April 14th, 2018

Back to the Lounge for the Saturday night shift.

Behind the bar : myself, and Abby. Charon has the supervisory wheel. Mary and Haley are our sole cocktail girls. (I’ll note for posterity here that we are extremely short-staffed. We are not in a teensy casino. We’ve seen 6/7 at top capacity for a single shift.)

The steady hum of people last night is somewhat diminished this evening, which we largely attributed to fearmongering weather forecasts, who obviously are conspiring to keep people home from the casino.

The stream of stupid starts off strong as our day staff inform us that due to a combination of inattention on the part of our own department heads, who didn’t update all of their documentation appropriately, and the people who work in finance who feel the need to nitpick over some truly idiotic things, we now are compelled to… okay. This requires a little context.

We accept many forms of payments. Cash, credit cards, gift certificates, discretionary comps issued by the Pit staff, and also and crucially – the ability to use points and comps off of a player’s “Player’s Club” card. Typically, we swiped the card, had the guest sign the resultant receipt, and stabbed it onto the little gold document spike for later delivery to the finance people. This receipt helpfully shows the player’s full name and player’s card number.

What we are -now- required to do… is hand-write the player’s full name and player’s card number. Yes. On the same sheet of paper where it was already pre-printed. 😑 Oh – and stamp it with a handy “Redeeemed’ stamp. (An item which, if I ever get fired for some reason, I’m liable to borrow for a day to stand outside a church after the service, and mark the back of peoples’ hands “Redeemed”, because I think it’d be fucking hilarious.) We moan and bitch about the inanity of this. We bring it to our supervisor. She brings it to our department head (Pammy), who confirms that the stupid will persist until she sends in a revision.

So we’re likely to be deailng with this for another six months, but I might be cynical.

Ugh. Whatever. With that out of the way, Abby and I start dealing with our guests, and getting the bar prepped for the long evening ahead. The usual activities such as cutting up copious quantities of back-up limes, and replenishing our hard liquor for anticipated demand are on full display and so on. Charon is being paticularly hands-on and hanging out much of the time with us in the Lounge. I suspect it’s mostly as Abby is newer and they want to make sure she stays on the right path, etc., because she can park me behind a bar and be absolutely confident that I’ve got it handled, huge sudden crowds notwithstanding. I don’t mind, though. It makes it easier for us to take our breaks, and she’s mastered the art of being helpful without rolling over you at the same time. That was one place I could have mentally docked Granny Nobs a point or two, but we learned on her last night that she had a history of military service, so it kinda makes sense, I suppose.

At any rate, things move slowly, steadily, and smoothly. One of our bar backs (Eddie) brought in a sampling of a recent batch of homemade fudge (which was criminally delicious, by the way). He’s a good dude, former professional poker player, and works hard at staying on top of his gig. He can rattle on a bit more than you’d care for him to sometimes, but I’ve noticed that tends to be a bar back trait in general. That or I just want people to shut up when I’m trying to work.

Dinner breaks were had, and after an extensive (and on reflection, extremely needed) sound check by our band, the show for the night got under way. They’re not one of our normal acts, but they have been there before. Lots of oldies and crowd requests. Charon made a point of cackling and requesting that the band play “Sweet Caroline”, which appears on my personal list of Songs-I’d-Prefer-to-Have-A-non-anesthisized-Lobotomy-Than-Ever-Listen-To-Again. I’d told her this, so, in addition to liking the song herself, it was definitely smart-assery on her part. She’s gonna fit in just fine.

The evening was sedate enough that taking our full second half hour break was not only possible, but attainable, particularly with Charon hanging around. Honestly, as I’ve noted, if a supervisor isn’t in-house, I tend to just skip the later break on band nights. I don’t like my co-workers swinging in the breeze, but she had backup, so hey. Suits me. I’d neglected to take any ibuprofin before shift and my knees were bugging me, so time to get off my feet for a half hour was welcome.

We really didn’t have any major problems or crazy people tonight, and the night wrapped up with no real issue. Abby and I got the bar cleaned out, collected a nice chunk of change for our Saturday night tips, and all went home.

On my way out the door, I paused by the office to chat with Charon. I’d noticed that we have four bartenders scheduled the next couple of Saturday nights, which is a heavier load than normal and didn’t seem tied to any particular events, so I was curious. She basically said that Jerry the Younger may or may not be hanging around much more for a while (He’s a roofer in his day job and work season is rapidly upon us.), so essentially they were loading it up heavier as a just-in-case. This means that if he’s here on a Saturday night, I’ll probalby just share the space with him. If he’s not here, I’ll probably just field the service bar solo.

There was the suggestion that I just go home early, and… eh. Maybe I’ll take it, but Service Bar on the weekends as you know, is golden stuff, so I made a case for it.

I think I may have talked myself into both weekend nights in the Service Bar, which my seniority should technically entitle me to, if that mattered for a damn in our place. How about that, huh?

Interesting and interesting.

Closing Observations :

Bands that play “Sweet Caroline” are automatically docked points on my review. They lose more for also adding in “Wonderful Tonight”, another song on the aforementioned list. They gained some back though by spontaneously closing the show with a decent rendition of “Gimme Some Lovin'”, which I was still grooving on from a screening of The Blues Brothers the other week. Call it a wash.
Our staff of cocktail girls is slated to increase again. Not sure what our current ones are going to think about that financially, but I know they’re looking for the help, so it’s all right from a running-all-over-creation standpoint.
Charon made a point of telling me that the Service Bar is going to be fully prepared for Friday’s shift on Thursday. I must have truly looked annoyed last night.
I may or may not have written a short note to the Finance people. On the comp receipts. One letter at a time. On a series of receipts. Now the question is – are they smart enough to a.) notice, and b.) read the message. Worst case – I get a wrist slap for being a smartass. Worth it.
Abby is absolutely twitchily OCD about the quarters going into a tip box solely for loose change, and that they should never intrude on tip boxes that contain currency. I troll her now and then about this. Putting a quarter -on top- of the box in question for example. Am what I am… 😏

Next up : Sunday night