skip cover charge with elevator trick (NOT)

Cover is $20 at this SC. No drink minimum. I went to a SC where in the lobby there are 4 doors. Door 1, to sidewalk. Door 2 to main floor. Door 3 to coat check (dead end AFAIK) Door 4, elevator to roof smoking area. Lobby has the cover cashier (tonight cover cashier is the SC manager due to slow night) and a bouncer checking IDs and a coat check woman behind coat check counter. Cover cashier and coat check are on opposite walls of the lobby. I walk into this SC, I see a man, egh, I want to say arguing, but it is a civil, not screaming, not agitated tone, so I'll say "a man talking". He doesn't have a wrist band, but he says he doesn't need one when the manager asks to see it in the middle of the lobby, he tells the manager his friends are already inside and he is with a group and he already checked in his jacket into coat check. Manager says he needs a wrist band. Customer then claims, he doesn't need to pay the cover and get the wrist band because he just "came to smoke" and only use the roof and he doesn't need a wrist band because the cash register counter where you are asked to show your wristband is next to the door to main floor so the wrist band is for main floor, and the elevator to roof is "free" for everyone because it is in the lobby before you reach the cover cashier. The manager tells him "are you coming in or going?". Customer says he can't go because of his friends. Manager tells him "are you in or out? make up your mind". Customer says I'm going, goes to coat check, gets his jacket (yeah, he paid $6 for coat check already), and leaves out the door to the sidewalk. I then pay my cover uneventfully. Cheap motherfucker or what? I've never seen a LD on roof at this SC, and there is a always bouncer on a stool on the roof. Sometimes strippers and customers go together to the roof, but its just to smoke and drink bringing their own glasses with them in the elevator. This SC has no waitresses, only bus boys that collect empty glasses. I really dont know what this customer was trying by trying to say the roof was free, or his angle was come out of the elevator, and claim he is a customer, or that cash register person wont remember his face and will assume he is a customer because he came out of the elevator and not the sidewalk door?