Posted by pYx~the~Wicked at usr-lv-186.rmci.net on September 08, 2000 at 14:17:44:
In Reply to: My other Las Vegas Story about Ben Affleck posted by DPnotDave on September 08, 2000 at 12:01:42:
K, first off, dealers don't get "big paychecks." Dealers live basically in the middle class, depending on whether they have others to support or not. None of them are rich, and it's a terrible job; you have to stand for 8 hrs, straight, with your half hour lunch, sometimes a 15min if you're lucky, tolerate people blowing smoke in your face and coughing on you, etc. It's horrible, my father's been a dealer for 27 years now (currently at the Mirage, since its opening.). Tokes, yeah, are divided at the end of the night, but they never see it the money until it's added on to their paychecks. And, if a casino employee isn't willing to give you certain information, don't take it personally. More often than not, it's company policy. For example, when MGM took over Mirage Resorts a couple months ago, and they were laying off a few hundred people a day, I was showing a friend around and thought I'd ask a dealer in the Mirage what of it... he vehemently denied that there was any kind of situation (the MGM is trying to pay off Wynn's $3 billion debt, hence all the lay offs). I'd just said I'd heard "rumors." But his pit boss was there, and had he been honest with me, he would have been fired on the spot. So don't assume dealers are "assholes" just because they can't tell you everything you wanna know, because they value their job security more than your personal gain of knowledge of visiting celebrites. I almost take personal offence to that.
~Wicked.
p.s. I heard about the Affleck/Damon story too, but it's not easy to confirm, unless we knew the dealers who supposedly received the money on a personal basis.