The rudest bouncer I have ever met
Yesterday, the Icon lounge, located in The Forge in Joliet, IL, was throwing a Halloween party, and my friend and I arrived at 9, not realizing that they opened at 10. So, we decided to wait for an hour. As soon as it turned 10, a bouncer named Brian came to check our IDs, and we were first in line. When it came time for him to check my friend's ID, there was no issue, but when it came to me, he told us he’d come back but never did. Once the door for the club opened, security checked our IDs, patted us down, and let us go through. However, security inside the club said that Brian had failed to input my passport data and that if I’m not in the system, they can’t let us go in and that we should go back out and talk to him. So, my friend and I did as we were told, only to get ignored for 30 minutes. After those 30 minutes, he finally asked why we were waiting by him, and we explained that when we went inside, they told us to go back out and talk to him as he failed to input my passport data into the system. Any reasonable person would have rechecked my passport and found a way to manually input my data into the system. However, because Brian is incompetent at his job, he told us to wait until he checked the entire line's IDs, which went around the corner, despite my friend and I being first in line. As someone who has worked in the service industry, it is a known thing that you do not keep people waiting, and if there’s an issue, you must resolve it immediately.
After another 30 minutes, Brian speaks up and says that you need an ID, and I explained that my passport is a valid ID based on the Illinois Liquor Control Act that allows any valid, unexpired, government-issued ID, such as a driver's license, state photo ID, passport, or military identification, to be used for verifying age. The Forge’s own website even states, “A valid U.S passport or travel visa/passport issued by a foreign country containing the holder’s photograph” is allowed. After I had explained this to Brian, he said that I needed a barcode, and what will a passport do for me, and that there is a process, and if I went ahead and typed up your passport data, I’ll be ruining the process. In response to that, I said that my friend and I came in first, so we shouldn’t have to wait for him to scan everyone’s IDs before trying to resolve my issue, which causes him to turn his back on me and complain to a random girl that some people don’t have spatial awareness, as if he is not the one in the wrong, which is incredibly rude. After such impoliteness from Brian’s behalf, my friend and I decided to take our business someplace else.
However, I would like to recommend that to prevent this from happening again, you should perhaps hire a bouncer who actually knows what they are doing and has a better, welcoming, and professional attitude, or hire more than one bouncer who is competent enough to resolve issues in a timely manner instead of making us wait for an hour to not even fix anything.