Sorry for not posting yesterday, but sometimes I just don't have much to say. Yesterday was one of those days. Those that know me personally are probably shocked--shocked--to hear that sometimes I have nothing to say, but it's true. For the past ten or twelve years, I have basically talked for a living, and sometimes, especially nowadays, I like to just embrace the silence. On my weekends, I usually spend my entire day on Tuesdays living like a hermit in my room. After five days straight in the casino, it's nice to get away from people.
And when I go back to work on Thursdays, it's my ultimate desire not to have to say a word to anybody until I'm sitting down at my first table. Then I flip the switch back to "ON" and start jabbering and joking basically nonstop for the next eight hours. But that ultimate desire never works out. Unfortunately, the people with their lockers right next to mine live in homes where it seems that nobody ever listens to them, but I'm guessing it's because they all suck at reading body language. Sometimes people, especially guys, just don't want to talk. Especially if it's small talk that accomplishes nothing.
It's especially true on Thursday nights, because that is "Monday morning" for me. And everybody who's reading this can relate because you all have that one moron in your office that you just don't want to talk to first thing every Monday morning.
Anyhow, I don't know how I got off on that tangent, but there it is...
On the other hand, I am coming down with an *extreme* case of job satisfaction right now. They have eliminated much of the dead weight in the casino (even though Rob got swept up in the purges, they got rid of several asshats, too!), and because of the fewer tables available, it seems to have put the squeeze on some of our worst fleas. We eliminated an entire pit of $5 games, which are fine to have in a tourist casino down on the Strip, but in a locals casino, having cheap games is like ringing the dinner bell for every degenerate gambler living in a trailer on Boulder Highway. So a lot of them have been weeded out.
And now we're starting to get some bigger action, too. The dealers on my shift used to complain about having to deal 'BJ 1' and 'BJ 2' all the time, because they were two $25 double deck games. Now everyone seems to like it because they've started dropping a lot of tokes on those two tables. And just tonight, a guy came in who I'd never seen before, and he was playing two hands of Pai Gow at $200 per hand, plus having me up for $5 on both hands every time. In Chinatown, that's what we call an Uber-George. Pai Gow is a tough game to make tokes on, and this guy was very good to us.
It also helps that we are busier much deeper into the shift every night, too. And our tokes have improved vastly over the past two months. I just got my W-2 form the other day, and found out that in 2007, I made $6000 less than I made in 2006. It was a bad year. (Could any of you imagine having to take a $6000 per year pay cut and keeping your job?) I've mentioned previously that we didn't have a single day of tokes over $200 in *all* of 2007. We've already had two in the past two weeks. And one day this week was one of the top five days for tokes ever since I've been there. Hell, even on Monday we made $175, which has been unheard of...
And last night, before I left at 2:20, another gal and I went around emptying the toke boxes off of the dead tables, and managed to fill up one of the main 'treasure boxes' completely before the main toke drop happened at 2:40 am. That *never* happens. So I'm sure we made good money again last night. All I can say is, Thank you, Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's about damn time!
But just like a pack of dogs who have been beat down too much, every cynical dealer in the joint is hoping that "they don't do anything to f*ck this up!" Hey, nothing good lasts forever (just ask the dealers at the Wynn), but I'm hoping to make hay when the sun shines, get out of debt, and stop having to live paycheck to paycheck like I did for most of last year.
Still, I don't think they're done with the cost-cutting measures just yet. I heard about another floorperson on the graveyard shift getting canned yesterday, along with another dealer or two. So everyone is still kind of walking on eggshells, hoping that the good times keep rolling, and that nobody else gets fired.
But just as I was sitting down at my second table for the evening, one of the bosses came over and put the fear of God into me. He said in a stern voice, Mikey, go see the shift boss on your next break.
Doh.
That's never good news.
I sweated for an hour thinking of all the stuff they could have on me, kinda like a kid going to the principals office. You know you're probably guilty of all kinds of shiat, but you don't know which stuff they know about. And I'll admit, sometimes I'm a total smartass at the table, so I was guessing that I probably offended somebody. (My first guess was earlier in the week when I was dealing Pai Gow, and turned over a hand with a pair of Queens on the bottom and a 10-8 on top, and I said Ooooooh, topless ladies! Just like at the Rhino! We got topless ladies at the Pai Gow table!)
Anyhow, it turns out that it was all for naught, I just had to go sign a form showing my current address, phone number, and email address, and another affidavit certifying that yes, I was still a white male. Whew...
But I guess I shouldn't have much to worry about. I get a lot of positive comments from the players, all the floorpeople like having me in their section because I rarely screw things up, and I drop a lot of tokes. Oh, and in three years of being a total smartass, I've never once been written up. And almost everybody in that joint has been written up for some sort of nonsense at some point.
Anyhow.
In the past, I've written at length about how the casino business is so different than any other business in the world. You just can't leave one job for another, and expect to be full time. Whenever you move to a new casino, you start all over on the Extra-Board as a part-timer. And that sucks, because it's tough enough to budget when you're making tips for a living, but then factor in the crumminess of not knowing how many days of work you'll have from week to week. Oh, and there's that whole thing about not having health insurance or any other benefits, either. So it's totally like having the neon handcuffs. Once you're in a decent place full-time, it's *really* tough to move on unless you get on with a brand-new top-tier resort.
But you know what the kick in the balls is that comes with that? Bet you didn't know this dirty little secret. Places like the Wynn and Palazzo and such over-hire like crazy when they first open. Better to have too many dealers than not enough. So they'll need about 400 or so dealers to be fully staffed, but then they'll hire 600 or more. And guess what happens 90 days after the place opens for business? They cut loose 200 or more unlucky souls. Granted, when you hire that many people, some toads slip through that you'll want to get rid of, but a lot of those people quit very good paying jobs because they saw the dollar signs, and then a couple months later, they're back on the street, begging for their old jobs back. It really sucks.
And back when times were so bad at my casino a few months back, and every dealer I knew was applying for a job at the Palazzo, they all thought I was nuts for not trying to get a job there. I *knew* what would happen. And I'm sorry, Sheldon Adelson might be a billionaire, but he didn't make his billions in the casino business like Steve Wynn did, so his properties aren't nearly as smooth when they open. And they opened the casino before they opened the hotel, so they had no players for the first several weeks. The hotel still isn't completely finished, so they're not getting near the traffic in the casino that they expected. So guess what--there are a bunch of former Palazzo dealers out looking for jobs right now. Luckily, I am not one of them.
Now, here's my dilemma.
I paid my $800 tuition for Poker Dealer School. And I've been going on and off for the past two years, mostly when I became fairly disgusted with the way things were going at work. I've had offers to deal poker, but I've had to turn them down because they interfered with my full-time job. If I had taken them, I would've taken a sharp pay cut immediately, and lost all my benefits too. And now that I have a regular truck payment and insurance of over $500 per month (when you add them together), in addition to all my other obligations, I just can't afford to take a poker job unless it is the *perfect* situation. Basically, I'm kinda trapped. I'd need to find something that was part-time on day shift (I can't just switch shifts at my casino, either. I'm pretty well stuck on swing shift for the foreseeable future), and it'd have to be someplace that paid well enough to make it worthwhile, while also having a shift structure that ended at 6:00 pm.
That's asking a lot.
I've always thought that the worst mistake I made when I came here to Vegas was listening to everyone who said "Learn how to deal dice first, you'll always find a job". Hell, when I got here and was sitting in dice class every day, the poker boom was just hitting Vegas, and the folks at MGM Grand came down and hired everyone they could get their hands on for their new poker room.
Those guys are making BANK now. And you know what? That's the job I'd want the most. Ideally, I think the perfect situation would be to work there full time in the evenings, dealing poker at MGM, and then pick up a part-time day job and a top-tier place like Red Rock, Bellagio, Wynn, or Caesars dealing dice or Pai Gow three days a week. A guy can dream, can't he?
I just don't see a clear path to get from here to there. And now that we're doing so much better at my current place, well, it makes it even tougher. We're on pace to have a very big year, if all things stay the same. But I don't want that $800 tuition to go to waste, and I'd really like to deal poker too.
And no, before you ask, I cannot deal poker in my current casino, and if I go to any other casino in the 'family', I'll have to forfeit my current job, go back to the Extra Board, lose my benefits, yada yada yada... Basically, if I get a poker job, I'll have to work two jobs, at least for several months.
So, I'm not quite sure what my next move is. The 'poker season' is ramping up again, and casinos are looking for dealers. And for whatever reason, I seem to be blacklisted at MGM/Mirage properties. Twice I've gone down to do their screening interview kabuki dance, and both times they've basically blown me off after spending an afternoon jumping through all of their hoops. It's not like I'm not well qualified to work for them...
I dunno. Can I see myself working at my current place for the next ten years??? Man, I don't know. It's a nice place, the bosses are cool, the money is ok, the benefits are good... I *do* know that I like the casino business, and I really love living here in Vegas.
I guess we'll just have to chill and I'll revisit this again after the March Madness circus rolls back out of town next month.
Mikey
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