Management has the right to turn you away

You're likely to have a good time drinking in a bar whose style reflects your own. Photo / Getty Images

I know we have an overblown sense of our own entitlement, but I'm always surprised that people feel they have a right to walk into any bar or any club in town as if they own the place.

I worked in hospitality for a number of years and loved it. Courtenay Place was just beginning its evolution from an industrial area to a hospo Nirvana and things were a little more free and easy.

My cousin and her partner owned Cafe Paradiso, and that's where I worked when the jobs in the media dried up. I started as a dish washer, moved up to a coffee-maker and clearer of tables then became a maitre'd, learning the trade from the masters, Rusty Donworth and Kori Millar.

I loved doing my best to ensure that every person who came into our place had a special night. I used to tell the wait staff that people had chosen to come to our place out of all the other restaurants and cafes they could go to and it was up to us to make the occasion truly memorable - for the right reasons.

Of course, when you're dealing with food, wine and humans, things can and did go wrong but I always felt that wonderful sense of anticipation before we opened the doors. It was like a curtain going up before a performance and you never quite knew just how the night would unfold.

However, there were some people I didn't welcome into our restaurant. I had no desire to serve them and I chose not to for a host of reasons. Sometimes it was because they were drunk. Sometimes it was because they were rude to our team.

A couple of times men who were married to good friends of mine brought women into the restaurant and, between drinks, made out with them. Bad manners to flaunt your infidelity in front of your wife's best friend.

On one spectacular occasion, a famous American actor backhanded his girlfriend while we were sitting around the table having a post-performance/post-work drink. He was thrown out immediately - but he turned up again the next night and was shocked and infuriated when he was told he wasn't welcome at the cafe, and would never again be.

When the New Zealand cricket team lost against Pakistan, I wouldn't let them in either. Some key members of the team had been in the back bar the night before, and clearly weren't familiar with the maxim "If you play up, you get up".

They thought I was joking when I told them they should be in the nets practising. They were grumpy when they realised I was serious and they wouldn't get a drink.

As far as I'm aware, management has always reserved the right of admission. When it comes to Jesse Wright, the young man with facial tattoos who was turned away from Rockpool, a Christchurch bar, we would probably have let him in.

Paradiso was where filmmakers, performance artists and advertising agency people came to relax - facial tattoos wouldn't have caused a stir.

But I sympathise with Rockpool. When you create a bar, you try to create an atmosphere and ambience.

Middle-aged single men have been turned away from student pubs; roughly dressed people have been turned away from cafes; people who simply aren't cool or pretty enough are turned away from nightclubs.

Find the place that best suits you and your style and stick with it. Wright might not have caused problems but the potential was there for some other patrons to comment on how he looked - given nobody else in the bar looked like that - and trouble could start.

Bar managers don't like trouble. They like everybody to have a good night and generally that means ensuring people feel safe and comfortable.

Loads of people have tattoos but few have tattoos all over their faces.

It's a statement and, while Wright says his tattoos mean a lot to him, they are meaningless to the public. They just see a young man looking for attention - and late at night it's often attention of the wrong kind. The best bars are like an extension of people's homes. You feel comfortable there, you feel you'll meet interesting, like-minded people.

If you're a square peg, why try to push yourself into a round hole? It just makes you and everyone else uncomfortable.