giggles & grind

A random topic to write about that came to mind today was my time on the Player Development team of a casino when I was in my 20s.

I started the casino as a slot attendant, which was fine, but nothing that was going to keep me interested. It was my first full time job as an adult and I made enough to live off of, but I know I wanted more. Not just more money, but more challenge and excitement.

Then the customer service desk had an opening, so I applied there and transferred over. It was a bit more interesting, but it didn’t take long for me to yearn for more.

A couple of the people that worked at the front desk also helped in the administrative offices for the Marketing department to help the directors of marketing with the pee-on work. I was very interested in being behind the scenes, as a puppet master, instead of in front of the public as the puppet.

One of the gals I worked with got pregnant and right about the time she was getting ready to go on maternity leave, I caught a manager in marketing at the desk one day and offered to help out with what she did while she was out on leave.

That tiny amount of initiative got my foot in the door, and it really didn’t take long to get a full-time position in Marketing, off the casino floor. It was my first big-girl job, and I couldn’t have loved it more.

The manager that gave me the opportunity mentored me for a few years. He understood my personality, learned my strengths, and focused me on projects I would be the most successful. One of the first things was communication and training. I learned the casino’s new software program that every department touched, and then I trained a mass amount of people on the system. The casino averaged around 600 employees, half of whom touched the system.

It was a major project, and I killed at it.

The next step was to create a newsletter that, if I recall correctly, was issued every few days. This was an effort to engage all front line staff on everything happening within the casino. This helps prevent a customer stopping a worker to find out that day’s buffet price, or bingo times, or promotions, and getting the dreaded “I don’t know” answer. This was a game changer.

Once this kicked off, I started customer service training. I attended the monthly new-hire orientation, which was anywhere from 10 – 30 people at a time. No surprise, the casino had a major turnover rate. I mean, there was a long of long term employees, but for the entry level positions, it was rare that people lasted long, especially the younger ones.

I held training courses as well beyond what I did at the orientation to really help strengthen customer service skills. It’s true what they say “those who can’t do, teach”. I was an excellent teacher, but I was shit for actually providing customer service on a consistent basis. I do not have an energetic attitude naturally, I lose energy quick being around people too long, I don’t naturally smile (post child for RBF), and I get inpatient with stupidity and greed, which is a majority of casino patrons. Sorry–not sorry.

Anyways, then my boss decided to launch Player Development. This was an approach he took to help retain our high rollers once he got wind that a new casino was going in that would have a direct impact on over 50% of our revenue, because those players would be driving past this fancy new casino, built right off the freeway, just to journey to our smaller, old-news casino that took forever to get to. Well, it was only 15 minutes off the freeway, but when you have a bunch of money burning in your pocket, every moment counts.

So, brings me on board and assigns me to work with one of the most brilliant minds that casino has ever seen, Mr. C (I won’t share real names unless I get approval ahead of time). He worked in the IT department and wrote computer code. My job was to design, his job was to create. Together, obviously with the direction of what my boss wanted, we designed the ultimate player tracking system. Specifically to provide our (soon to be hired) VIP hosts. And then, naturally, I was tasked with training everyone how to use it.

It was beautiful.

Next, a consulting company came in and helped us learn about player development. Ultimately, we were working on building a team of hosts that would squeeze every penny they could out of our top players. We learned about everything that motivates players to gamble, what attracts them, what keeps them playing longer, other incentives to get them to come. Basically, anything we could do to manipulate them to gamble, we learned. And then we learned how to study them, take that data, and assign them to the right host. It was all calculations, reports, studying, numbers—-my most favorite of things. My jobs was to maintain training, keep the player tracking system ever evolving, reassess current and new high rollers, reassign them to new hosts as needed, and help build events that drew them in.

One of the most incredible things about my time in that job was when we hired one of the most famous hosts in the US, possibly the world. He had written a book about all of this, that I had previously read, and we hired him to come in and polish us even more. Of course, he signed my book. Where that book is now, I have no clue. But, it was just, super!

After a few years, I became a monster. I worked around the clock, regardless if I was home or not. I lived and breathed my job. I had a work phone I carried everywhere, because if a host needed approval to comp something beyond their authority, I had to review the win/loss of that patron and determine if there was any ROI (return on investment). Our hosts truly adored their players, but to me, these people were just ATMs for the casino, and my job was to dehumanize them and make decisions based on what was best for the casino, not for the player.

Unfortunately, although I was remarkably good at it, once I became pregnant with my youngest child, the stress took its toll on me, and I became more conscious of what I was doing. I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. I was, for lack of better terms, a drug dealer. Not the one on the street peddling the drugs, the one that all the dealers came to. So, may I was the supplier then? I don’t know, but I’m sure you get my point.

There was a breaking point when one of our long time players became ill and ended up in the hospital. Her host called me to see if we could send flowers. I asked the likelihood of this player returning, and her host expressed that it wasn’t likely she’d even leave the hospital, not to return home at least. So, with that, I had to do my job, and I told her no. If we weren’t going to get any more of her money ran through the slots, then we weren’t wasting any money on flowers. No ROI, no deal.

That was one of the defining moments where I truly felt I had sold my soul to the devil. The worst thing about it was, I didn’t even have a big fancy office, or a management title, or a huge paycheck. I was just good at it. And I earned it on my own. Nobody handed it to me, nobody encouraged me in my personal life. It was me. And it was really hard to live with myself once I realized what I was good at.

My pregnancy got to the point that I also prematurely delivered and the doctor put me on bed rest. Did that stop me from going into work? Absolutely not. If my boss didn’t know what my doctor said, then nobody was going to force me to slow down.

I kept going until about the end of my pregnancy. And I honestly think it was moments after I held my new little girl that I knew I needed to stop putting my job before my mental and physical health and the needs of my family, and let it go.

So I quit, two weeks after having her.

There is so much other things about this part of my life I could share, but that’s all I will for now. It was an incredible experience. I learned a ton. I learned that I enjoyed studying people more than I enjoyed being around them. I learned that there’s a tremendous amount of worked involved in any successful business that most customers don’t get to see, and that really intrigued me.

But most of all, I learned to take the amount of cash you’re willing to lose out of the bank, and put it in your pocket, and leave the rest at home before going to the casino. Everything there is a manipulation. It is a vice that takes a lot of happiness away from a lot of people. It is dangerous to dabble in. It is highly addictive. And at the end of the day, the house always wins.