From your example, I take it the writer would like to emphasize how random it is who gets into this club. A perfectly valid bit of storytelling. This could be made clearer by putting a line of people in front of the player character. That way, before you reach the entrance you see that half the people are being let in, while the other half are being refused for no good reason and are complaining about it. When you get there, you've got a 50/50 chance of being let in with no problem. If you're not allowed, you have to go around and climb in from the back. So you're getting to the same place in the end, but which way you get there depends on your luck.
What has this accomplished? It creates a moment, while you're waiting on the line, in which you genuinely don't know whether you're going to be let in. The confidence that "He likes me, so he'll let me in." is a valid emotion as well, but not having that confidence, not having that sense of control changes the emotional thrust of the scene. Rather than going over your past actions in your head to reassure yourself, you're silently cursing the idiocy of the guard. Neither one of these is wrong, and a good writer should see both options in front of him.
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