everything. So that’s what I did for the next twenty years as my main job, though I left that facility, and eventually all facility work within three years. I did go back to school for my RN, and life interfered. Then I went back for my bachelor’s in psychology, and that ended before I could finish.
But, as you may or may not know, nurse’s assistants get paid shit. And not just the literal shit we have to clean up, the pay rate is horrible.
So I had side gigs.
My most stable side gig was working as a bouncer, which led to security work in other ways.
I mostly worked for two guys. They each owned multiple bars. One guy had mostly LGBTQ focused bars, oxidizing including the drag club that was my main and favorite place to work of his. The other guy ran mostly strip clubs, which was not as much fun as you’d think, but I still enjoyed as a bouncer.
Anyway, the first guy was the one that got me into bouncing. My best friend is gay, and by the time I was old enough to get into bars and clubs, so were almost all of my friends. I just like the community. But we were at the club for a drag show. It may help to know that back in high school I had started power lifting, and had been picking up 400lb people out of showers for a good while at this point. I was a big ol boy lol.
So, you know how weekend drag shows can get. Everyone and their sister crowded in, trying to dance, get laid, and enjoy the show. Spats happen.
Well, one of them started getting bad. The staff was trying to get in and break it up, but it was wall to wall people.
One of the more inebriated patrons took it from just screaming and shoving into serious territory, grabbing a bottle and starting to swing with it.
I picked him up and shook him a little. He dropped the bottle and started crying and hugging me. So, since me doing that had kinda stopped the show and the crowd was now watching us I carried the dude over my shoulder to the bar and sat him down, while the bouncers on staff (one of whom later on saved my life a few times) made their way to us.
The owner was there that night, and saw it go down. Had the head of security ask me to come into his office. He gave me a blast of hell for risking my neck, and then offered me a job lol. I would work weekends here and there, some weeknights.
The other guy and him were friends since they didn’t really compete much, and I got introduced that way, and would work for either of them as needed for the rest of the nineties and into the naughties.
Between them, I also ended up doing some low grade security work too. Mostly escorting bar owners to make deposits at the end of the night, or being visible muscle when interacting with unfamiliar fellow business owners. Which had its benefits. I got a chance to talk to some interesting people that way, since once everyone was chill, the muscle tended to be superfluous, and just sit around drinking coffee, bullshitting. I got offered a job doing celebrity work, but didn’t want to travel like that. Closest I came to that was taking a few trips to other cities with some of the better known Queens that weren’t as friendly to the community.
Anyway, I pretty much fell into both jobs unintentionally. They weren’t the only jobs I did, but they were the consistent ones, and the ones that I miss.
Wow, that’s quite the detail. I now think those dementia patients had cooperated simply because of your size, haha. You have such a colorful history!
I’m kinda morbidly curious about these…
Oh hell
That one was the Bulldog. She’s still a good friend.
Short little thing, about 5’6". Cute too, and hates being reminded she is. She’s a few years younger than me, and had been working on fake id, but that’s a whole nuther kettle of fish
She was, and is, fairly butch, if that means anything to you. So her head comes up to about my nipple line, and my arm was bigger than her leg, and she wasn’t the most petite little thing, she worked hard and exercised.
But the first thing she said to me when I came out of the office was that if I ever picked her up like that, she’d feed me my balls on a stick.
That’s the Bulldog.
So, this is a drag club in the south in the nineties. Regular gay bars caught hell, but a drag club near a main road, with neon lights and parking lot full of some of the brightest flames it has been my privilege to see? It was a target for every cretin, redneck, and bigot for a hundred miles around the city.
So we’d end up having run-ins with gay bashers or at least assholes trying to act tough almost every shift during decent weather.
More than once, she would kneecap some fuckwit coming at me from behind, or when I was tangling with someone and couldn’t get loose. She was also known for tackling and choking the hell out of assholes, even when they’d just stand up with her hanging on their back; hence the nickname.
So, there were knives that didn’t get me, ball bats that never got swung because she had my back in every sense, and vice versa.
But the big one? Fuck me, it was bad.
A seriously crazy fucker went after one of my favorite patrons, this skinny, sweet little twink with nothing but love and hugs for anyone that would give him half a chance. But the kid was off property, halfway down the block, and we weren’t supposed to go that far.
Me, bulldog, and Kerry were on the lot and door that night. Kerry is a tall, lean but athletic ex marine and drag queen. He actually haunts lemmy to, so he might chime in. But when I took off running when I saw the crazy asshole come out from a shadow and hit the kid, Kerry starts cussing, but it was Bulldog that was right behind me first. Kerry was smarter, and stepped inside to call for help, and tell the inside staff to call the cops.
Cops always took their damn time showing up there.
Anyway, me and bulldog are running hard, seeing this kid on the ground, getting beat and kicked.
The nutjob grabs some junk from the lot he stepped out of, some rebar with concrete on it and pulls back to bash that kid’s head in.
I get there, thank the gods of speed for making my big ass run fast enough, before he can do it, and we go at it. I’m swinging wild, because this was back before I got serious about martial arts. I’d done some wrestling and a tiny bit of boxing, but never dedicated.
The nutter was fast, and hyped up on something. I was always slower. I got a few in before he caught me and I took a knee. He was cueing up for my skull when the Bulldog comes in growling, literally, and goes at him.
He swings with the rebar and smashes her in the face, and she goes down hard. It was fucking meaty sounding. I can see blood, so I fucked up and moved to her, and the crazy gets me in the back with the improvised club.
If Kerry hadn’t been busting ass, I’d have been dead because I couldn’t breathe
Kerry comes in and puts a boot upside the guy’s head, then steps back between all of us and him.
But the guy is lit up by whatever it was. He’s trying to get at us, and Kerry is having trouble because damn. Three people down, and Kerry ain’t budging, but you can’t cover everything like that.
So the dude slips by and tries to kill the kid again, after having feinted at me.
Kerry bumps him off target, and I get up.
That’s when it got ugly. I kinda lost my shit. Picked the guy up, slammed him and just went off. I don’t even know what I was saying, or even thinking, but Kerry tried to pull me off and couldn’t.
But Bulldog? She pulls herself up, comes over to me and gets in my way. Grabs my arm and stops me hitting the crazy guy again. She’s dripping blood, broken nose, plus other fractures that weren’t visible. But she was the one that put herself in the way and kept me from killing the guy. She did that half blind from swelling, concussed, and bloody.
She still has scars from that. Outside for sure, but inside too.
Saved my life two different ways in one night.
Worst fight I was ever in. Well, against a human.
But, yeah, her and Kerry kept my ass alive for sure. There were other nights I kept them safe too. That’s just how we did it.
At that time? She wasn’t even legal to enter the bar. That’s the night I found out she was using fake info, but that’s not really important. But we were young. The “kid” was around the same age as me, and I couldn’t buy a drink at the places I bounced yet.
It was a fucking crazy night. But our boss? That dude paid every hospital bill, not just for us, but for the kid too. I missed work at my regular job, and he just paid me like I was working full time for him. Told me I was an idiot, and not to do that to him again. But he hired on extra security so we could walk patrons to their cars when they couldn’t park on site.
The crazy dude did serious time, attempted murder, multiple counts.
Now, I gotta be honest here. I’ve told this story a few times between reddit and lemmy. Kerry tells me that none of them are fully accurate. That I keep getting things mixed up in the order they happened and such. I know that when I remember it, there’s a lot of blurry edges, and stuff comes to mind scattered. It’s flashes of stuff that was terrifying and I was flooded with adrenaline, fear, and anger, so it’s hard to be confident in the details.
I’m certain about Bulldog’s face, because it made me cry to see her like that. I know for sure that the kid was in a bad way, and almost died on the way to the hospital. I can remember his face too, when I rolled him over before the first ambulance got there. And I know I was fucking hurting lol. My back, my hands, my knees, my face, alllll beat up lol. It took me a few days to walk upright and not hobble.
Kerry, chime in! Wow, this was an insane read. I’m glad the guy got justice served. What a horrible struggle and that sucks that multiple people were scarred in multiple ways. Did you not go to a hospital after?!
Your boss’s coverage in the aftermath was also great, given how that all probably happened in just 5 minutes or so. With stories like this, I now feel like there could be a /c/Bouncers community on here. I’m glad no one got a TBI or was permanently paralyzed; either of those would have probably been the worst outcome (apart from just straight-up dying, needless to say). I wonder how many bouncers now have pepper spray or other self-defense tools.
Oh, yeah I was taken to the hospital. Kerry said he’d put his size 12 boot up my cracked ass otherwise lol.
I was the least injured other than Kerry, who only got some bruises and a scrape. I had some cracks in some ribs, my knuckles were kinda split but didn’t need stitches. Most of my injuries were blunt force stuff, basically deep bruises. I wanna say it was three ribs that had fractures? They weren’t bad, but they hurt like hell for a few months after.
Bulldog got the worst out of the squad. Broken nose, fractured orbital, concussion, split lip and her face was shredded from where she slid on the concrete.
The kid was fucked up though. Took him days to wake up. He recovered with no disability, but it was a long recovery. Broken ribs, skull fracture, jaw broken, I can’t remember what all else.
The asshole was worse off though. His trial was like a year after, and he was still fucked up. Missing teeth, couldn’t walk (though I suspect he was faking that some), mostly blind in one eye, some other shit that isn’t coming to mind. I know he wasn’t faking stuttering and messing up words. He did end up with brain damage. I wasn’t joking about Bulldog saving my life a second time, I damn near killed him. If she hadn’t stopped me, I probably would have, and it was most definitely excessive use of force.
Regarding bouncers and gear, it depends on where you live, but you have to be real careful with what you carry and use. Cops tend to not like bouncers, or didn’t back when I was still doing it. So you spray someone, you better have witnesses and plenty of them. I knew guys that carried knuckles, batons, even knives though, particularly at one of the rougher strip clubs. A few would carry a small handgun too, but it isn’t a good idea, imo. Legal, at least in my state, but not a great idea in a setting where you’re supposed to be keeping shit cool.
I dunno how often he checks in, but @kerriganindrag@lemmy.dbzer0.com , if he notices this, he might remember some of the stuff better, if he sees this any time soon