LiveNation

I may have been America’s shortest security guard for a brief period of time (I’m 5 feet and 3 quarters of an inch tall). If that didn’t already make you laugh, they also called me Big Dawg. Still not laughing? Ok, imagine a 5 foot tall girl with pink hair dragging out a 6 foot 2, 230 pound man out of a concert because he was so drunk he could not walk by himself. Yea, I was kind of a badass.

Working this job was pretty cool. I got to see a ton of shows I never otherwise could have enjoyed. I got to work with tons of people with very different backgrounds from mine, and I met some of my favorite artists.

Here’s the official-sounding list of all the things I did here:

Lead line control and ticketing team to ensure all ingress safety measures are executed
Screen for valid identification, vaccination cards, potential weapons, and illegal substances
Protect 1,500+ guests by keeping walkways clear, alerting for spills, calling medic for injuries, mediating conflicts, and ejecting non-compliant and over-intoxicated guests when necessary. .
Exceed expectations by staying late to help clean up, taking initiative when problems arise, training new hires, keeping myself informed about building policies and local ordinances, helping cover shifts at other venues, and being a friendly, welcoming face to all staff, guests, and artists

Security guards get a pretty bad reputation from the public. To many people, they may seem like the people who can’t a job anywhere else, who are mean, and who don’t want people to have a good time. From my perspective, most security guards genuinely want people to have fun in a safe environment. They don’t want to take people’s stuff, but they also don’t want to see that knife used to stab someone later. They don’t want to take drinks from people, but that’s better than carrying that over-intoxicated person out to an ambulance. Most of all, these “mean” people that the public sees are just people that are trying to do their job.