The scene reminded me of the Chris Farley character from Saturday Night Live of the motivational speaker that kept pulling up his pants and reminded us he lived in a trailer down by the river. This guy that was sent in to try to motivate the workers, to get us to perk up and smile. This guy must have just gotten fired from the local gay crack pipe store.

Our first alarm went up when the general manager called me into his office. As head dealer representative of the property I was the first one to be informed that all the dealers would be attending a "motivational" class, and that they would all be working six days next week and all would be paid tokes for doing nothing more than attending a "party" for four hours and getting paid to "get happy." Not a good start since the working dealers won't be happy about splitting their already small weekly tokes and I was left to explain it to them while the G.M. packed the Mercedes and went off to Palm Springs for five days. As I explained this to the dealers in our morning meeting the rope was tied and thrown over a tree branch while they tried to find my neck when my shift boss luckily showed up to remind them this was a company "meeting" and that it was for our own good. If they could motivate us it would make us better people, better dealers and all around menches. Although I've learned that somehow whenever a company wants to do something for the workers you'd better watch your wallets, and when it's a casino company, you'd better watch your watches. These guys could steal the grapes from a pair of your fruit-of-the-loom underwear and leave the other fruits without you even feeling it.

If you've ever been to a meeting where the person heading the meeting is a gay guy that's fifty pounds overweight wearing a t-shirt with a big smiley face and a hands-free microphone you know you're in trouble. And when he goes to adjust the volume and can't find the remote unit because it's hidden somewhere under his layers of fat, then he's in trouble. But when he's a motivational speaker and he's starting to make weepy and whiney sounds as he rumbles around under the fat, we're all in trouble.

Running up and down the isles as he tries to whip the workers into a frenzy "EVERYBODY, IF YOU'RE HAPPY TO BE HERE POUND ON THE TABLES!!" Dead silence…"EVERYBODY, IF YOU'RE HAPPY TO WORK HERE, POUND ON THE TABLES." Again, dead silence. "EVERYBODY, IF YOU'RE HEART'S BEATING AND YOU'RE STILL BREATHING POUND ON THE FUCKING TABLES." Two people tap on their plastic glasses. Not a great start. Now the beads of sweat are starting to form on his forehead as the department heads that are standing around the tables like body guards waiting to pounce if anyone gets out of line, or rather, if anyone doesn't get out of line (Being from Chicago this is reminiscent of a union meeting where the union "officials" stand around as everyone else sits in the middle and they "take names" if you're not "participating") or They give their deadpan stare at the silence emanating from the crowd until one meek little office worker finally says "YAH!!" out loud and is followed by twelve others following his lead when they realize the stares they're getting are from their managers. "We're getting complaints from the customers that you people aren't exactly giving gold medal service, you're not smiling out there, you're not looking happy, and we're here to get you happy." "HEY, YOU WANNA GET US HAPPY, HOW'S 'BOUT A FUCKING RAISE." Comes the cry from someone and now voices can be heard "YAH, GOOD IDEA." And I'm thinking to myself "and Jeez, I used to like those two guys, too bad they'll be getting fired tomorrow." "Raises are great but until we start creating happy customers we can't afford to give raises." Yet somehow the managers all get yearly cost-of-living raises that manage to suck up all the profits and leave the rest of us to beg for tips from the customers who are already stretched themselves by the prices of rooms and food and entertainment as well as their own personal cost-of-living increases. It's bad enough that they already can't manage to figure out when to hit a 12 and when to stay on a 17, they're having a hard enough time trying to win a $5 bet and now we need to soak more tips from them or we have to make up the difference when it comes to rent time and paying the outrageous power bills and gasoline bills. They're reminding us not to "overeat" in the employees dining hall but what they fail to realize is a lot of us are eating our only meals of the day and many of us don't even shop on a daily basis for food as we can't afford it. I've seen the porters make sandwiches and stick them in their pockets; some bring plastic baggies and put a salad or a few pieces of chicken to take home as their paychecks won't allow them much more than Rice Krispies and skimmed milk as a main course.

One of our tasks was to walk out to the casino for ten minutes and observe others in our departments that were currently working to see what kind of job they were doing, and it wasn't pretty. I stood near one table where the dealer for whatever reason was really rushing it. She was slapping the cards out of a six-deck shoe and slapping the table with the palm of her hand to hurry the players along. She wasn't even looking at them, just slapping cards and slamming the winning checks from the players into the rack and enjoying every win outright. The players were obviously unnerved by the dealer but continued to play since there weren't any other available spots with that limit. I felt for the players as she was unforgiving. There were two silver dollars behind the discard rack so she wasn't making any tokes either and no wonder she wasn't making any tokes. Another dealer who was dealing Roulette was standing across from the players mucking the losing chips into individual stacks and slamming the stacks of 20 a couple of times on the layout before pushing them into their spot behind the wheel. A move I've made myself a couple of times but you don't want to do it too much because now as I stand on this side of the table it's annoying for the players. Here too this dealer only had a few dollars on the wheel head indicative of his attitude. There's very little if any exchange between the players and dealers and as I stand there it's unnerving to sit at a silent table just pushing your check onto the betting circle over and over in silence.

Coming back to the meeting I'm supposed to report my observance. There's forty other employees listening and as a dealer I'm embarrassed to say what I did observe. But as the head dealer representative I have an open-door policy with every department which allows me to walk into even the casino G.M.'s office without so much as an appointment and say whatever I need to say without fear of retribution. And the dealers know if there's a dealer that's out of line to the players or other dealers and a dealer decides he can't take the complaint to his shift boss, they can take it to me and I'm in that position to bring it to the shift boss myself and actually be heard. So I stood up and just mentioned that I observed that dealers need to be more open and friendlier to the players but what I should have said was they should fire 75% of the staff and just get it over with. These are people that need to be alone. They need to be put out of their misery and put the players out of their misery by doing so. I gotta remind myself it's not an easy job and yet I manage to show up everyday and pretty much have a good time. I find that no matter what the circumstances I can usually manage to break even the staunchest bad mood with a little kindness. This sounds corny but I'm serious. No matter how bad the previous experiences on the tables with the other dealers I can usually manage to get them to smile and more importantly relax on the game. I constantly remind them to take their time in making their decisions when I can see it's obviously a questionable decision. And as people start to feel welcome, as they let their guards down and relax and enjoy just hanging out and playing. The reason these people are here is the same reason, it's their weekend, their vacations, their day off, and they decided to come here to spend it. If you've ever looked at a map of gambling available twenty years ago in Las Vegas and the entire Southwest it was a small dot in Clark County Nevada, today it's a massive area including the entire San Diego County, Los Angeles County, San Bernedino County, and so on and so forth. Our competition is enormous and it reflects in our numbers both in the casino and other related areas. Including restaurants and hotel rooms., and retail sales. But looking at what your selling, all you're really selling in this business is enjoyment. The place they enjoy playing the best is where they gamble, it's as simple as that.

I was never a table game player, I stuck to poker where I didn't really want a dealer with personality, just a dealer that could control the game with 9 other assholes trying to run it at the same time. Once I sat down I was on my own. (Although it did help when the old Mint used to serve up donuts and bagels every morning to the players who managed to make it to daylight.) I remember one night playing at the Golden Nugget from 9 or 10pm until daylight. We closed the table down and I was up around $1,000 for the night, I handed the dealer $100 on top of all the tipping we all were doing all night long. I left and went across the street to the Pioneer Club to finish my drinking and a guy sends over a double Jack Daniels, my usual, and I thanked him. "Shit, you're paying for it." "How do you figure?" I said. "I'm buying it with your tip man, I was your goddamn poker dealer for the last 8 hours. Don't you even recognize people you hand a hundred bucks to?" He said. I didn't even recognize him without the vest and bow tie. But at least he bought the round. And that's the problem today, too many drinkers and not enough people just buying the rounds and having a good time.

Ken Pearlman