5 star venue 0 stars for event management!!!!! Shocking! Appalling!

I was a gig on 14/10/22. The company (Security and Event Solutions) refused to organise the plethora of different queues that had started, which meant an unfair entry process.

Once inside, instead of organising people into queues inside, everyone was allowed to loiter and block doorways and NO communication at all from the security staff.

Initially one male said we will just have one door and start the queue here (I was first so was ok) but then no comms to anyone else to keep people in a line so there were messy queues and groups everywhere.

Then the rude team leader came over (white, female, 40, slightly plump) and said open both doors and it’s a free for all but don’t let them run.

I suggested well if you had one queue (which could have been organised in the 20 minutes we were standing around in there!), then you wouldn’t have running because it would all be orderly. Moreover people would enter calmly and all soils be fair.

As a professional organiser of humans for 19 years as well as being a queue manager at comic conventions for 7 years I find it extremely difficult that any SIA staff would want or allow such chaos, but unfortunately the female TL was rude and clearly clueless.

When it comes to organising these kind of events it’s so simple: just communicate and the human zombie sheep will do as told. If you don’t communicate instructions or give any instructions then shock horror, it all becomes chaos, and unfairness happens.

Surely a venue would want customers to have a good experience and be happy. Employing such poor companies (well to be be fair the normal staff seemed friendly enough but unfortunately the tyrant female TL was calling the shots and clearly didn’t care about customer service at all!) seems a bad idea if they are not instructed to be good at their role. People won’t come back or say good things if they receive such service.

The venue itself is really quaint. It’s the first time I had been and was lovely. A great little set up with a beautiful view, car park, cafe, toilets, lovely food (5/5 it was so good!).

I am sorry that I had to leave a one star review but perhaps that’s the only way that the extremely poor management for events will get addressed. It’s not difficult to manage 700 people. I frequently do that amount as one person with no loudspeaker or colleagues. It’s easy: just communicate. This company had a plethora of staff but no organisational skills about them at all. This kind of poor organisation would make me very hesitant about coming back again.