The State of Vegas Baby

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Vegas Baby is on the edge...

Two unpaid tickets have gone to warrant with another pending. Bank just mentioned repossession of his new car, he cant afford to register it, his bank acct crashed again and is $200 in the hole and the gas tank is empty and his 2 angels are done helping (not that he blames them) and he's got $5 for the next 6 days...

His millionaire ex wife is still hitting him for hundreds a month for back child support. His impoverished ex wife lends him $40 here, $100 there and cheers him on.

Vegas Baby is not a lazy man. Most men and women will roll up their sleeves and get another job like Vegas Mom used to literally scream at him to do. Vegas Baby's been resisting working a second job because bipolar kicks his ass when he does.....

He's had a knife pulled on him before

The last time he worked two shifts a week, when he was still pit clerking at the MGM Grand and going through Imperial Princess's orientation he couldn't recall anything seconds after receiving verbal instructions, his eyes burned for days, mania began to set in, his personality changed and he starting getting violent.... When he informed Vegas Mom about all this she said, "Well, then, you better quit your MGM job...."

Though it makes him cringe, sometimes Vegas Baby has to pause and admit to his innermost self that even though at times he is rather functional and has never had psychosis, nevertheless, he is indeed seriously mentally ill. His ruined Naval career stands as dark testimony to that as well as a dozen other dismal monuments.


Vegas Baby's only 6 months from getting the verifiable 12 month experience the posh casinos want at which point he can get juiced in to his $80,000 plus a year glorious dealing job. But can he make it?

The parent corporation of the Imperial Princess has some rule going and they won't let him transfer to their other properties and they haven't given him more than 3.5 days a week of work for months now.


He's in a dire race to beat the jailers and repo men to the finish line; its getting awfully close and doubts assail him. Then he hit upon a plan as he was adding up the hundreds and hundreds of dollars he needs to get himself out of the hole.

So, he went to the casino boss, Johnny, who originally hired him, an affable upfront guy, who, unbeknownst to him until the day he was interviewed, used to play golf with Vegas Dad when he was a dualie at the same casino years earlier. He told the boss that his finances were going down the tube and he was about to drown and asked him for help getting a full time dealing job at another casino.

He specifically asked to not be promoted to the sister casino where IP dealers got promoted to, because he didn't want to generate hurt feelings of his fellow dealers. But Johnny told him he couldn't lift the blacklist to other properties. He said he would see if he could get him an audition at the sister casino.

Later that day he spoke with Vegas Mom and she said to not worry about what others may feel. That he had to think of himself first. He had to get himself established in Vegas and pay his bills. That this sort of thing happened all the time.

He spoke with Vegas Daughter and she pointed out that any of his dealing friends would do the same thing if they got offered a boost up.


So, perhaps things may turn around for Vegas Baby before he gets thrown in jail or his car is repo'd. It will be about another month before the auditions start. He did go to the Tuscany and audition for a full time job, though he thinks the boss had already ruled him out before he started because he didn't audition him on roulette like he did the other 4 prospective dealers before him.


In the meantime Vegas Baby is looking for a second job at Slots A Fun and Dealer's Employment Agency hoping he can ride the bipolar wave without hurting someone on the road.


If he does get promoted to the sister casino then his income would increase two and a half times. Vegas Baby is crossing his fingers and saying his prayers....
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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

How to Survive and Thrive as a Break-in Dealer

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Okay, so you're on the way to fame and riches as a Las Vegas dealer. Sure you're in a house now where you're earning under a $100 a night usually. But one day if you play your cards right (hahaha) you'll be earning over $70,000 a year.

But how do you make sure you survive the many pitfalls of a break-in dealer? How do you thrive in the meantime?

Here are some simple guidelines that can help you make it to the Big House.



These come from dealers with decades of experience in Las Vegas gaming, so listen up and make sure you stay on the right track.

First Rule: Never correct your own mistakes on a table game.

When you make a mistake on the table always call the Floor over. Remember you're being watched by Surveillance and you're handling thousands of dollars so every move you make is being watched by the Eye carefully.




Even if you've called your Floor over several times already and you don't want to look stupid by calling him over again- call the Floor boss over anyway. You just have to do it.




My dealing mentor who has 30 years experience told me that she's seen dealers get fired for making their own corrections. (I HATE when that happens...) And these are dealers with years of experience. A break-in dealer on probation or with less than a year's experience is even more vulnerable.



Second Rule: Never argue with your Floor.

Just do exactly what they say. He is the supervisor and if anything goes wrong it's on him or her. Plus when things are stressful during a game and a fast decision needs to be made it is best if only one person is making it. There is little room for a quarrelsome dealer in a break-in house.

More to come ...

AND what questions do you have about dealing that you would like to know? Email me at jimbo123@live.com.

Jobs Galore in Vegas!

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Ok, folks, this is the first wave of the great opportunity for Vegas dealers (and all hotel employees as a matter of fact).

Vegas Baby has been very unsatisfied with his financial outlook lately. Having to dodge cops because of not being able to register his car, let alone cover his other bills has been driving him to distraction, not that that is hard to do.

Some days he would just sit at home in his digital cavern doing his own online thing and avoiding going out, not leaving the house once to spare him unnecessary drama and terrible costs if he gets stopped by Metro or the Highway Patrol.

He asked to be promoted to dual rate supervisor/dealer since many of his fellow scrub dealers are doing so and they are getting almost 40 hours of work every week. He then hit up break-in casinos around town, especially downtown for full time jobs. As well as signing up at the Dealers Employment Agency and a Temp agency for telemarketing gigs. None of which yielded any fruit.

Now suddenly he realizes that the first big shift in the dealer employment in the Vegas scene that his Vegas Mom and Dad have been telling him about which will make dealing a very lucrative career in a third of the time it took them is upon him. The first wave of an impending three. Next is City Center and then the Encore.

City Center

Wynn's Encore

Just 3 days ago Vegas Baby planned on settling for 40 hours a week at a break- in casino so he could make ends meet at about $31 grand a year. But as he became aware that the new casino expansion opening was looming and he was coaching a fellow break-in at the Imperial Princess who had 9 months experience to shoot for the top casinos and start making $70 grand a year plus, it hit him.

Vegas Baby has Juice.... Sure he has to learn his games and still hit the pavement to hustle for the good jobs but not like this gal did. Sure she was a cute young and pretty Asian girl, but she didn't have a patron in the industry that's famous for connections to achieve career advancement. He has Juice!



So he called Vegas Mom and introduced the idea of exercising said juice next month. She sputtered and backtracked.... Vegas Baby realizes she doesn't want to be embarassed by her ADDled brained son. And he understands her sentiment. No one wants to look bad to peers they have known for decades.



But Vegas Baby has grown much in the past decade. Sure he got into trouble in his 20s and never held a job for long until his 40s. BUT he did hold a banking job for over 6 years recently and he is sure that fact motivated Vegas Mom to encourage him to get into gaming with the idea of her using her influence for him- something she never would have done 10 years ago when he tried dealing previously withou daring to breathe a syllable about using her juice for him.



So, this is the scoop for the Vegas dealing scene:

The Venetian, a very posh megaresort, is about to double with an expansion called The Palazzo. Where they will be hiring beaucoup dealers- and there will be hundreds of them who will be putting their 2 week notices in around Wednesday, November 28th, he would guess, since Palazzo's Orientation starts on December 11. So he figured the rest of the casinos in Vegas will get the idea that they will have to do massive hiring around Monday, December 2nd. And smart, savvy dealers like him and those who read this blog will be hitting the casino bosses up that Monday.

Sooo, while Vegas Baby will be hitting up break-in downtown casinos and elswhere in town, hell, even Mesquite! he is also gonna probe for positions at his 3 fave casinos all of which generate more than $70,000 a year in income and are truly dream jobs as far as morale and a great working environment go.

Vegas Baby is getting excited!

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