"las Vegas" Primiere Reminded Me ...

[JDoors]

I used to have a kajillion stories from work (a casino) but haven't shared for a while, so:

1.) A guard's minding his own business. Notices ... something ... moving in a guy's shirt pocket. A second later a small head pops out, looks around, and ducks back in the pocket.

The guard's not even sure he's seen anything ... "What?" Out pops the head again.

Turns out the guy brought in a baby squirrel he picked up outside. Yeah, he got kicked out. Comes back in after chucking the poor thing in the bushes.

2.) A guy's groping his girlfriend at a table game. Winds up getting kicked off the boat, not for groping his girlfriend, which tends to be overlooked up to a point, but for taking the opportunity, while everyone's distracted, to grope the stranger sitting next to him too. The stranger did not take kindly to being groped. (Ya think?)

3.) A guy complains the music's too loud. To make his point he yells, angrily, every time someone speaks with him. Eventually the spectacle of him yelling while pacing back and forth with his hands over his ears brings forth the casino manager who eventually has the music turned down enough to shut the guy up. Oops, now the guy's mad because some woman ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CASINO are yelling too loud whenever they get a good hand, "Tell them to be quiet!"

Umm, buddy, you know, if you want peace and quiet? Maybe a casino isn't where you want to be!

4.) (This type of escalation of the tale could happen at any workplace) A guy gets fired. I find out a few days later, the first person I hear it from said a Gaming Board Agent (a division of the State Police) met him at the timeclock and escorted him out. Later I'm told TWO Agents walked him out. Then THREE. FOUR. FIVE! We don't HAVE five agents! The next day I hear he was arrested by the local police. Tonight, I'm sure, I'll hear a S.W.A.T. team, with two helicoptors, swooped in to take him away. Maybe backed by the National Guard. Since we're on the water, quite possibly the Navy S.E.A.L.S were involved! Eight people were critically injured! (OK, maybe I shouldn't joke about that, but ... c'mon!)

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Edited September 29, 2007 by JDoors

[JSKY]

JDoors.

Someday we'll have to get together and trade stories about working in casinos..

I spent 20 years working in a underground gold mine and thought I had seen everything. But when they shut it down and I started working in a casino. I couldn't believe the things I have seen. Gamblers.... Now they are a ........strange group of people.

Will put hundreds of dollars in a slot machine. Put if it shorts them one nickel.... Boy-o-boy.

[JDoors]

The only event worth mentioning last night (and yeah, the stories I could tell from thirteen years in the business ... ):

Last night I got called into the no-smoking section, no clue why (I wish-I wish-I wish they would say something like: "Customer assistance with blah-blah-blah" A clue, ya know?). A woman pointed to her machine. They do that a lot; point at the machine, look at you, look at the machine, look at you, then sit back and wait, for what I don't know since ninety percent of the time I have NO idea what their complaint is -- everything looks normal.

So I ask. She's claiming a jackpot. I look ... no jackpot. She points at three symbols that appear in the window and says, that's a jackpot. I look at the glass (where all the winning combinations are revealed) and ... Hmm, it DOES sorta look like a jackpot. Now I have to do a bit of research to see what's going on.

I can't find out why it's NOT a jackpot (and it's not, else the machine would be dinging away).

I find it, it's a multi line machine where combinations can appear on any pay line. The third symbol, while visible in the window, is NOT on a payline. It's a bit confusing I admit, it looks awful CLOSE to a payline, but it's just not on a payline.

She WILL NOT listen: "No! It's a jackpot!" "If you look at the payli... " "NO! It's a jackpot!"

OK then. I call a technician to explain it better than I can (well, since she won't LET me explain it I'm actually just passing the trouble on). By the time he arrives I have convinced her of the error she's made and she unhappily continues to play.

And I still, somehow, naively believe people play for fun.

[JSKY]

ROFL.....

Well thanks

I'm one of those poor technicians that always gets the pleasure of handling them jobs. I even get called at home to come in and set things straight.

One of the things I like about being the tech/manager. For me, the customer isn't always right and I get the pleasure of telling them so. (sometimes you just know they feel 6 inches tall when you're done explaining).

But the pay tables are getting harder and harder to figure out. Anymore, I have to set them up and play them for a couple of days in the tech room just to get the pay tables down just for those reasons.

And you hit it right on the head about the customers and them just pointing at their machines. LOL

In 8 years of dealing with people. I only had to call in our gaming commission twice to have them back me up.

I find the last defense against an irate customer that keeps complaining is to just pull out the ace in the hole.

I point to the glass and tell them that "Any machine malfunction voids all pays and plays". And if they insist that it was a malfunction, that I'll consider the credits they won were caused by the machine malfunctioning and I'll just void out their credits and shut the machine down until I can "Fix" it. When they hear that, they always change their minds and they insist the machine works fine and admit they must be wrong. (really works great if they have a large amount of credits)

[JDoors]

Yup, sounds the same. EXACTLY the same.

As long as we're commiserating, how 'bout when you're resolving an issue and the customer has a family member, friend, or even a total stranger who's trying to "help?" "That's not what happened -- she didn't get her money -- this place is a rip-off!"

Would you just. shut. up. Please.

Wow, I hadn't thought about this one in a long time: Back when we sailed (I'm on a riverboat) a customer approached me as we were docking. He needed ... something. I didn't know what because he only spoke Chinese. Docking is a complex procedure and everybody's busy as heck, trying to find someone who speaks Chinese would've been impossible.

He hands me his business card, so now I have a name. Then he hands me a business card for a cab company. "Blink!" A light goes off; I call PBX, have them call the cab company and arrange to have a cab ready after we dock to pick up a Mr. So-and-so. Somehow through an exchange of business cards and smiles we both knew that everything was arranged as expected. I can't believe we managed to get through that without one word being understood.