The Goose At The OVT, Selly Oak

Me and my friends used to frequent this pub. It had good prices, so we liked it.

This was until the other day when we were playing on the quiz machine and won 11 pounds and were very happy. All we needed to do is finish our remaining credit off, then the machine will allow us to take our winnings out. So we were losing on purpose because it was close to closing time, and this way we could get rid of the credit left and thus collect our winnings.

The problem began when a member of the bar staff that was waiting for us to leave said that we had to leave straight away, even though it wasn't past closing time.

We pointed out to him that it wasn't closing time yet and that we had 11 pounds in the machine and that we will leave as soon as we got our money.

All of a sudden, he got really angry and insisted that we leave straight away. We, in turn, said that we will leave very soon and we explained to him that the machine won't let us take the money until we lost our credit. Bear in mind that at this time it was still before closing time.

He then lost control and started shouting at us telling to leave, and them he immediately proceeded to grab one of my friends and put him in a headlock! We were all very surprised and alarmed by this. I asked the guy to calm down and to let go of our friend. He then twisted round and threw our friend on the floor and then attacked one of my other friends. I intervened and broke up the commotion by physically pushing him off my friend and then the manager arrived in a hurry. At the sight of the manager we relaxed and thought everything will soon be settled and we could go home. Little did we know that the manager himself would turn to attack us! We tried to defuse the situation but they both got progressively more violent and we realised that if we fought back we would be the ones to get in trouble with the police because we had been drinking and they were the pub staff, who the police would sympathise for. We kept as calm as we could in that kind of situation and we backed out of the pub. After we got out the manager stood in the doorway and began to taunt us by calling us names and saying that he wanted to fight my friend. We were very angry at him, but we said nothing and walked away towards the taxis.

My extended family work in pubs. Some as staff, some as gaffers, some even own pubs. I have never ever in my 32 years of age have ever seen anything like this. It was pure rage directed at us without provocation. We've been going to that pub for almost a decade and we didn't do anything wrong. I am writing this to let everybody know what happened there and who was responsible, so that everybody is completely aware of what sort of people operate that pub.

So much for customer loyalty and basic fairness. I guess, in retrospect, I feel quite sorry for them. Especially for the pub manager, who should know better than to provoke customers who have been drinking and were outnumbering them by 4 people. If we were less restrained we would have beaten the crap out of him and his stupid barman, but we had the intelligence to know better. One day his luck is going to run out and he will learn a very hard lesson indeed.

We will never set foot in there again. After all, there are plenty more pubs to go to in Selly Oak.

8 May 2008 02:15