You are the guys who stand at the tables and collect the same toke envelope (just a figure of speech now days since tokes come on checks instead of cash envelopes, thanks to the IRS.) You are the guys who can't seem to speak to the customers, they're a nuisance to you, you guard that rack of chips as though anything you lose out of it will come out of your paycheck, like God will strike you dead, then you'll lose your job if you give away a stinkin' five dollar chip.

You can't look the players in the eyes and smile and be sincere about it, you don't feel that you owe the players anything. You really think it's the casino's that pay you. Well I'm here to tell you different. IT'S THE GODDAMN CUSTOMERS THAT PAY YOU PAL.

Sure if everyone wins you'd probably be out of a job, but not before you'd be taking four figure checks to the bank every week before they closed you down. I make more tokes from the players that eventually lose than the players that win. Let's face it, that covers most of the players right there, but plenty of players lose and NEVER get ahead, yet some of them still manage to push out a dollar or two as a "TOKEN" of appreciation for a job that, if not well done (where the player wins) but at least the attempt to make the player feel that he hasn't just had his pockets picked, his gold fillings yanked out, and his entire savings account wiped out while he was just sitting and having an innocent drink and gambling a little.

If that's not bad enough, you have to stand there and not a fucking word out of your mouth the whole hour you're dealing the game, then the player finds out the toke he just gave me after telling me "Thank God, a dealer that actually talks and has some personality, boy I hope you don't have to share my tips with that last guy." WAS just shared EQUALLY between us. Now imagine how hard it is for this person to have to WANT to tip me but know they're also giving the same amount to the last dealer(s) that didn't even say "drop dead" before he wiped them out without even a smile or a thank you when he left the table.

Here's how it happens, since you've never heard this before. I come on the game and look at the players on the table in the eyes and say "Hi, or just Hey" if there's a few players I'll ask "How you guys doing?" then as if a light just came on, they all look up simultaneously and say to each other "Huh? Is he talking to us?" then they look at my nametag and someone will always say, "Ken, we just can't believe you're talking to us, the last guy didn't even say hello or goodbye or thank you or look up or anything. He just took our money like he'd loose his job if he lost a hand." I'd say "Well maybe he's just having a bad day or someone just yanked his chain before you came." They'd say "No, it was more like maybe he just didn't speak or understand English, like the only thing he knew how to say was "change a hundred"(that's with the accent of course).

Then he claps off the game and turns to the floor man and says "So who you bettin' in the Superbowl, I'm laying the points and parlaying the second half " sounding like he just graduated from freakin' UCLA. Then the first thing he says to me is "So how much did we make last night?" My pat answer is, "Well I made about $300 but you only made $6 so I guess together we made about $75"

The casinos tell you to get the hands out, I'm telling you it can be done while being friendly at the same time. Some of you can talk and deal at the same time, most of you can't even deal, but don't tell me that even if you don't speak or understand English, you don't know the language of being friendly the language of decency. You don't know that a smile means you understand, a nod of the head and a smile make them think you're glad they played a good hand, or maybe that you wish they would have won if they didn't, and thank you with even the worst accent still comes through if you try hard enough. A damn smile is the same in every language, every nationality.

In a world where we're continually thrown together in a melting pot of humanity, some of who we like, most who we don't like, who we're forced to live amongst and just can't seem to get away from. A world where the population is moving into the same places continually jammed together and stacked on top of each other, and are forced to deal with ever increasing stress of living amongst so many people, so many people different from us, different cultures, governments, religions, and worse, different ideas of how to treat people with civility. But you're living in a civilized society now, and when you're sharing the same money with me, I can tell you "THIS IS AMERICA PAL, SHAPE UP OR GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR BUSINESS GODDAMNIT!!"

-Ken Pearlman