I've worked almost every music industry job — coat check is my favorite
I started working in the music industry shortly after I entered college, and despite threatening to leave for over a decade, I am still very much part of it — whether that be waist or ankle-deep, involved as one could be or just hanging out on the peripherals.
I started out as a music writer and have since tried on almost every hat that’s been offered to me. I’ve traveled and performed as a techno DJ. I’ve been an experimental modular synth artist. I’ve put on parties, workshops, classes, and concerts. I’ve been both the talent and the promoter. I’ve founded and operated an experimental record label. I’ve bartended. I’ve worked as the door, guest list, and merch girl at countless events. I’ve worked behind the scenes at music festivals. I’ve interviewed artists like Gerard Way and Clams Casino, reviewed concerts, albums, and more. There’s only one role that floats to the surface, though, when I am asked what my favorite is — and that’s working at coat check.
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It’s an odd choice, perhaps, but it’s mine. I’ve done coat check at clubs and venues, and still, it remains a faithful friend and a role I’m always happy to take on. A friend in need wants someone to take over for the night? Count me in. The club needs an extra person for a busy evening? I’m there. Coat check is a job I love and look forward to, and one that I’ve always had the most fun doing. Here’s why after over a decade of working in the music industry, coat check will always be my favorite role.
Coat check is a pretty easy, enjoyable gig
Some nights suck. Sometimes people are rude, don’t follow the rules, snap at you, or cause a scene. But to be honest, that’s unfortunately something that’s to be expected from most any job, and coat check is no different.
Overall, coat check is one of the easier jobs in a venue, given its limited pressure and urgency. It’s not particularly messy or dirty, and, most importantly — it’s straightforward. Nobody has an “order” that you have to remember, and it’s up to the customer to keep their ticket safe in order to get their jacket back. Us? We’re just the middle men in a glorified locker room that also makes conversation. Ultimately, it can feel like you’re really just here to hang out.
At concert venues, coat check is typically only busy before the show and after, leaving a fairly solid block of time that you can use to chat with your coworkers, read a book, do other work, or even watch the show if someone stays behind. Of course, there’s always the people watching, too. God, the people watching — the sweaty, intense, magnificent people watching! From behind a counter, concerts are a jungle.
Coat check is like a sociological adventure
One time when working at coat check, a man gave a $50 bill each to me and the two girls I was working with. He also gave $50 each to the two girls who were in front of him in line. He had somewhere to be urgently, and needed to cut the line. Another time, we all watched as a guy put his hand into the tip jar to take back his $2 change.
Like bartending, working coat check offers a plethora of stories, tales, and opportunities to observe humanity when it’s at its most honest and raw — in line before and after a concert. Few things are more humbling than coat check, I’ve found. It’s truly the great equalizer: Everybody has to go there at the end of the night, everybody has to wait in line to be handed their coat, gloves, and scarf. Even then, a grown man could suddenly develop the temperament of a kindergartener.
Coat check can be humanizing
Sure, some club and venue patrons can be rude and horrifying, but many are also kind, funny, generous, and friendly. Some just want to talk, having come to the show alone and looking for somebody to share the moment with. Oftentimes, coat check is the quietest place in a venue, and when the band or artist is playing, it becomes empty and desolate, so it can be the perfect spot for a solo stranger who’s hoping to find an interaction.
More so, people leave the show to come to coat check with their aches and pains, their demands and complaints. Sometimes, we’ll toss them a free bottle of water. Other times, we’ll see them tossed out.
You can also learn a lot about a person from their jacket, and how they discuss it around you. “It’s a very expensive jacket,” a lady told me the other night. “Make sure nothing happens to it.” That same night, another woman left her jacket completely behind.
As a bartender, you see patrons progress from sober to drunk over the course of a night; as a door person, you really only see them once, unless you catch them stumbling out at the end of the night, too. But coat check bookends the club and concert-going experience, and when you work there, you can see the changes in people from the beginning to the end.
Recently, I worked coat check at a death metal show in Toronto. The show had been sold out for months, so the audience was buzzing, their black and red outfits almost aglow with excitement. The line for merch went out the door, and after making their purchases, many deposited them with us for safekeeping. When I asked one of the young attendees why this show seemed to be such a massive deal, he said the band had just gotten a new vocalist who everyone loved. So, while I may not know every show that comes in, I get the chance to know a bit through the shining eyes of the patrons.
At the end of the night, I bring the people their jackets and wait for them to leave so that I can also go. I collect the tips and the stories like a pseudo-anthropologist, uncovering the truths about humanity. I think of that saying, “Sober thoughts are drunk words,” and I watch the change, the peeling of the layers, from the reserved people who come in at the beginning of the night to the hyperactive and buzzed folks leaving. I may have worked in the music industry for a long time and even worked better paying, more interesting jobs, but nothing will ever top the deeply, yet underrated, human experience that is coat check.
