Pros
I met a lot of cool people. Saw a lot of great music.
Cons
The Bartenders and Managers are the only ones making decent money. The Door Staff is treated very poorly. They basically pay minimum wage. The old saying "I would pay you less if I could if it wasn't against the law." Dealing with belligerent drunks, cleaning up vomit/poop and working long hours on your feet it's not worth it. And let me explain what door staff is. They are Front Door, Security, Custodians, bus boys/girls, managing staff to shut down the club, and we even sweep the whole neighborhood after long shifts. That is a lot of job titles for one small wage. At one point the Crew Chiefs(Managers of door staff) went to management for raises(since they hadn't had one in a long time). They also went to bat for the Door Staff requesting raises for them as well. Management flat out said no. So about 5 crew chiefs(one that had been there for 18 years!) and a good dozen of some of the best door staff walked. Meanwhile Seth(one of the owners) bought one of the million dollar condo next to the club. So it doesn't seem that money is too tight does it? And I get it, it is a tax write off because he will probably use it to entertain guests/talent. Like to have free time to live your life? Don't bet on it. You sign up for shifts for the month a few weeks ahead of time. If you have set plans for other things in your life, that can change real quick and have to be cancelled all the time. Sometimes as little as 24 hours before a shift, a single shift can change to a double or triple show(2 comedy shows and then one DJ show that can last till 5 in the morning). So, your expected 8 hour shift turns into 13-15 hours. So any plans after work get cancelled real quick. Happened more times than not. The funniest thing is they have the holiday party in February(because the owner is so cheap he doesn't want to pay for a place to rent in December)!? We would get paid different wages for different venues(9:30 Club, Lincoln Theatre, Merriweather Post Pavillion, Strathmore, Echo Stage). At one point management decided they were not going to pay the $13/hr. at Lincoln Theatre just because. Not sure of the legality of this because we run the theatre for the District of Columbia. There may have been something in the contracts about how much they need to compensate the employees similar to Unions. I stopped working shifts at Lincoln when they cut the pay there.