Me- anal retentive?

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Omg, I'm the biggest slob in the world (at home)! How can one with an ADDled brain like mine be anal?



You should see my bedroom and the back seat of my car! It ain't pretty, folks.

Wikipedia says:

A person with such attention to detail that the obsession becomes an annoyance to others, and can be carried out to the detriment of the anal-retentive person.

I was bitching in the break room about not getting enough roulette time and Frank, a floorman, said, "You know what you're problem is? You're too anal! Yes, you are- you make sure every stack of chips is so straight it slows your game down and when you are pushing a stack of 100 checks out? Oh man, you stand there and correct the slightest tilt so that you irritate the customers."


My jaw dropped- but then, in a flash, I could see exactly what he was saying. Just the day before I posted on my favorite internet forum the oddity of my personal slobbiness compared to my constantly straightening out things at work.

I think it started at my last casino when I was a pit clerk. As a pit clerk you have a lot of down time and then suddenly a customer wants a $20,000 marker and 2 other floormen ask you to print up a Player's Card for 3 customers and Bam! you have to scramble to get these done in 5 1/2 minutes.

So, when I would be in one of these rushes and something was out of place and I couldn't find it or an item was missing, I would flash with interior rage and want to throw something across the pit. Once I hit a customer in the arm with a stapler- just kidding!

So, quite often on my many down times I would go through the pit straightening things out and making of list of missing items. It would burn me up if I was in the middle of pit 10 trying to get a marker printed up and assembled in 190 seconds while a floorman was standing over me and there would be no damn stapler and I would have to rush over to the next podium to staple the gorram marker- arrrgh!

So, I called my rummaging forays and straightening sessions anger management. The goal was to keep me from letting fly a curse or a stapler in the middle of a rush.

Hence, I became anal retentive.


Nowadays, I remember my early days as a scrub dealer 12 years ago when the floormen used to walk by my table and growl at me, "Fix your rack!" That was a novel concept for my ADDled brain. It makes much more sense for me today.

So, I am constantly pausing my game (only for a few seconds) and making sure all my checks are in stacks of 20 and are only being emptied from the right side of the rack. When I first come on the table I do not look at my customers, I look down and see what sort of mess the previous dealer left for me and start straightening things up. Then I look up at my customers and deal with their "Oh no, Frank's gonna take all my winnings" anxiety. (Players are the most superstitious people- it's really kinda amusing- when I gamble I harbor none of that- it's pure logic to me)

Quite often, on a dead table, I will discover a stack of checks in my rack to be at 19 or 21 (I've learned how to count the checks, difficult as that may seem) and will call a floorman over so I can straighten it out. When the black checks are wrong it drives me nuts.

So there you have it, Frank, the Vegas Baby, is anal retentive. Good God, next thing you know I'll be giving seminars on how to organize your life!
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Mistake corrected, thanks to a star employee

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Wow, not only did he get Swing back- but he got his seniority restored, too!

Vegas Baby sure lucked out. Eric, the Imperial Princess's scheduler, did his usual professionally excellent work and with one call yesterday put him back on Swing for the week after next and on top of that set it up so he got his seniority back!!!


This is not the first time Eric has come through for Vegas Baby. He did a great job accommodating his start at the Imperial Princess too. Every time he called Eric he got a professional and thoroughly competent response. Great customer service.

Kudos to Eric, the star scheduler.

Doh!!! I made a mistake and lost my seniority...

I overreacted to a certain type of stress from an individual source on Swing shift and lost shift seniority.

Instead of taking a floorman's advice and confronting the stressor source politely I fled. I suppose it's a bit of cowardice. The emotional intensity of this stressor colored my vision so strongly that I failed to see the advantages of taking the floor's advice. So, I fled like a whipped dog.

I submitted my request to change to Days. I felt very angry about having to do so for several moments throughout that week. I did nothing wrong (except to refuse the advice and give the stressor a chance to be human) and now I had to lose the friendships I forged and all the other perks of Swing.

A couple days before I found out my request was approved the stressor did indeed become much more human and all the stress ceased. I wondered if it were too late to rescind my request.

Three days later the new schedule came out with me on Days AND with Friday and Saturday off- argh, I forgot we lose seniority when we switch! I had just started getting weekend shifts with the higher tokes, damn!

Well, yesterday as I was discussing my income problems with my international friend who was visiting from across the Pond, I was telling her how I called Eric, the scheduler and found out that there would be no real job time improvements due to any dealers quitting to work at the Palazzo which is opening any day now. Which means I will still only be working 3 to 4 days a week and had to get a second job.

In mid sentence I suddenly realized that my chances of working a second shift were drastically reduced by my switch to Days. On Swing I don't report to work until 8 in the evening. Which gives me about 6 hours from 1 pm to 7 pm where I can work a second job. But on Days my time is too limited to work a typical part time shift. Soooo, I decided I would have to go back to Swing.

Also, it dawned on me that I could not attend family dinners if I worked from noon to 8 pm. And Christmas dinner was so wonderful I really do not want to miss them... ever.

So, that is how Vegas Baby lost his seniority.

Christmas in a casino

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Got my first Christmas card of the season.

It came from the sweetest dealer in Las Vegas, Monica from Vietnam. She is the epitome of fresh and sweet and innocent. Though she's tasted the sadness of widowhood in her 20s she is a spring of goodness and cheer, perfect for Christmas.


Monica