Can you make an exception?

I have been asked by many how come bouncers are so stubborn? Why be so rigid and stiff towards those who don’t feel like following all the rules. Well, my answer is always the same – for every exception one would make, ten more would crop up like magic mushrooms after Chernobyl.

Bouncer game is as old as the world itself. There have always been those tasked with enforcing the rules to even the playing field. Even if just for show. As long as there have been some kind of standards for addressing human behaviour, there have been those tasked with upholding them.

Same goes for the door. In order for the ground control team to do their job properly, it is the absolute must that the ones on the door do not deviate from the rulebook. (Even if it is almost nonexistent). For every standard set, there ought to be a reason, which in turn leads to a reasonable explanation for the execution of the rule. If one tasked with upholding the rules lets his guard down, pretty soon the existence of the rules will become meaningless at best.

You don not make exception unless there is a rule that allows you to do so. And nine times out of ten this rule does not exist precisely because it undermines the ability of the functional application of the rules as a framework. Say you make an exception to one, and some time later another person comes, but this time with slightly different reasoning for the necessity of the exception. How thin would you stretch the canvas before tearing it to shreds?

If we use legal system as an analogy, there are good reasons why for example in the so-called “civil law system” rule of analogy is applied cautiously if at all. How do you balance the scales, so that neither rules nor exceptions would not outweight one another? Unfortunately there is no good solution, because every case is “a thing in its own right”. Therefore, when we have to choose between two evils, rigidity seems lesser of the two.

Otherwise nightlife would become something akin to walking on the edge of the nietzscheesque abyss, but without the catcher hiding in the rye for cases of near-fall experience. Night is tough, and night is ruthless. Therefore only possibility to survive it is to be equally rigid and scrupulous.