Dead Man Walkin'

Tonight is my last night of work at my current casino and I can't wait until its over! On Tuesday, they actually asked me to come into work on one of my days off, giving me a very rare 5-day work week. I took that opportunity to tell my main shift supervisor that I'd be starting a new job next week and will be leaving. Like I mentioned in my other posts, the bosses at this place are the one bright spot of working there, and he couldn't have been cooler about it. Unlike my experience at my break-in joint last year, they did NOT immediately serve me with resignation papers upon hearing the news, he just told me to finish out this week's schedule if I wanted and he'd give me the papers on my last night.

I'm really glad I didn't just blow off these past few work-nights, like both Mikey and Chris said I should have done. First, I'll be in orientation for a full 40 hours next week, which only pays the base minimum wage. So I can use any cash I can squeeze out this week. Also, the fact that I was asked to work on a day off and was encouraged to finish out the week further proves the fact that this place is in dire need of craps dealers. So once again, as much as I hate working at this place, it's nice to help the bosses out a little and give them a couple extra bonus shifts that I could have just stayed home for. As big as out-of-towners think Vegas is, its actually a small town with the casino world being even smaller. So not burning bridges and leaving under good karma could possibly come back to help me at some point down the road. You never know. The one downside to working this weekend is that I just found out that my new place begins its work-week on Fridays, so I probably won't have next weekend off like I thought I would. Oh well.

Going back to the lack of dealers though, just about NOBODY in town is hiring right now.....except for my place! The fact that the players at this place would eat a brand new break-in alive means they can't really hire dealers right out of school. But the fact that the money sucks and you get stroked all night by chain smoking losers means they can't hold on to too many good dealers, myself being an example. For the past week, there has been this kind of creepy Asain guy standing next to me for 20 minute stints at the craps table. He's obviously using his breaks to get familiar with the dice game, but we had no warning he'd be doing this, and he totally invades my personal space while wedging himself between my base position and the box. For anyone that has dealt dice, this is extremely disconcerting!!! Plus, he has NEVER spoken one word while doing this! No questions, no comments and no warnings that he is there. He just suddenly appears, just stares at you and the bets for 20 minutes, and then vanishes.

The last couple of nights at work have been just a little strange. Everyone knows at this point I'm out of here soon, so they kind of interact with me like normal....but not really. The dealers don't really go out of their way to strike up conversations in the break room like they used to. One thing that did happen though was a floor supervisor named James (who almost always sits box on dice) made it a point to sit by me during a break on Thursday night. For some reason, this guy seemed to take a liking to me as soon as I started and he told me that this place never used to be so ghetto! I guess 4 or 5 years ago, the dealers were averaging over $100 per night and the place was full of players you didn't mind seeing every day. Now its just regressed into a flea infested bottom dwelling place, which is made even worse around midnight when the gang-bangers invade to prop the hell out of the hop bets! If I was a green bettor buying in for $500 or more, I wouldn't be caught dead in this place! And so all of the good players are gone.

So my plan for tonight is to get to work early and find out how to return all of my stuff after my shift. I work 8-4am, which means I'll be leaving when the uniform room is closed....and I'll be DAMNED TO HELL if I make the 40 minute round-trip commute at a later date just to turn a couple polyester shirts and a name badge back in. I also have to try to get through the 8 hours without doing anything completely stupid. Last night I got into a verbal altercation with a couple of idiots, but it was more of a preventive action to keep them from killing each other. One nice thing I've learned from years of officiating sports back in Ohio is that you can always sense when a major problem is going to occur about 3 minutes before it actually happens. That's the same sense I got from these two last night. One was playing the pass-line while the other was on the darkside, each making bets intentionally that would cause them to win if the other lost. And not a roll went by without one or two sarcastic comments spewing out. What made it worse was that they were from different ethnic backgrounds, and it was obvious to me that they had an axe to grind because of it. Since the box-lady was doing nothing, I finally interjected for them to "knock it off" and stated something to the effect that I'm a damn craps dealer, not their babysitter! It didn't make them very happy, but the impending fight never materialized either.

So wish me luck tonight. I'm just an 8-hour shift away from starting my one day-off before heading to the Strip, bright and early at 8am, Monday morning for orientation.