The Madness

If you are still checking into this blog every once in a while, God bless you! I haven't had much of anything to write about lately, and haven't done any entries since the Olympics for crying out loud!

Here's the deal at work in the casino. The first part of this year was barren, both in money and shifts. It took until the last week of February to get a 5-day work-week, and I think there have been more 3-day weeks than 4-day weeks. Tips have pretty much been terrible the first 6 weeks of the year.

Enter the madness.

Last week began the college Spring Break season. Now college spring breakers are NOT known for their bountiful tips. However, many people ask me how we make money this time of year. The answer is simple: volume!

The national rodeo in December, NASCAR weekend, and college spring break are all the same. As a group, they just don't tip. But what little amount of tips we can grind out from all of them, they add up just by pure volume! The drawback, of course, is that we work our asses off for every dollar we make! And day shift isn't even immune. Usually, the drunk-ass-doucebags don't really present themselves until only an hour or two before we leave, leaving swing shift to clean up the mess and drop the majority of the tokes! But this time of the year we see spring break clash with St. Patrick's Day which coincides with March Madness. Talk about a perfect storm!

The tokes this past week or two have been incredible. Normally, we can expect about $60-$70 in tips during the middle of the week. An $85 Wednesday is considered a windfall! Yesterday (Wednesday the 10th) we made $104! We were in the $90s the two previous days and I made $146 on Sunday to get my week started right! For the first time EVER at my current casino, I am coming extremely close to accumulating $1000 in tips alone for the 2-week pay period. Chump change to the Bellagios and Wynns of the world, but pure gold to us!

If you recall, I was forced to swing shift at this time last year and toiled away on the foresaken shift for about 2 months. Not so this year! I'm still solidly on day shift, and I just finished off a 5-day week. Guess what, tomorrow starts the next work-week and I'm on the schedule for SIX days! Casinos HATE HATE HATE paying overtime, but they're trying to open as many tables as possible these days, and the struggling part-timers are having a feeding frenzy on all of these open shifts! We all know that we need to make as much money as possible during March and April. Once June gets here, the shifts dry up and its back to 3-day weeks!

Danielle predicted burnout, and I tend to agree. Right now I'm in the middle of working 11 out of 12 days, and that streak will probably go further depending on next week's schedule (comes out Saturday). I'm assuming I'll be working throughout the first two rounds of the basketball tournament, which means I'll be working, at least, 14 out of 15 days! The T2V Message Board buffoonery is probably completely out of the question, unless they all show up at my table next week!

And to top it all off, I've come down with a case of the casino funk again, just like during this time last year. Casino funk is basically a cold, but it just NEVER goes away! I can almost expect to suffer from it for the next month or so, on and off. Most dealers know exactly what I'm talking about. It's not the kind of cold that kicks your ass and causes you to miss work. But I just always have a nagging scratchy throat, sinus issues, muscle aches, etc. When you're working almost every single day and exposing yourself to unkempt douchebags and their nasty smoke, its very hard to completely recover from a case of casino funk.

So wish me luck these next few weeks. Danielle and I are trying to plan a four-day weekend away from the madness in mid-May. Our plan is to go up to Zion National Park in Utah and do some hiking.