Good morning everyone! I'm bloggin' to you wireless, from the comfort of my living room floor while the highlights of all the weekend's games provide the background noise.
I swear, I've never been so thankful to be done with a shift at work as I was earlier this morning. First of all, we started off on the wrong foot--I found out that as busy as we were on Saturday night, we made only $120 in tokes. That's just sickening. F*cking fleas. Thursday and Friday were good, the rest of the weekend is making a giant sucking sound.
After seeing that, I peeked at the roadmap to confirm that I was scheduled to deal my favorite string of tables--2 Pai Gow games and Deuces Wild. Well, when I left work on Saturday, I was, but yesterday when I got in, there were a few changes. Of most importance was the note on there that said "Mikey to dice".
Hmmm... Mixed emotions, there.
I haven't been scheduled on dice in almost a year, so eight hours at the craps table would be good for me. But dealing Pai Gow is like an eight-hour vacation compared to working in the dice pit.
It turns out that I was scheduled on the 'Reserved' game. It seems that we have an asshat player who thinks he's a big swinging richard and deserves his own table ON CALL whenever he's in town. He may show up, he may not, but we have to keep a table open, with no other players allowed to buy in, and of course staff it with a crew who do nothing but stand around waiting for this jerkoff to show up, all the while killing our tokes.
Of course, he never showed up. He'd been in earlier in the day and made a small fortune, leaving 1% of his winnings behind for the crew. That's another reason the dealers hate the guy--if he loses, we get nothing. If he wins, we get a 1% taste. So if he ties up a dice table for eight hours and makes five grand, he'll leave fifty bucks behind for the entire crew. If he plays all day and breaks even, not a dime.
But the cool thing the bosses did to make the night a little easier was to rotate our three-man reserve crew in with a four-man open table. So basically my night went like this:
40 minutes on a dead game
20 minute break
60 minutes on a live game
20 minute break
Lather, rinse, repeat for the entire night for all seven dealers.
That wasn't so bad, except that we had another one of our regular asshats at the live game thinking *he* was the Big Cheese, throwing money around and ignoring the fact that there were other players at the table. Dealing to him is always a workout, in addition to it being a Zen exercise in patience, because every dealer in the place just wants to tell him to shut the hell up. Luckily, he lost his entire ass this week, and I know we took at least eight grand off of him last night.
The last Five Large was especially tasty, as I was on stick at one point and in the middle of the game he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pimp-wad wrapped in a rubber band and tossed it into the middle of the table, demanding chips. So we had to stop the game and count it all and lay it all out across the layout for the Eye, before shipping four different colored stacks to him.
Of course it was obvious to us that this dipshit was just getting his jollies by showing everyone that he just happened to carry five grand around in his pocket wrapped with a rubber band. Seriously, everyone could tell that he just wanted to draw attention to himself, and there was much eye-rolling amongst the other players. He succeeded in getting his attention deficit temporarily filled, but we took him down to the felt in less than three hours. Heh.
Anyhow, once I got out of there, I was one worn-out little trooper. Any dice dealer will admit that standing on a dead game is tougher on you than dealing a steady game, and at the other end of the spectrum, a busy game with a couple of strokers just wears your ass out. So we had the worst of both worlds going all night long.
Oh, and the shift boss came over and told me that she scheduled me for two more nights of dice next week. I checked the book before I left, and it looks like I'll be earning an honest dollar on Thursday and Sunday night, instead of sitting on my ass in the rice paddy watching the TVs in the bar while I zone out every few minutes during that dead time when the players are setting their hands.
I shuffled out of there, thankful that the workday was over. I made a quick stop on the way home for a tall fountain Coke, and as soon as I got home and the shoes and pants were kicked off, I added a generous portion of Malibu rum to the cup. I put on some swim trunks, slid my tired feet into my old worn-out Nike flip-flops, and grabbed a Black Label from the humidor.
I ambled on down to the hot-tub, and finally relaxed in the soothing heat of the of the water. I lit up that cigar, put my head back, and damn near fell asleep staring at the stars. It was chilly out (mid 50's), so the steam and the blue smoke of my cigar mixed together and climbed high into the nighttime sky before disappearing in the breeze. It was a moment of perfect bliss, reminding me of the last time I thought I wonder what the poor people are doing right now...
Of course, I was humbled a half hour later when I accidentally knocked my cup over, spilling half my drink on the concrete. That's about the time I decided that I'd had enough, and climbed out, toweled off, and made my way back to the apartment.
Now it's time for a well-deserved rest.
Mikey
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