October 21
Well, another night where MCSD rolled on calls left and right and I did nothing more challenging than check ID’s. There was an assault outside, plus the usual collection of drunks, cretins and misfits. I was involved in none of it.
Which is all right. One of the things you learn sports officiating is not to go looking for trouble cause enough will find you without looking for it, so I really didn’t mind.
The first hour I spent roving. Daisy commandeered me for the first half-hour, which we spent patrolling the casino and chatting, which put a crimp in stalking of course, so I begged off after a half-hour and went and manned Eddie – 2 with Rich for a few minutes before going and scoping out the usual suspects finding everyone but Blanca, who was on her weekend, though who I would later see while working the brewery, where she was all dolled up and Blanca all dolled up is one of the most beautiful women on the planet, #2 in power rankings behind the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Estela on graveyard, who is so beautiful she leaves me completely speechless. Blanca was spending some quality time with some friends. None of them appeared to be a boyfriend, thank goodness.
I spent two and a half hours at the entrance to the brewery checking IDs. It never fails; there is always at least one person who is turning 21 on that day and tonight there were no less than three people celebrating the day they can legally purchase and consume alcoholic beverages at the Monte Carlo Brew Pub.
I also got thanked for my service to our country. A couple of young naval officers had presented themselves for admittance. One was a Lieutenant (junior grade) and we chatted about his current assignment and I told him when he was still playing with tug boats in the bathtub I was a quartermaster on the USS Blueback, (SS-581 Diesel Boats Forever, goddammit). Being a naval officer, even an airedale, he knew it was a submarine and he said wow, those were some pretty cramped quarters and I shrugged manfully and said you got used to it and he said “Well, thank you for what you did for us.”
I said he was welcome. I didn’t tell him mine was the most half-assed service in history, though.
After a leisurely 482, I helped Daisy with fills – taking chips from the cage to tables – since there were a few backed up, and ended up having a problem. At the time I didn’t know if it was a major problem or not, though it ended up being no big deal.
The problem was the dealer dropped all three copies of the fill slip in the money box, instead of tearing off the red and gold copies, returning them to me, and then dropping only the white one.
Ken, the pit boss, tried blaming me for it. “Why’d you let her do that?” he scowled, but I’m not taking the broom handle on this one. It is not reasonable to expect your security officer to supervise every aspect of the fill. It’s not my fill, it’s the pit boss’ fill, he’s the one who ordered it; I am merely responsible for safe, efficient delivery to the table from the cage.
The normal procedure is for the pit boss to take the fill slip from the officer, inspect the fill to make sure the correct amount is there, and then sign the slip. He gives the slip to the dealer who also verifies the amount and signs it. The pit boss will then take the slip from the dealer, tear off the top sheet, which is white, and return the pink and gold copy to me. The gold copy gets left with the pit clerk and the pink copy is returned to the cage.
For some reason, Ken signed the slip and then wandered away from the table and the dealer forgot to tear off the white copy and dropped the whole shebang into the money box.
So I’m standing there wondering what the fuck to do. I have not been doing this forever, but this was unprecedented, even in my experience, though as I thought about I decided this could hardly be the first time a dealer dropped an entire fill slip.
I mean, consider this: there have been an awful lot of fills in Vegas over the years. Figure, on average, there are, more or less, five fills an hour, a figure which is probably low. This gives you a daily total of 120.
That comes out to 43,800 fills a year. Again, this figure is probably low.
So let’s say Monte Carlo is an average strip casino in terms of size. There are 20 casinos on the strip and gambling, outlawed in 1909 and legalized in 1931, has been legal for roughly 75 years.
There haven’t always been 20 casinos on the strip, so let’s fudge that figure and say that over the past 75 years there have been, and this figure is more or less pulled out of my ass, an average of 15 casinos on the strip.
15 casinos, on average, gives us 1,125 Casino Years. 43,800 fills per year over 1,125 Casino Years comes out to 49,275,000 fills on the glamorous Las Vegas Strip over the years.
Now, I am not smart enough to come up with that figure while standing at the table with my thumb up my ass wondering what to do, but it did cross my mind that this wasn’t the first fill in casino history and it was unlikely this was the first time a dealer had dropped the entire fill slip into the table box. There are probably procedures in place to deal with this.
There were. I went and told Razul, the pretty foxy head pit clerk and then I went and told the cage and no one smacked their forehead or rended garments or wailed what in the heck are we going to do now. I wasn’t taken out, tied to a post and told to pray to whomever I thought would do me the most good. A form or two was filled out and I got the impression the matter was rather routine and I didn’t even bother 77Rick about it.
Here is your Outside lineup for tonight:
Mary 1 – Redneck Randy
Baker 1 – Jo(s)e
Baker 2 – moi
All three fixed positions, the four-way, the New York, New York gate and the New York, New York garage are manned, so there’s three of us to keep what limited outside space remains safe. The last two nights have been pretty busy, but trouble has avoided me all week and it will probably be pretty boring.
I checked the latest MCSD seniority list last night and we are almost back to being fully staffed. There are now 102 officers, one less than we had when I was #103 in January of ’05. I am now #60, still behind Fred and just ahead, IIRC, White Sox Metzger.