Is there anything better than waking up to a fresh pot of good coffee? I mean, besides waking up like Hef with a bevy of naked bunnies lying about... I guess if there was some bacon cooking over a fire and I was in a tent up on Mt. Charleston, that might be better. But it's too cold for that right now, so I'll just be content to hop out of my own bed, grab a cup of hazelnut happiness from the kitchen, and chill out here at my desk for a bit.
As much bitching as I've done about work over the past year, it seems that we may be turning a corner. First of all, this week has been the best week for tokes (so far) since I've been here in Vegas. Hell, we had a $180 day on Tuesday, which is unheard of. And of course, Super Bowl weekend was fairly lucrative, too.
And then this past Monday night, they implemented a new rule which will easily add a bunch more dollars to my pocket every week. Effective immediately, the Extra-Board part-timers are no longer allowed to work on Friday and Saturday nights. Now, if you're a part-timer, that's a huge kick directly in the balls. But if you're a full-timer, which I am, it means more cash every week.
Here's the thing--The casino only pays dealers around $7 per hour. A few make less, but I myself am topped out at a whopping $7.10 per hour from the house. Of course, the bosses are always quick to say We don't put a cap on your earnings--you have unlimited income potential working here!, but the truth is, the house doesn't pay us shiat. No biggie, that's the deal I signed on for when I got here. So the vast majority of my income comes from tokes.
Now the house can do things to make it easier to make tokes, like offering more higher-limit blackjack, fewer $5 tables, limiting the number of 'flea' games like mini-baccarat, etc. And do some decent marketing, which goes without saying. Of course, I'd *love* to work in a place that only offered $25 blackjack, but that's not a reality-based wish. But I certainly wouldn't miss that $5 Pai Gow table if they got rid of it--it's a drain on our income.
Anyhow, the biggest gripe is that we have way too many dealers on staff, especially on swing shift. And having too many dealers around really dilutes the toke pool. Starting around 1:00 am every morning, a good chunk of our games get shut down. And it has to be that way because 1) We don't have enough players around to keep them open at that time of night, and 2) Graveyard shift starts at 3:00 am, and they don't have half as many dealers as swing shift does, so games *have* to be shut down--they don't have enough personnel on hand to keep the games open. But most of the dealers on swing shift are scheduled from 7:00 pm till 3:00 am, and a handful are scheduled from 8-4. So what do all those dealers do for the last two or three hours of their shift?
Well, the "roadmap" goes out the window, and the games you started the evening on are no longer yours. We go onto a condition known as 'rubber band' (who knows where that term came from) which basically means that each time you come back from break, you check with the shift boss (or whoever is in charge of the roadmap) to find out which game you go to next. The problem is, there are so many dealers still around whose games have been shut down that instead of dealing for an hour and then taking a twenty minute break, you end up doing forty minutes on, twenty off, or even worse, twenty on, twenty off. Or worse yet, the Mother of all pain-in-the-asses, double breaks followed by working for twenty minutes.
Are you beginning to see why it's so hard not to take an early out?
And since the money was so bad last year, some people have become conditioned to never leave early--they have the mindset that it doesn't matter how many breaks they take, they won't leave until they put their eight hours in. Me? If I'm not doing anything at work, it's hard for me to stick around. I hate hate hate just standing around doing nothing at 2:00 am. And we have dealers who refuse to even take the half-hour early out--they still get the full hour of tokes, but lose $3.50 in hourly wages. Man, I take that EVERY time I can get it--but some people refuse, they want that last three bucks (I'm sorry, but my free time, even if it's sitting on the couch eating Cheetos and channel surfing, is worth more to me than that piddly three bucks).
Now, here's the thing--each shift treats their part-timers differently. Back when I was on the Extra Board, if it got slow, they threw my ass out of the casino with no hesitation whatsoever. Some nights I'd go in and get sent home after just two hours. Some weeks I'd be scheduled for five or even six nights, but end up with only 24 hours of actual time worked. Extra Board dealers are used at the casino's leisure, and there's not much you can do about it. Nowadays, however, we have a new shift boss, a new casino director, and it seems like new rules. They'll still send the part-timers home, but good lord, not unless they absolutely have to (Rob's shift, however, is different--they punt his ass to the curb without a moment's hesitation. It's kind of funny, he's gotten to the point that when he gets tapped out to go on break, he hides from the bosses so they can't find him and send him home--if he can dodge them until twenty minutes after the hour, he gets another hour of tokes for the day!)
Since it seems like they don't want to send the part-timers home, all the dealers have been bitching up a storm about having too many dealers on hand. And Friday nights, our busiest night of the week, ends up being a crappy night for tokes because there are just too many dealers taking a slice of the toke pie. Seriously--back when I started, weekends were usually between $175 and $225 per night. For the past several months, they've been closer to $120. Which really sucks, because I work way too hard on those nights to get only a hundred and twenty bucks. Throwing a monkey wrench into the whole equation is the fact that part-timers are not allowed to work over 32 hours per week, and full timers are not allowed to work less than 32 hours per week.
Not only have the dealers been bitching, but it just looks shiatty and unprofessional to have a gathering of about 30 dealers standing around at the end of the pit, waiting for a table assignment like pigeons begging for scraps in front of an old man at a park bench. And every night, sometime after midnight, that's what we have going on every 20 minutes.
So, they did something about it--no more part-timers on the weekends, meaning fewer dealers diluting the toke pool. As a full-timer, I *love* this. However, since Rob is a part-timer, it really sucks for him. They haven't implemented this rule on his shift, yet, but I don't know if they have the same issues on day shift as we do on swing. And the In-my-day part of me says "I don't care what happens to the part-timers--they dicked me around like that for nine months!", but Rob is now at ten months on the extra-board with no full-time openings in sight.
The irony of the whole thing is, if the money improves because of moves like this, there will be no turnover. And it'll take even longer to get off the extra board and into full-time status.
So, here it is, Friday afternoon, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what our tokes turn out like this weekend.
And Rob just took off for the casino to begin his shift as I was typing that last paragraph. Wanna know what the last thing he said to me was?
See ya in three hours!
Mikey
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