Way too many in 10 years of dealing table games. I’ve seen people lose a lot of money until they cried at my table, people sitting at machines and being there the next day I came to work smelling like actual shit, a regular always brought her disabled kid in a wheelchair and put them next to her while she gambled for almost a day each time.
I had a guy who clearly had dementia at my table and even with complaints they still allowed him to play. He could barely make hand signals and kept forgetting we were in the middle of hands. It didn’t help that he was tipping the beverage server well so he got massively over-served alcohol.
Reports on these people should have made it so they couldn’t continue doing this stuff but it never actually changed anything.
The worst was a few tables away from me a guy’s girlfriend was trying to get him to leave and he got so pissed he tried to choke her to death right at the table. He ran from security into the woods behind the casino and killed himself.
Taking turns so one parent could play the slots while the other sat in the noisy, bright lobby while the kids tried to sleep.
The casino I worked at was very loudly against kids in casinos. No vending machines in the hotel, no kid friendly TV channels in rooms, no video game room, very bright lights in every public area, etc. And every Friday and Saturday night we would see kids sleeping on bumpy metal benches and on the floor while the adults gambled.
Editing to say there was an adult with the kids. The kids were still sleeping on benches, but they weren't left unsupervised.
Still horribly irresponsible and overwhelmingly selfish, and probably emotionally abusive. But not abandoned. So marginally better, maybe worst depending on how you look at it.
Former casino kid, reporting in. I grilled my parents about this behavior as an adult. My dad defends their choice calling casinos “one of the safest places on earth” due to all of the cameras and security they had.
I remember when that 7-year-old girl was left alone at a casino by her father, and she was raped and murdered at about 4am by two young men who lured her into the restroom. That happened about 30 years ago.
He actually sent her to the ladies’ bathroom and they followed her in. I will never forget this case. I brought my young son to the ladies room with me. When he got big enough to go on his own, I would stay by the entrance of the men’s room. I had seen Candy Man and THAT scared me.
Tuesday mornings. Barely reopened from the 4 hour weekly cleaning and the folks on social security are already in playing penny slots with the $10 left over in their budget.
I worked a bank near an Indian casino. The casino bus would park near the retirement home and shuttle the people to the casino whenever social security checks cleared. Those who had accounts with us would come the next day trying to halt any payments because of "fraud" from the casinos. Every month.
We had this issue with my gran for years…. We thought she had went mad but one time she was with us for a week and the payments still went out…. One of the staff had taken her card and had been using it for about 2 years cleaning her out without it anyone noticing. We got none of it back.
I worked at a casino over a decade ago, but here's mine: Somebody won a small jackpot, something like $2000. When checking her ID for tax paperwork it was discovered that she had put herself on the state's problem gambler self-exclusion list, which meant the casino was obligated to remove her from the building without paying (she wouldn't have been allowed in the building if she had been recognized). While double checking the manager downloaded an updated list (we auto-checked against a local copy that was sometimes a few days out of date) and it showed that she had removed herself from the list with sufficient notice, so the jackpot was paid out.
She proceeded to put every penny of the jackpot back into the slot machine... And also made a couple visits to the ATM... And at the end of her stay she asked the cashiers if she could be put back on the self-exclusion list.
This is why I hate draft kings and fan duel and those cell phone games and all their relentless commercials. Like advertising your addiction in your face and you don't even have to leave to take part. It ruins lives
I don't struggle with gambling nor directly know anyone who does but those commercials make me irate when I see them.
I don’t have a gambling problem but I do have a bit of an addictive personality. I know myself well enough to know that I could very easily develop a problem with those sports betting apps. At the beginning of the NFL season last year they were offering some “sure thing” bets. I think one was something like 100:1 odds on Patrick Mahomes completing 1 or more passes with a maximum bet of $1. Essentially what they were offering was $100 in free bets, and worse case you lose a single dollar. I downloaded the app to place the bet and then imagined myself 3 months later, several thousand dollars in the hole and desperately trying to get back to even, and I deleted it. I’m very confident that I made the right decision.
> I think one was something like 100:1 odds on Patrick Mahomes completing 1 or more passes with a maximum bet of $1. Essentially what they were offering was $100 in free bets, and worse case you lose a single dollar.
What they're buying is first access to a user with a brand-new gambling problem.
It's okay though, because they also put the gambling addiction hotline after those commercials with a disclaimer about getting help, so there's no way all of those commercials and advertising could possibly hurt anyone /s
It's one of the things I hate the most about sports now is the amount of gambling advertising that's involved. Everything is sponsored by DraftKings or Fanduel or some stupid company. And then they'll suspend players who gambled on games unrelated to their own team. While having that news report on about how this player is suspended, it'll be cut with a gambling commercial somewhere right after. It's insane to me.
"What's your secret, man? Oh! I use the built-in limiters so I customize my playing style for *my* needs!"
Sick bro! Let me get in on that fun in moderation action! 🙄
I genuinely think we’re gonna look back at the widespread promotion of sports betting decades from now the way we look back at doctors endorsing cigarettes today.
They’re gonna need to do something about the player props. Johntay porter just got banned for life from the nba for rigging the under on his prop bets to cover gambling loses.
But I think something crazy will happen like a fan will shoot a player who misses his 8 player prop parlay.
I think there will also be a massive live betting scandal at any time. Like the computers will spit out the wrong odds and the sites won’t pay up.
A similar sentiment was shared by a friend trying to quit alcohol. Every time she's tried, she feels overwhelmed by online ads for alcohol. And there's no way to turn them off.
There needs to be a way to turn off targeted advertising for addiction related content. Gambling, food, alcohol, whatever it is.
I talked to a guy who had been a gambling addict (happily not anymore). It was chilling the way he talked about it. I could definitely see myself getting one big win and spending everything trying to get another.
I guess I’m lucky in that every time I go to a casino, which ain’t often, I assume I’m donating $100 to whichever tribe operates it. If I walk out with more than zero I am surprised but always splurge for some treat with whatever is left. Last time it was like $30, I got a really nice ice cream for myself and my daughter, and some cookies.
That is the healthy way to gamble - always assume you're just spending however much money you're putting in and don't expect to get anything back. Most of the time you're right and if you're wrong, bonus.
Most people have mental safeguards against problem gambling, because a normal brain places outsize value on something that it sees as "yours". To put it succinctly, most people hate losing something more than they like winning something, even if the value of both "things" are equal. There's an interesting experiment they did to validate this back in the day - researchers took two different groups of people; with one group, they offered them a choice between a guaranteed $5 or the chance to guess the results of a coin flip, with $10 for a correct guess and nothing for a failed guess, and with the other group they simply gave them the $5 outright, had them do some random stuff for a few minutes, then offered them the chance to wager their $5 on the coin flip (same as the first group). The second group was significantly less likely to go for the wager than the first group, despite the actions being fundamentally the same, because their brains now saw that $5 as "theirs" and most of them didn't want to lose it, even for the chance to double their earnings.
Those with gambling addiction literally have different brain structures than most people, and their aversion to loss and failure is much weaker and/or the dopamine rush they get from winning is much stronger than what you find in a typical brain.
My first December working in the casino I'm still at I was on a blackjack table and a guy sits down and drops $1565 on the table and tells the dealer "dealer, my family's about to have a great Christmas or no Christmas"
20 minutes later it's gone and he asks the dealer if she's happy with herself and how well the casino has to be paying her.
Never saw the guy again(our casino is 95% repeat customers) so I wouldn't be surprised if that actually was his Christmas money.
What’s really depressing is it’s not like he only had $50 and was throwing a Hail Mary. My family always has a pretty great Christmas for way less than $1565. But my kids would be so crushed with “no Christmas.”
This happened to a friend of mine who was a dealer. Player had a couple thousand dollars, came in late on Christmas eve and said it was the money for his kid's Christmas presents, talking about he was gonna get him a bike or something. He lost it all pretty quickly and his response was "welp, no point going home now," went to the ATM and kept playing through Christmas day.
If it helps, that money was never going to go towards a Christmas present. These people are addicted and they do everything they can to justify it to themselves and others.
Oh yeah, him "losing the Christmas money" wasn't really the super sad part. It was more just the instant resignation/defeatism followed by completely ignoring the kid on Christmas and choosing to be completely alone, gambling the entire Christmas day. Working as a dealer at a casino on Christmas has to be one of the most soul-crushing experiences ever.
They know. Just easier to play the victim so you never have to take responsibility for your actions. You can just justify it in your head that someone else did it to you instead if you doing it to yourself. Coping mechanism maybe.
Right? He was the only one making choices there. He chose when to sit down, what to bet, which moves to make, and when to leave.
She was at work, where it's her job to interact with the players. It's not even like she outplayed him- dealers usually have a strict script they follow that may even be printed on the table where players can see it. He lost to *that* (and chance, ofc.)
I didn’t personally witness it but in late 1999 I helped open the Motor City Casino in Detroit. A month later an off duty police officer lost everything and blew his brains out on the floor.
Yep.
The casino opening went through multiple delays which were estimated to cost them a million in lost floor revenue per day. One of the reasons I never got into gambling. I was working for an IT vendor that did a lot of work with Mandalay Resorts at the time. I stuck around for the first week of operations and then moved onto my next gig but my main contact at the casino was working when it happened.
Yeah definitely was awful it was a Saturday night busiest day of the week to. Definitely a horrible situation. He threw is money in the air and took a running leap. There was no stopping him
Ex-casino worker here. I saw way too many people spend ridiculous amounts of money on gambling. I've seen little kids asleep in chairs outside the casino floor cause their parents were busy gambling. A gentleman had a heart attack at a poker table and other gamblers were pissed cause we had to stop the games so EMS could come.
Saddest one though was a lady who wanted to cash a check made out to the electric company. She wanted to know if she could scratch out the company name and write in the casino name. I told her we could not do that.
Same. The last casino I worked at would put up several Christmas Trees around and outside the casino floor. Seeing little kids curled up near/under the trees always made me so sad.
I was one of those kids unfortunately.
Mom would take us to a restaurant in the casino as a “treat” then would leave us there and not come back for many many hours. It was awful.
Same. Mom would play slots and I’d have to stand about five feet behind her or else I’d be considered too close. Eventually I was old enough to go to the arcade and sit at a restaurant by myself.
Same here. I used to sit for hours even up until 3-4 hours before the morning of Monday when school started. My family would go for hours and left me after the “free buffet”. Thankfully due to this, I hate casinos and haven’t stepped into one or gone to Vegas since I was 17, never gambled as well due to childhood hatred for it.
We were each given 5 dollars to play in the casino arcade then they would leave us there for an eternity. It was truly awful. I can't even think of doing that to my own kids. Never.
I had a guy get thoroughly pissed because we wouldn't cash a check made it from a trust fund bank account. "This is my nephew, legally I'm completely in charge of the money." Fuck you dude. Your nephew has a huge asshole for an uncle.
Another guy brought in his federal tax return check. He had completely scratched out his name from the Pay To like and hand wrote in the casino name. All of a sudden it was the casinos fault that now he couldn't cash his check at the bank because his name was no longer in the check.
And yeah, the heart attack thing happened on my shift, too. Paramedics were shocking the guy on the floor and this douche tried pushing thru us because it was the shortest path to the machine he wanted.
> I've seen little kids asleep in chairs outside the casino floor cause their parents were busy gambling.
I've been that kid.
There was a tour company that had a casino package. You get picked up by the bus from whatever town you love in, and come to the city for a weekend. Stay at the hotel/casino. My grandma used to do that a few times a year, so naturally my mom would go pick her up and we'd all go for supper. It would always start with "Stay out here for fiveminutes, I'll go get grandma from the casino." But grandma was on a lucky streak, so she wouldn't leave. Then my mom would out $20 in the slots and play while waiting. Then grandma's lucky streak was over, but my mom would wait until she went through her $20. So grandma would play while she was waiting for mom, and it would just cycle through like that.
Five minutes turned into 10, and then 30, and then an hour. Usually by that time, they would come out because they were hungry. But that was if we were planning on going to eat, if it was the afternoon, it was always a longer wait.
Worst part is that my grandma had a hotel room there. I could have just sat in the room and happily watched TV all day or brought something to do. But they never let me.
We never had cable so a hotel was a treat. A few times my folks went downstairs to the bar for a bit and I could watch cartoons. Sad you just had to wait and hope for a quick return.
It’s better than them sleeping in situations like you described, but I’ll never forget the revulsion I felt in my bones the first time I saw casinos were adding kid day cares. I understand that some of the kids there are children of casino employees, but a lot of them are the children of parents losing the rent money.
The ones near me will take kids as young as 6 weeks old. Fucking disgusting.
I kind of agree with you but am torn on this one.
My good guy hat says: It feels like the Casino is responding to creating a safe place for these kids. The shitty parents are going to come anyway and leave their kids in rooms, cars, hallways, anywhere they can, in unsafe manners so how to stop that. If you say just dont bring your kids they will continue to do it and leave the kids in the car for 5+ hours.
My bad guy hat says: They are just doing it to enable parents to lose more money.
Honestly I don't know what to think its too easy to say they are the bad guy but dumb parents have been doing this for a long time. It could be a response to try to make it safer.
That was my first thought as well. Is it a ploy to lure these parents in, or is it altruistic to at least have somewhere safe for the kids to be if the parents are gonna be at the casino either way?? Sometimes I wish I could see the world in black and white
I worked at an Apple Store when they had personal training for $100 a year. A guy had a heart attack during one of the premium group trainings.
People were pissed we closed the store so the guy could get care. Luckily, one of the members was a nurse or a doctor and sprang into action until paramedics arrived.
But in the distance as we asked people to leave, a couple of people were bitching “I just need to get some headphones!”
It’s like dude, you’re in a mall and a guy is getting chest compressions. You can easily get some headphones at one of the kiosks or other stores, go for a walk.
We had another heart attack a month later and same thing happened. Except it was some guy waiting for his iMac to be brought from the back. Our back of house people stopped between the warehouse and floor in the office area because they overhead the store was closing due to a heart attack.
The guy was livid he couldn’t just pay as we asked everyone to leave as a man fought for his life feet away. This time it was in the same area, but feet from him on the other side of the table.
People can be self absorbed idiots.
Some people are monsters. A guy was stabbed and he collapsed in the doorway of the store I worked at. I had to run and turn off the door to keep him from getting crushed by the door. We employees were all scrambling getting towels, medical supplies, calling 911 etc. Customers were coming to the register which was less than 10 feet from where all of this commotion was going on and start bitching about no one there to ring them up. Uh sorry that a guy’s life is a wee bit more important than your small bag of dog food. And while we were waiting for the ambulance and such to show up, we were trying to direct arriving customers to the other entrance about 30 feet away or better yet come back later. The bitching and moaning about the inconvenience of walking 30 feet wasn’t even the worst of it. One lady literally stepped over this dying man and was on her phone and I heard her say in such an annoyed tone “some crack head got stabbed here.” I was so shocked at the absolute lack of care from like 90% of these people but her heartless callous remark as she stepped over him was so vile.
I was driving cross country for work and stopped in West Memphis for the night. Went to the casino to burn a few hours. Fron my machine I saw a lady playing slots with tears running down her face. I heard her scream and looked up to realize the machine hit zero and she started bawling uncontrollably. She was screaming that she had nothing left and to please have her money back. Got removed by security. I hit for $150 and cashed out but the walk to my car was terrifying. I'm not a target demographic for mugging, but the desperation on people's faces was noticeable. Never going there again.
Southland? Yeah I've been there a few times during the day and I've seen a hell lot of sad degeneracy there. People spamming large bills into slots at maximum pace, people freaking out over a huge loss, lack of hygiene, hours long sessions at a single machine, etc.
Worked Valet at a casino. One night we got the car and they dropped it off, left the keys in (normal here). I hopped in to move it and it smelled like death. I moved the car and informed my super. He called the cops as it was the smell of a decaying body.
Cops came and we opened the truck.... full of groceries.... from 4 months ago.... in the missouri summer heat. It was chicken. They came to claim their car and were told to not park here in valet again
They said the person who normally carries their groceries up to their second floor apartment left and they don't have anyone to help them anymore. So now they go to casinos and eat out every night....
They didn't have money to do this, no idea where it came from. I will never gamble or go to a casino after working valet those years. Many many more stories
We would get people that had been in there a while request to get something out of thier car. We would bring it up and they would dig through it and then leave.
One night I was accused of stealing $300 out of the glove box. Security took me back and I was searched.... $300 was not discovered on me.
Turns out the person had been in the casino for 2 days and after Security reviewed video surveillance, they found the person already went to valet to get the $300 the day before... they didn't remember it
Casino worker here - winning big can ruin your life. It’s like a drug and I have seen so many people try to chase that high again. They start at higher denomination machines and slowly over time you see them move to $1, .50, .25 and eventually down to the lowest level.
I have lost approximately $2K gambling at a few trips. That high is so high and the losses hurt worse and worse. Chasing a loss is so scary. Luckily I have stopped at my budget but I have gambled enough to taste the emotions of it.
On the rare occasion I do go to a casino I have my “playin money” in my left pocket. My winnings go into my right. When the left is in empty I leave. It works for me but I don’t gamble often.
It’s a really important rule that I live by too. It’s my fun money - if I win, I buy a nice dinner or take a shopping trip, if I don’t, I had fun watching it go because the rent and bills are already paid.
I *really* like gambling, I totally understand the draw of it that can ruin people’s lives as we’ve seen in this thread. So I’m really glad that I’ve had the discipline to keep that budget rule firm - and to a degree, glad that I’ve never really had enough of a “fun money” budget that I felt an urge to push the rule.
Yeah, I used to manage casinos in a different life and always told people the people with the best luck never win. You'll see a thousand responses in this thread about how people don't understand why people go to the casino. Those people have never made money in a casino, and they don't have "the itch" and will save themselves mountains of money by never playing. A big win forever changes your mindset, you win once and you'll be back again next week to lose it all back, then the week after that to donate some more.
Not a worker but…
Back when casino boats used to actually cruise the river, every Friday night we went there was a guy who would grab a $1 poker machine, feed a hundred dollar bill, lay his face down and hit Max bet. Rinse and repeat, 1,2,5 times, once we saw 10 times. Never saw him win a penny.
Cruises were 1 hour 15 minutes, he took about 10-25 minutes max, would get done, leave the machine to take a seat by the gangway exit.
I spent a lot of time in the casino, my dad had a gambling problem, it’s sad to watch your hero fall but he pulled himself out and away from that but the things I’ve seen….
Seen a blind Chinese man come in with his bodyguards to help him gamble
I’ve seen couples blow their entire money and just stand there looking at each other half in tears
I sat next to a woman who lost it all and just couldn’t bring herself to get off the chair because reality wasn’t setting in
My dad used to really hit it big, and once he would make me play on one machine and he plays on the other…. His was losing and mine started winning big I got shoved off that seat so fast….
I don’t miss that place it’s full of greed and misery
We had a roulette and black jack table room that joined with a night club I worked in. There was this guy who spent more money than I made in two months in just a few hours.
He wasn't drunk. I tried to get him to stop playing (he was the only player at the table) but he just said he is lonely and playing blackjack was the only thing that made him feel ok. He was far away from home (I think he was Russian) and just really really sad. It was tough to watch. His face looked just as vacant when he left as when he started playing. So sad
I worked a whole host of positions in Casinos over the course of 6-7 years. In that time I saw a lot of really funny, really sad, and really frustrating things.
The one that hurt me the most was seeing the father of one of my Highschool friends coming in over the course of the years. He started showing up every now and then when I was 19 and had my first job there. He was an older guy (late 50's-early 60's) but still pretty healthy, had a lot of money, drove a nice car had a nice house, even owned a small plane that he flew recreationally. Slowly but surely he was coming in more and more frequently though. He started gaining more weight, he was looking more pale and sickly, drank almost constantly. It turned out that his home situation was going downhill fast. He and my friend (his son) had a massive falling out, and eventually his wife left him and took their other daughter with her. He had nothing left but his money and himself, and even that didn't last. He was never winning anything and had to have lost millions in that time frame. He was in the building for days at a time without moving from his machine. Because of that and the amount of alcohol he was consuming combined with the lack of sleep, aging body, and constant second hand smoke exposure, his health was quickly plummeting. He was always nice and happy to talk to anyone, but even that didn't last as he started snapping at every little thing and not interacting with anyone at all.
I left that job years ago but every now and then my family will go back to that same casino and see him at his same machine looking like a husk of his former self. Even now that shit is heartbreaking to me. Gambling addiction is a dangerous horrible thing, but you never really realize just how bad it is until you see someone you've known your entire life driven to the very brink by it.
There's a PBS documentary called "Donut King" about a Cambodian man who escaped the war, came to the U.S., and opened a chain of donut shops. He was quite prosperous, until he discovered Vegas, and within a year, everything was gone, including his family. He somehow got enough money to return to Cambodia, and that's where he was living when the movie wrapped.
You are totally correct. I can’t even imagine the numbers they’d be gambling. Hell, my wife and I sulk for the rest of the evening when we lose $20 at the casino. I’ve had a few family members lose thousands; one almost ended in divorce when their spouse found out how much they had secretly lost. It amazes me that we can be related and yet totally different when it comes to gambling.
Fantastic storytelling……even if the subject is depressing as hell lol.
I remember a Facebook post that was like "I don't get why people like casinos. I just lost $5 and I already wanna blow the whole place up."
It really do be like that, for me at least lol.
I'm not a casino worker. I was at a bar on the casino floor and an elderly man in a suit and hat sat down a few seats over and started talking to the bartender.
They made smalltalk and then he mentioned that his wife of 50 years had died of cancer a few weeks beforehand. He said they never had kids and not many friends, so he took all the savings they had and came to Vegas to "have some fun until the money runs out, then I'll be going home to be with my wife."
Bartender never followed up on it but just kinda let him drink. I just awkwardly kept scrolling on my phone. What do you even say to that?
Yup. If I'm at that stage of life, only future is becoming less and less able to live without embarrassing assistance. Let me go out having some fun. Personally I wouldn't pick Vegas but...
This one's very different than the other stories about all consuming addiction and misery. This one is a man choosing his own epilogue to a long life and hopefully 50 happy years of marriage.
Bittersweet for sure but I could see myself making the same choice in that circumstance.
Yeah you're right, bittersweet is the better term I guess. It was just sad that this man's whole life had died a few weeks before, but I guess that was just a testament to his love for his wife and their relationship.
I watched my dad kill himself slowly after my mom died. For a minute, he tried to be happy but he just couldn’t. I’ve never seen someone so miserable. He finished working to
Retirement age, then retired and went straight downhill and died in 2022. Maybe the old man had the right idea.
Our mom and dad were married for 66 years, and when our mom passed, we worried about how he would take it, but he handled it pretty well.
He's now 96, and still sharp. Our oldest sister lives with him and helps him when he needs it, but he's still able to take care of his own needs.
4 out of us 5 kids live fairly close to him, and all of us are there weekly and talk to him a lot, so he never has a chance to get lonely.
He never made much money, but he's rich in friends and family, and has his DNR on the refrigerator and says with whatever the future holds, he's good.
I had a custmer walk up to me as a slot attendant, with four quarters on his open palm. He asked if I had any idea about any machine that might be ready to pay out.
He explained he had driven a little over two hours to get to the casino and this was literally all the money he had left, he hadn't bothered to fill the gas on his car and it didn't have enough to get him home.
Best I could tell him was one particular bank of machines had had several decent payouts, but that was about all I could say, as even slot attendants don't have much idea when any particular machine was going to hit.
I got called off to another customer, I don't think he even won enough to buy some gas...
>Best I could tell him was one particular bank of machines had had several decent payouts, but that was about all I could say
Not a casino, but many years working in a convenience store that sold lotto and scratchers. My go-to line when someone would ask similar questions was "if I could answer that, do you *really* think I'd be working *here*?" I'd always say it with a smile so they'd know I didn't mean it to be snarky, and it got a few chuckles out of people over the years
Couple jumpers off the top of the parking garage every few years, guy hanged himself in the bathroom…security and maintenance saw a lot more than I did as a slot tech. I just heard about it, I didn’t walk in on it.
Not a casino worker, but still a sad story. Managed an apartment portfolio decades ago and one of the properties was in Vegas. Keep in mind that this was before the days of paying your rent online. We had a zero cash collection policy, but the manager of the property told everyone is was "lifted" for the month to help boost our collections. The perfect storm happened on a Friday that aligned with a lot of paydays. She collected about $80k (roughly $150k in today's dollars) in cash for rent and then went to the casino and put it all on red. Her thinking was that she would double it, then deposit the $80k on Monday and nobody would ever know the difference. She did not win. Monday comes around and I see that the money didn't get to the bank so I call the property. Nobody has seen the manager. Alarm bells immediately ring in my head. I fly to Vegas. We eventually found her at some dude's house and called the police. So stupid.
Area Manager for a fast-food chain (12 stores). One Monday, a store manager did not show up to work, after calling her house w/no answer I grew concerned and went to the store. The entire opening crew was waiting outside for someone to show up. When I opened the safe, all of the weekend deposits (6) were missing.
Fearing the worse I called the police to report the possibility of robbery/ kidnapping. The manager was found two days later at a casino, she had gotten so drunk, she passed out, fell and hit her head on a slot machine.
Same thing, she thought that she could double the money, pay it back and no one would be the wiser.
This was a 72-year-old grandmother that went to jail for felony theft.
Sad for everyone involved.
Some guy on a local radio show who was down on his luck did this with 5 or 10 grand and also lost..Everyone was warning him not to do it but he wouldn't listen, thought he had a surefire plan
Oh man, I have a ton from my 15 years as a casino manager, but I’ll just write a few and come back later:
Woman who was an anesthesiologist asssistant hit a “bad beat jackpot” at a 1-2 no limit poker table for around $120k. For non-poker players, this is the lowest stakes no limit hold’em game offered by most poker rooms. The buy-in range was from $100-300 min/max at our room, so by poker standards not terribly high. After she hit the jackpot she started playing the bigger games, first 2-5 no limit ($200-1000 buy-in) and then moving up to 5-10 no limit ($500 min, and I believe at the time it was no max). Next thing you knew she was out playing in the high stakes blackjack pit playing $100 a hand. She got bumped up to a black card quickly from all the blackjack she was playing.
Fast forward about 4-6 weeks, maybe 2 months tops and we don’t see her around as much. A few players asked if we’d seen her and a couple let it be known that she borrowed money from them and hasn’t repaid it. She started showing up late at night wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and playing slots.
Shortly after, security determined that she had been living out of her car and sleeping in the parking garage.
The fall went QUICK. It was just like all the lottery winner horror stories I’d seen on tv but playing out in real time.
Story 2: kid steps up to roulette table and puts down $100 on whatever number and it hits ($3500). Keeps playing and he’s on absolute fire. Runs it up to $30,000 in about an hour. 6 hours later he left down $600 (gave it all back plus another $500 out of his pocket). 22 years old and out on his birthday with friends. Friends should have told him to walk away!
Story 3: guy at poker table had a heart attack. Tried to reach into his jacket pocket. Supervisor puts it together that he has a nitro pill (he knew him) and gets it out and gives it to him. Ambulance comes, guy pulls through, pill saved his life. Supervisor was suspended for over a month while they investigated whether or not to fire him for administering prescription medicine to a patron. wtf.
Story 4: did not witness directly but happened at one of the properties in my company. Guy has crush on server at buffet. Always requests her/sits in her section. Never gets out of line, just polite and cool about it. One day he brings her a gift, something small, nothing inappropriate on its own accord, just situationally inappropriate I suppose, although you tip your servers so I guess it’s questionable at least. She tells her boss that it made her feel uncomfortable and manager ends up banning him from the buffet for life. Next day he comes back, sets a fire in the parking garage to draw away all of security, walks up to her and shoots himself in the head. Fortunately it was just him not her too, but still insanely traumatic.
Story 5: high stakes player who’d played poker and blackjack for 48 hours straight walks up to me and says “I need you to call my wife and tell her I’m at the final table of a big poker tournament and that’s why I’m still here.”
I say “just because I work at a casino you assume I have no morals?” He raises his voice and tells me to just do it or he’s leaving. Shift manager notices and comes over, he tells him what he told me and the shift manager calls his wife with no hesitation. This was a manager I had a lot of respect for and was like a mentor to me. Lost all respect for him after that.
Story 6: quadriplegic who would get wheeled into our room by his daughter, he’d play poker but occasionally would smell so bad we’d have to call her to come get him and often she wouldn’t for hours and he’d just sit there at the edge of the room. We couldn’t have him at the table because he smelled so bad. It was clear his hygiene was being neglected badly but casino upper management wouldn’t report it or allow anyone to go further with the situation. This was like every other week for a year…
When I was single and childless I had a lot more money so I would frequent the casino a lot. Once I saw an. infant in the car seat covered in a blanket moving around in an unattended car in the parking lot garage. Security had already been alerted and the parents were found inside at the slots. They were arrested and made the news that night smfh.
Not a casino employee, but I used to work at a bank. Had a customer asking about something on her account, so I was reviewing her statement and saw these frequent $2,000 withdrawals at the casino nearby. In the one statement I was looking at, there were over $10K in withdrawals, and this customer’s total account balance was somewhere around $60K. I started going backward in her statements and found she had sold a house and received something like $700K less than a year ago, and had steadily gambled it almost all away, month by month. It was one of the most depressing things I saw there, which is saying a lot at a bank.
I used to be in a fintech where the customers linked their bank account. When they called in for support I get anproved access to their history to troubleshoot money transfers.
I only saw people who had trouble getting by. It's absolutely depressing to see bank accounts hitting zero or negative so many times in a short time and the people on the phone are so calm because it's just life for them. They just accept their losses in life as the banks racked up overdrafts that drain a huge chunk of their paycheck
IIRC, Touched hundred of accounts a day but deep dive into like 5-10 a day
Edit: my thoughts during these was always that these people were gambling when they bought lunch. The bet: Will I get lunch for the already overpriced menu price or will $35 be tacked on for overdraft? Pro tip turn off overdraft. Better to not get lunch than not have 4 lunches worth taken out of your account by the bank. The fintech wasnt associated with the banks
Former casino worker of 20 years.
I’ve seen a lot of things, but this one stands out to me. I was the games manager on shift and there was a lady in her 40s playing blackjack. She had been there a few hours and had made quite a few trips to the ATM and her buy ins were getting into the thousands of dollars.
I was doing paperwork in the pit when a dealer called me over while the lady was on another ATM trip and said she was crying just before. I kept an eye on her and after she lost a few more hands I could see the tears start and she was silently crying while playing. I went up and as discreetly as possible, asked her if she was ok and offered help through our partnered addictions help program. She looked me right in the face and got mad at me for asking and told me she’s fine and to leave her alone.
She was making staff very uncomfortable at that time and it was obvious she was crying more and more as she continued to play and lose. I made the decision to ask her to leave for the night and comped her cab ride home. I tried again to offer her information to organizations to help with her gambling again, but still not interested.
Addictions are heartbreaking to see and I really hope she was able to get help.
My dad was a security guard at a casino for 15 years and he’s got stories. When he started working there the chairs at the slot machines were made of cloth they had to change them to vinyl because people would not get up to go to the bathroom and they would piss and shit all over the chairs. People would sneak their kids into the hotel in luggage when kids aren’t allowed in the hotel. Others left them in the car in the parking garage. One guy took a loan out against his house to gamble and lost it all. He dropped dead in the casino. People would literally spend days gambling in the same clothes. People would beg for money at the exits of the highway for money pretending to be homeless and use the money to gamble. I could keep going Edit: the casino my father worked at did not allow kids on premises period. If yours does then fucking good for you!
I saw this video just the other day of a guy [who lost his life savings at the casino](https://new.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1dkakdz/guy_throws_a_tantrum_at_the_casino_after_losing/) and threw a major tantrum. I imagine this happens more frequently than I think, maybe not the tantrum or dropping dead part, but someone who is so deep into the gambling deepend that they bet everything they own and come out with nothing.
Most certainly, and the incidence of tantrums and dropping probably increase when the person loses everything. All three at once is a statistical rarity i'd bet
Former cage supervisor - in the span of a month, 2 people committed suicide by jumping off the top of our 6 story parking garage.
Saddest part was that when it happened the second time, all the staff were just like "Really? Again? That's inconvenient".
I lived in Vegas for 6 years, all my jobs except for the last were in casinos, I've seen some shit. The tamest is at my first job we didn't work directly for the hotel (just leased space there) so we could cash our paychecks at the cage. One payday, one of my coworkers cashes his check on a break, hits the tables on his way back, comes back 20 minutes later having lost it all. And this wasn't minimum wage either, it was a tattoo shop and he was an artist, so we're talking a check for thousands of dollars. He just laughed, and at least waiting a couple weeks to do it again.
Second job not gambling related, but I worked at a nightclub in one of the casinos, some girl in line to *get in the club* was already drunk off her ass and popped a squat and pissed and shit right there in line. Like, full on diarrhea all over.
Third job was for a casino downtown. I would start my day walking the property, including the casino floor, and end it that way as well. I'd frequently see the same people on both walks, sometimes days in a row, and each time they looked worse and worse. It was awful.
Edit: this was secondhand but it comes from my last non-casino job - driving for Uber/Lyft. Picked up friendly older guy, don't remember where I took him but I think he was local. We started talking about gambling, and he told me about a friend of his. Former cop, retired and moved to Vegas with his wife. Within 4 months his $400k pension was gone. It was a miracle his wife didn't leave him.
Casino worker for 35 years. All I'm going to say is, that I believe everyone of these stories. I don't know if they are all true, but I've seen it so many times, nothing really surprises me now. It's truly sad.
Ex-craps dealer. Have seen people run $100 to $10,000 in an hour. And then drop that $10k and 500 more back to the casino in 3 or 4 more hours. Even after I told them to put some of those black chips in their pocket and to not take them out until they got to the cashier.
The saddest thing I've seen was an elderly man who lost his entire pension in one night. He just sat there, staring at the slot machine, looking completely lost.
One of the saddest things I've seen was a regular patron who had clearly lost more than just money over time. He'd come in frequently, always chasing his losses, and it was evident that his gambling habit had taken a toll on his personal life. Over the months, he became more withdrawn, and his clothes and demeanor showed signs of neglect. It was heartbreaking to watch someone lose not just financially but also in terms of their well-being and relationships.
Not a wild story as I worked in a standard UK city casino with quite strict limits.
I once saw a person lose their house over the course of a short summer.
Not much exciting just a general sadness and anger from the regulars.
My sixth form friend’s dad did that. Lost his house then lost his wife and kids, because unsurprisingly telling his wife that he’d lost their house did not go down well. Really fucked them all up, the aftermath wasn’t much different to if he’d been addicted to heroin instead- he wasn’t a part of their lives and he’d destroyed theirs on his way out. Awful. Don’t even know what happened to him, he just kind of fell off the radar
Not a casino worker but I saw a woman stage an impromptu intervention on her father at a blackjack table.
Was playing at a table with all veterans at potawatomi in Milwaukee. We were all doing well except this one guy who was playing table minimum and losing. But we were laughing and taking and having a good time.
This guy losing is sitting to my right. A woman comes up on his right and grabs him by the shoulder. She says, 'I knew I'd find you here! You said you were going to get groceries! How'd you even get here?'
He says, 'your uncle brought me...' cue to her Uncle waving to her from a table over.
She says, 'you have kids at home relying on you. How could you do this again? Come on we're going home...'
He says, 'olay, fine but I'll just come back later...' as he cashed out like $30 and sulked away.
As if on cue the 5 remaining guys at the table push their chips in and cash out.
I still think about that family 15 years later.
I was at the casino one night and a guy was on a decent tear. I saw him hit a bunch of jackpots in the $1200 - $3000 range. I would say at one point he was up about $7000. He was tipping the floor people who handed him the money like $100 here, $200 there for each jackpot he won. I went there with $1000 to play with, and at $2 a spin I was there for like 5 or 6 hours. I watched this guy just absolutely tank. He went from machine to machine putting in hundreds and hundreds into each machine. He was not some high roller, just a normal dude. Just as I was finishing up, with about $750 to take home with me, one of the floor workers went up to him and this was the conversation.
"So I see you're having a run of bad luck right now. I would really hate it if you went home with less money in your pocket than what you gave out to us." He said something like "Oh. Ill get it back don't worry." Within 10 minutes he was at the ATM taking out another $1000. Then again at the ATM taking out another $1000. Then again about 10 minutes later taking out another $1000.
Dude left about the same time I did, having given out around $1000 - $1500 to floor workers as tips, losing his initial money he came with and at least another $3000 on top of that. I walked to my car a few minutes after him and he was smashing the steering wheel of his truck and screaming.
I was a scuba diver at a vegas hotel and we started at 3am to get the tanks cleaned before people started coming in during the day. My diver was in the tank and I was spotting.
I noticed a lot of commotion and EMS going into the club across the “hall” in a casino sense. About 20min they come out with a dude strapped down hard, laughing like the damn joker with his face COVERED in thin razor cuts. I mean absolutely dozens of them. Just laughing his absolute head off, actively bleeding and just totally disfigured face.
It was so surreal but I will never forget that laugh man.
I have several stories. I worked as a cashier and also a slot attendant for 5 years.
The worst was when a guy was just sitting at a slot machine with a bewildered look on his face. Like he was in shock. I asked him if he was ok, could I get him a water? He just looked at me and said, "I need help, man. This just isn't fun anymore."
I called my manager on the radio and asked him to grab a casino host, then sat down with him. A casino host couldn't help, but he could take him to a quiet area to talk. My manager came by, I introduced the player and said, "Guy_name is having a hard time right now. Think we can all go somewhere quiet and talk?" The manager took it from there, but I felt so bad for him. He was just quietly crying in desperation and whatever realization he had just experienced.
As a cashier, my first Christmas Eve there was the first time I'd ever worked on Christmas Eve in my 28 years. It was also the first Christmas I hadn't been with my family. Around 8 or 9pm, a lady came to my cashier window and asked for $250 in quarter tokens (several years before paper tickets). I did the thing and she said, "No, no, no baby! You've got to put some extra luck on these! I need to win, I haven't bought my babies anything for Christmas yet." I tapped them twice, wiggled my fingers towards the quarters and squinched my eyes, and said, "Done! That was all the luck I brought tonight!" Ol girl was tickled pink, she just knew she was gonna get that jackpot for her babies!
Another cashier sat with me at dinner break and told me it only gets easier after that. She lied.
Last one for now was the lady who had just won a $5000 or $10,000 jackpot on a dime machine. It was very clear she didn't want it. Turned out she was banned for her gambling addiction and behavior. She was begging to just forget we saw her and give it to anyone else. She just wanted to play. Unfortunately, the law is the law and she was handcuffed by gaming officials and arrested.
White: Just thought of another good one. It was an employee this time. She got caught stealing tips players have to the slot attendant.
The cool thing about casinos is when they catch you, they make note of it, save the video evidence, and do nothing other than add to a report. Once the employee steals enough, I think $500, it's a state felony because technically every non-player penny inside a casino is state property because it's state regulated. Like a bank is federal.
So they catch a co-worker stealing tips. One day she's just coming on shift and is counting into her jackpot payout bank when gaming stops by and starts talking to her. Gaming guys aren't friendly if they have to leave their office. They're like extra angry chihuahua's that haven't eaten for days and suddenly are being teased with hot dogs, small children's fingers, and pupperonis. Everyone in uniform stops and backs up, then they start loudly reading her her rights. Not only was she arrested, but she got called out in front of everyone she was stealing from.
I lived about 2 city blocks from a riverfront casino. Gamblers regularly left their kids and infants in their car while they played the tables. Many times I would walk my dog on the river and come across lonely men (usually) sobbing with their heads in their hands.
Used to be a supervisor in a casino. Anything $10,000.01 or more I had to hand pay with a security supervisor. $25k+ had to be paid by check, which could be cashed for up to $50k.
Had a guy win $125k. He cashed out $50k of it, tossed it all back in the machines that night. The rest went in over the next month. This was a guy that really could have used that money to better his life too.
My ex was from a suburb outside Vegas.
When she was like 7 and her dad was AWOL her mom would take them to his favorite casino and send her and her brother out to play "Go Find Daddy".
Video poker casino, i worked graveyard shift,10pm - 6am, and we got robbed at gunpoint one night. We had about 5 people there playing.The robber disarmed the security guard and forced all the people to go to the ground.
So they did their thing and fled. I am sitting in the cage, smoking stressfully waiting on the cops and those 5 people fucking got up and went right back to their games. Cops were in questioning them, and they are just playing away.
I am in the cage talking to the cops and my boss while they are dusting for prints and such, and these people just keep coming to change out money. I quit the job the next day.
Not a casino worker, but back in the 90’s working at a gas station part time, we had a few regulars who would stop in every Friday and gamble away most, if not all, of their paycheck. Edit- on daily Numbers, but mostly scratch-off cards. (From a stone mason to an ER nurse - hardworking guys with families…). It was sad. To make it sadder, the owner of the place would extend ‘credit’ if they wanted it, which is highly illegal, obviously… this is why I never gamble. I can’t believe where we’ve gone with the whole sports-betting thing - it’s fucking devious, and the masses are buying in, and it was already ruining so many lives.
15 years in the casino, on the F&B side. I have seen:
-People shit and piss on themselves so they don't have to leave a machine. Shit in the line to the buffet and roll it down their pant leg so they don't lose their spot. Completely not even batting an eye at their actions. I have more shit / piss stories than I care to share.
-People get an opportunity to buy a home, finally, and find out they can't get a lone because 95% of their income has gone into the casino for years.
-Someone die, just to have people try to step around the barrier to get to the free soda machine, or over the body even, because they could care less.
-Fentanyl classes had to be given to my team in the event someone found something on the ground. I am glad we did that as a company, but sad it was there and that common.
-Someone throw themselves off the parking structure.
-Someone stir up a car chase and end it in the valet, basically suicide by cop. (not really the casino's fault here)
-Don't get me started on Covid handling both pre and post closure.
Needless to say, I am long and gone out of that world. I NEVER gamble.
Not casino related, but one of your scenarios reminded me.
We had an employee at our small family run business, been there many years, everyone knew he was good at his job. Well he didn’t show up to work one day, so my father went to his house to check on him and found him dead on the floor, from a heart attack (he was older and smoked. Everyone was shocked, but not really surprised).
Well, he calls the cops, emt’s, etc., and pretty soon the word gets to his family, who shows up and are quite literally stepping over his body to get into his house and take his stuff, bickering about who gets what the whole time.
He was the patriarch of that family, and the only people there who gave 2 shits about him were my father and the first responders, and they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Not a casino worker, just somebody who likes casual gambling.
First time I was ever at a casino the woman in front of me at the atm took out her last five dollars. And paid a 9.95 atm fee to get it. Her account balance flashed on the screen as she walked away.
Almost made me wanna go home.
Similar story. My roommate and I were 21. We tried some nickel slots and didn't hit a single win (I played $5, he played $10), so we tried some blackjack. It went the way we expected, so we cashed out the last couple chips that weren't even enough for the table minimum.
While waiting in line at the cage, we watched a guy slouch to the casino. We promised each other not to ever be that guy. The lady behind us said "that's his third trip to the ATM tonight"
Not a casino worker but…
my freshman year of college in the mid 90s i drove out with a friend to meet some friends at a rez casino. the dude i was with started the night by pulling out $300 each trip to the atm…after about his third time i was like bro we gotta go…ofc the dude refused and became a dick…ended up staying and catching a ride home…
by the second quarter of school i asked around about homie and he left school…ended up blowing his entire student loan on the casinos and couldnt afford to stay…
dont think he ever came back
My mom works at a casino. She was walking through the tables and a guy in front of her pulled a gun from his pocket and shot himself in the head. The gun landed a couple feet from her...feet.
This made me think that she's never really mentioned it since. I should probably check to be sure there's no lingering issues.
A lady came to my casino on a bus day trip.
She never went home. She gambled until everything that she had was gone, and then she sold her house to some shyster and gambled that money.
The last time I saw her, she was begging on the sidewalk. Never found out what happened to her, but I never forgot her. It broke my heart. I tried to talk her into going home, but she was either into the early stages of Alzheimer’s, or dementia, and nothing would get through to her.
A friend of mine got divorced after his wife playing slots in the grocery story fairly often. She was buying $50 in groceries and getting $100 cash back to play. Multiple times a week, he was confused why his grocery bills were so high with the relative lack of food at the house.
If you ask a casino/hotel what one of their biggest maintenance problems are they will tell you the plumbing, because these players wear diapers to stay at the table/slot then flush the diapers clogging up the pipes.
Playing poker at a tribal card room. 20-25yo kid at the table was terrible, and all the other players loved him. As he rebought chips for the 3rd time (that I was present), he mentioned he has just been laid off from the local factory, and he figured he would come to the casino with his severance check. Suddenly, I was far less interested in playing with him.
A few minutes later he busted again, and didn’t rebuy. Pretty quiet when he stood up and left.
Not casino worker, but having seen that video of the person sitting at a virtual slot machine and entering like 20k directly from their bank account into the machine FROM the machine is just terrible.
It's one thing to have atms cause at least there's the small chance the person stops and thinks before withdrawing the money. But when they can do it at the machine, it is just terrible.
I worked for a Gambling Control Agency in my state. The saddest thing I ever saw was a woman come into a casino still wearing a hospital gown because it was her first stop after being released.
Used to live in Vegas when I was a youth.
My step-dad liked to randomly gamble his entire paycheck.
One time he gambles his whole check, borrowed money from his mom, gambled all of that, too, then involved me in making up a story about losing his wallet and someone stealing the money from his mom.
Fun times, those were.
Obviously everyone at the casino is trying to win, but the sad truth is people are addicted to losing. The high comes from the anticipation of the win, not the win. That’s why people don’t leave when they win.
I used to do shows at casinos and I once watched a guy blow through $5,000 at a craps table in under 30 minutes. He was making big bets and pushing to keep his bets working even without a point being on. It was sickening to watch him lose so much so quickly. I was up doing simple bets and I paid close attention to his bets to learn what not todo.
A few days later at another casino I watched someone blow through $20,000 in under 30 minutes. He looked like he could afford it, but the look on his face indicated he could not.
I was at Mohegan Sun during the Kentucky Derby last year or the year before (it was the race where the massive underdog won and had odds like 1000:1) I saw an older gentleman walking the casino floor dressed to the 9’s in the usual derby way (full suit and vest, dress hat, etc) with this look of absolute shock and despair on his face. I’ll never forget it I felt so bad for whatever he was going through.
There’s the women who would try to sell their jewelry in the bathroom to get money to keep playing. The little boy calling for his mommy from the edge of the gaming floor. The guy who called his kid from the table with some lie as to why he couldn’t be at his birthday party that day. The guy who died on the table and the player waiting for a seat who stepped over him.
I could go on. Unfortunately.
I wish the guy who worked the blackjack table at the casino my dad went to could respond here about stories of my dad.
My father had a successful plumbing and sewer company in Miami. If it wasn't for his addiction, we would probably be millionaires, and I would have taken over the now defunct corporation. My sister told me a story that he won $10,000 and proceeded to lose it all and about $15,000 more in one night. I feel for anyone who has this horrible addiction and the ones affected by it.
Worked in a tribal casino for a little over 7 years. One evening a fight broke out between two males. The older guy was in his 60’s I’d guess when he got up to use the bathroom or go to the ATM, his chair was free and open to anyone. A young guy in his 20’s sat at the machine and started gambling.
Older man came back started yelling and getting in the young guys face, younger male punched him in the face and dropped the older guy.
Young kid ran out the casino, older male was killed from the punch.
Older guy lost his life over a machine and younger dude will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Sad end for both.
You wanna hear about the guy who looked at mashed potatoes with a label that said mashed potatoes and then looked me dead in the eye and said "What is this?" While gesturing towards the mashed potatoes.
American accent. White guy. How has he never seen mashed potatoes before? This was in 2008 and it's stuck with me since.
Or about the guy who literally lost 125,000$ and the casino gave him...a hotel room and a free buffet meal. He was quite an unhappy customer.
I am going with my GF to Vegas for a week in September. I have no issue with gambling, and have never lost more than 50 bucks before calling it quits. She has never gambled in her life. I think I am gonna take your guys' advice and leave the cards and most of the cash in the room, just in case she has the bug and neither of us know it.
Look up Area 15!! There are a ton of cool experiences, like interactive art exhibits, different augmented and virtual reality scenarios you can do, and a ton more. I really reccommend checking out Omega Mart, I'm going next week! Its basically a 'supermarket from another dimension,' with a ton of hidden passageways and rooms, and a lot of surrealist products. The whole thing is interactive, and you can buy a lot of products too!
My girl used to work in the gift shop at a casino. People would come in with shit and/or piss in their pants and have to buy new clothes. They weren’t disabled, they just didn’t want to get up from their slot machine *even if it meant shitting and pissing in their pants*.
There were other stories, like people being stuck at the casino with no money to get home, people begging her and her coworkers to make phone calls or borrow change for money to catch a bus. Sad stuff.
I was a bartender in a local casino and especially older people would sit at my bar 8-10 hours a day, feeding money into the bar top machines, all while talking about their homes being foreclosed on, their lights getting shut off, etc. They got free pop, coffee, juice, and then after feeding all this money in them, would tell me, "Sorry I cant tip you, I have to watch my money!".. not even a damn dollar. I had to quit because the whole scene went against what I believe. My next door neighbor came in one day and asked me if I could lend them $300.00 cause this machine was "getting ready to hit". He said he was in there to win money to pay his light bill. That was a big fat NO!
It's not really sad by the time you see it. The sad thing is the first time you spend time in a Casino, which for a lot of people is the first day.
The first thing that strikes you is the smell. It's like a sandwich, the ingredients hit you one after another. First there's cigarette smoke. Even in casinos that have banned smoking, the smell still hangs on. Then there's the smell of stale liquor, cheap liquor. The place smells like a wino. Right under that is the smell of unwashed humanity. Sweat, piss, fart, shart, halitosis, and that unmistakeable old person smell. Then you realize these smells are wafting equally from the casino and the clientele.
Then there's the sound, or lack of sound. Despite all these people gathered here for 'entertainment', there is no cheering, no laughter, just the maddening noise of game machines all shouting over each other. The players stare zombielike into the screens, the security look out silently over the players, people mill about among the machines in silence. It feels like a cubicle farm.
Then there's the sights. Casinos are dressed up like resorts and theme parks mixed together, but have none of the excitement or people either have. You don't see happy families or college kids on skip years or swedish travelers. You see ragged, worn out people in their pajamas shuffling in to disappear into the machines. Contrasting the bright colors and blinking lights and patterned carpet and very nice uniforms. All this will change your impression of a casino really quick, on your first or second day, before you even see something really terrible.
This place is just selling vice, catering to the beaten down people who indulge in it. It's all just part of the delivery mechanism where they take money and give the products, alcohol and gambling. These people are here to feed, not to play. If they win all they win is a chance to get a little more. You come, you buy your loss, you buy your liquor, you go home, you come back tomorrow. It's so mind crushingly mechanically miserable that when you see the misery manifest it only confirms what you had already worked out.
Not the saddest, but I did watch the Louis Theroux documentary on Las Vegas and they showed a couple guys who were both more than $20,000 down during their visit to Vegas. They kept insisting they could win at Blackjack.
Nope.
Swing shift as a guard. I walk by a pale old guy, leaned uncannily in his chair with his mouth opened just a bit. I check on him verbally and the guy playing on the machine next to him makes a dismissive comment ("just sleeping"), waving me off. I ignore him.
No response from the pale guy, so I call a medical on the radio after failing to feel a pulse.
Guards flood in. We pull pale guy off the chair and pull his shirt open. We hook him up to the AED I ran to grab and it fires off a few times. EMS arrives and they cart this guy up.
Dismissive guy is just playing his machine the whole time, a few feet from it all. My manager tells me something horrible.
EMS asks dismissive guy if he's going to ride to the hospital with pale guy. Dipshit huffs and cashes out his voucher.
See, my manager told me that dismissive guy was pale guy's family. Brother, I believe we decided (presumably surveillance pulled their info from their player cards, which track a ridiculous amount of information).
Shit head was so fixated on a bunch of flashing lights that his brother being defibrillated and sent to the hospital was just an annoyance and obstacle.
The hospital the guy went to always let us know if the people they intook survived. Pale guy survived, so I got a gift card. Hooray.
Worked as a floor attendant at a casino through grad school. Saw two people with diabetes flop over in their chairs and die because they wouldn’t get up to eat/take their insulin. Saw several people piss and shit themselves not wanting to leave their machines. Obviously the money factor is tragic, too. One particular guy stands out to me because he’d been playing my entire 8-hour shift and was there long before I got there. I knew he wasn’t winning, but I’d lost track at how much money in checks I’d cashed for him. He started getting super frantic by the end of my shift, then the tears. He told me he’d spent his daughter’s entire college savings and then some: around $80k. Maybe it doesn’t sound like much alongside other amounts here, but it was rural WV in 2006. No one in that area had or has that kind of money. As someone who was racking up student debt at the time, that one hit me hard, and I felt so awful for the strain that was going to put on his relationship with his daughter (if he even had one at all after that).
Edit: spelling
I live in a city with a lot of casinos. I've been three times. I'm 34. I only ever play about $40. I figure that with the free drinks, I'll almost break even. I came up once and cashed out $400. Another time $200. Then the last time I lost the entire $40. I've been heartbroken ever since and refuse to step foot into a casino again.
I also sat next to an elderly Chinese man who was playing $1000 a hand blackjack. He lost $40k while is at and watched. I will never step foot in another casino.
Way too many in 10 years of dealing table games. I’ve seen people lose a lot of money until they cried at my table, people sitting at machines and being there the next day I came to work smelling like actual shit, a regular always brought her disabled kid in a wheelchair and put them next to her while she gambled for almost a day each time. I had a guy who clearly had dementia at my table and even with complaints they still allowed him to play. He could barely make hand signals and kept forgetting we were in the middle of hands. It didn’t help that he was tipping the beverage server well so he got massively over-served alcohol. Reports on these people should have made it so they couldn’t continue doing this stuff but it never actually changed anything. The worst was a few tables away from me a guy’s girlfriend was trying to get him to leave and he got so pissed he tried to choke her to death right at the table. He ran from security into the woods behind the casino and killed himself.
WTF is that last story?! My God.
The dementia guy is fucked up
Seriously I don’t know how that’s even legal to let him play!
Coming into work and seeing the same people still playing that were there when I left the night before.
Taking turns so one parent could play the slots while the other sat in the noisy, bright lobby while the kids tried to sleep. The casino I worked at was very loudly against kids in casinos. No vending machines in the hotel, no kid friendly TV channels in rooms, no video game room, very bright lights in every public area, etc. And every Friday and Saturday night we would see kids sleeping on bumpy metal benches and on the floor while the adults gambled. Editing to say there was an adult with the kids. The kids were still sleeping on benches, but they weren't left unsupervised. Still horribly irresponsible and overwhelmingly selfish, and probably emotionally abusive. But not abandoned. So marginally better, maybe worst depending on how you look at it.
That’s fucking heartbreaking for those children
Former casino kid, reporting in. I grilled my parents about this behavior as an adult. My dad defends their choice calling casinos “one of the safest places on earth” due to all of the cameras and security they had.
With that logic the best place for a kid would be a prison cell. Your dad doesn’t seem to understand the basic needs of a child.
I’m sorry that he still defends that.
Talk about reaching deep, wow, no remorse?
I remember when that 7-year-old girl was left alone at a casino by her father, and she was raped and murdered at about 4am by two young men who lured her into the restroom. That happened about 30 years ago.
He actually sent her to the ladies’ bathroom and they followed her in. I will never forget this case. I brought my young son to the ladies room with me. When he got big enough to go on his own, I would stay by the entrance of the men’s room. I had seen Candy Man and THAT scared me.
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I’ll be there for the first time 48 hours from now. Work conference. I’ll check to see if she’s still there.
An old lady playing the slots? Pff, good luck finding *that*
Tuesday mornings. Barely reopened from the 4 hour weekly cleaning and the folks on social security are already in playing penny slots with the $10 left over in their budget.
I worked a bank near an Indian casino. The casino bus would park near the retirement home and shuttle the people to the casino whenever social security checks cleared. Those who had accounts with us would come the next day trying to halt any payments because of "fraud" from the casinos. Every month.
We had this issue with my gran for years…. We thought she had went mad but one time she was with us for a week and the payments still went out…. One of the staff had taken her card and had been using it for about 2 years cleaning her out without it anyone noticing. We got none of it back.
I worked at a casino over a decade ago, but here's mine: Somebody won a small jackpot, something like $2000. When checking her ID for tax paperwork it was discovered that she had put herself on the state's problem gambler self-exclusion list, which meant the casino was obligated to remove her from the building without paying (she wouldn't have been allowed in the building if she had been recognized). While double checking the manager downloaded an updated list (we auto-checked against a local copy that was sometimes a few days out of date) and it showed that she had removed herself from the list with sufficient notice, so the jackpot was paid out. She proceeded to put every penny of the jackpot back into the slot machine... And also made a couple visits to the ATM... And at the end of her stay she asked the cashiers if she could be put back on the self-exclusion list.
This is why I hate draft kings and fan duel and those cell phone games and all their relentless commercials. Like advertising your addiction in your face and you don't even have to leave to take part. It ruins lives I don't struggle with gambling nor directly know anyone who does but those commercials make me irate when I see them.
I don’t have a gambling problem but I do have a bit of an addictive personality. I know myself well enough to know that I could very easily develop a problem with those sports betting apps. At the beginning of the NFL season last year they were offering some “sure thing” bets. I think one was something like 100:1 odds on Patrick Mahomes completing 1 or more passes with a maximum bet of $1. Essentially what they were offering was $100 in free bets, and worse case you lose a single dollar. I downloaded the app to place the bet and then imagined myself 3 months later, several thousand dollars in the hole and desperately trying to get back to even, and I deleted it. I’m very confident that I made the right decision.
> I think one was something like 100:1 odds on Patrick Mahomes completing 1 or more passes with a maximum bet of $1. Essentially what they were offering was $100 in free bets, and worse case you lose a single dollar. What they're buying is first access to a user with a brand-new gambling problem.
It's okay though, because they also put the gambling addiction hotline after those commercials with a disclaimer about getting help, so there's no way all of those commercials and advertising could possibly hurt anyone /s It's one of the things I hate the most about sports now is the amount of gambling advertising that's involved. Everything is sponsored by DraftKings or Fanduel or some stupid company. And then they'll suspend players who gambled on games unrelated to their own team. While having that news report on about how this player is suspended, it'll be cut with a gambling commercial somewhere right after. It's insane to me.
"What's your secret, man? Oh! I use the built-in limiters so I customize my playing style for *my* needs!" Sick bro! Let me get in on that fun in moderation action! 🙄
I genuinely think we’re gonna look back at the widespread promotion of sports betting decades from now the way we look back at doctors endorsing cigarettes today.
They’re gonna need to do something about the player props. Johntay porter just got banned for life from the nba for rigging the under on his prop bets to cover gambling loses. But I think something crazy will happen like a fan will shoot a player who misses his 8 player prop parlay. I think there will also be a massive live betting scandal at any time. Like the computers will spit out the wrong odds and the sites won’t pay up.
I was watching the gambling website commercials on TV and a hockey game broke out.
Change the channel til you find another gambling ad.
A similar sentiment was shared by a friend trying to quit alcohol. Every time she's tried, she feels overwhelmed by online ads for alcohol. And there's no way to turn them off. There needs to be a way to turn off targeted advertising for addiction related content. Gambling, food, alcohol, whatever it is.
I talked to a guy who had been a gambling addict (happily not anymore). It was chilling the way he talked about it. I could definitely see myself getting one big win and spending everything trying to get another. I guess I’m lucky in that every time I go to a casino, which ain’t often, I assume I’m donating $100 to whichever tribe operates it. If I walk out with more than zero I am surprised but always splurge for some treat with whatever is left. Last time it was like $30, I got a really nice ice cream for myself and my daughter, and some cookies.
I am not opposed to gambling with this mindset, it sounds so fun :)
That is the healthy way to gamble - always assume you're just spending however much money you're putting in and don't expect to get anything back. Most of the time you're right and if you're wrong, bonus. Most people have mental safeguards against problem gambling, because a normal brain places outsize value on something that it sees as "yours". To put it succinctly, most people hate losing something more than they like winning something, even if the value of both "things" are equal. There's an interesting experiment they did to validate this back in the day - researchers took two different groups of people; with one group, they offered them a choice between a guaranteed $5 or the chance to guess the results of a coin flip, with $10 for a correct guess and nothing for a failed guess, and with the other group they simply gave them the $5 outright, had them do some random stuff for a few minutes, then offered them the chance to wager their $5 on the coin flip (same as the first group). The second group was significantly less likely to go for the wager than the first group, despite the actions being fundamentally the same, because their brains now saw that $5 as "theirs" and most of them didn't want to lose it, even for the chance to double their earnings. Those with gambling addiction literally have different brain structures than most people, and their aversion to loss and failure is much weaker and/or the dopamine rush they get from winning is much stronger than what you find in a typical brain.
My first December working in the casino I'm still at I was on a blackjack table and a guy sits down and drops $1565 on the table and tells the dealer "dealer, my family's about to have a great Christmas or no Christmas" 20 minutes later it's gone and he asks the dealer if she's happy with herself and how well the casino has to be paying her. Never saw the guy again(our casino is 95% repeat customers) so I wouldn't be surprised if that actually was his Christmas money.
What’s really depressing is it’s not like he only had $50 and was throwing a Hail Mary. My family always has a pretty great Christmas for way less than $1565. But my kids would be so crushed with “no Christmas.”
I feel like even if he did win the first go, his family still wouldn't have a Christmas.
This. These kind of people, even if they win, do not have discipline to stop. Why stop at double or triple?
This happened to a friend of mine who was a dealer. Player had a couple thousand dollars, came in late on Christmas eve and said it was the money for his kid's Christmas presents, talking about he was gonna get him a bike or something. He lost it all pretty quickly and his response was "welp, no point going home now," went to the ATM and kept playing through Christmas day.
Your friend saw my father.
That is bone chillingly sad.
If it helps, that money was never going to go towards a Christmas present. These people are addicted and they do everything they can to justify it to themselves and others.
Oh yeah, him "losing the Christmas money" wasn't really the super sad part. It was more just the instant resignation/defeatism followed by completely ignoring the kid on Christmas and choosing to be completely alone, gambling the entire Christmas day. Working as a dealer at a casino on Christmas has to be one of the most soul-crushing experiences ever.
Don't people understand the dealer probably rather have them win so they can get tips?
They know. Just easier to play the victim so you never have to take responsibility for your actions. You can just justify it in your head that someone else did it to you instead if you doing it to yourself. Coping mechanism maybe.
That's so fucked up to do to the dealer, take SOME fucking responsibility.
I mean, the kind of people that take responsibility for their actions aren't really the types to bet the Christmas gifts money.
Right? He was the only one making choices there. He chose when to sit down, what to bet, which moves to make, and when to leave. She was at work, where it's her job to interact with the players. It's not even like she outplayed him- dealers usually have a strict script they follow that may even be printed on the table where players can see it. He lost to *that* (and chance, ofc.)
I didn’t personally witness it but in late 1999 I helped open the Motor City Casino in Detroit. A month later an off duty police officer lost everything and blew his brains out on the floor.
Guessing this is the story https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/gamb-f02.html
Yep. The casino opening went through multiple delays which were estimated to cost them a million in lost floor revenue per day. One of the reasons I never got into gambling. I was working for an IT vendor that did a lot of work with Mandalay Resorts at the time. I stuck around for the first week of operations and then moved onto my next gig but my main contact at the casino was working when it happened.
Former casino security here …a guy jumping off the 8th story of the parking garage
Oooh rough. The first suicide I made as an EMT was an eight story jump. I feel you.
Yeah definitely was awful it was a Saturday night busiest day of the week to. Definitely a horrible situation. He threw is money in the air and took a running leap. There was no stopping him
Ex-casino worker here. I saw way too many people spend ridiculous amounts of money on gambling. I've seen little kids asleep in chairs outside the casino floor cause their parents were busy gambling. A gentleman had a heart attack at a poker table and other gamblers were pissed cause we had to stop the games so EMS could come. Saddest one though was a lady who wanted to cash a check made out to the electric company. She wanted to know if she could scratch out the company name and write in the casino name. I told her we could not do that.
I’ve seen little kids asleep in chairs outside the floor on Christmas Eve.
Same. The last casino I worked at would put up several Christmas Trees around and outside the casino floor. Seeing little kids curled up near/under the trees always made me so sad.
I was one of those kids unfortunately. Mom would take us to a restaurant in the casino as a “treat” then would leave us there and not come back for many many hours. It was awful.
Same. Mom would play slots and I’d have to stand about five feet behind her or else I’d be considered too close. Eventually I was old enough to go to the arcade and sit at a restaurant by myself.
Same here. I used to sit for hours even up until 3-4 hours before the morning of Monday when school started. My family would go for hours and left me after the “free buffet”. Thankfully due to this, I hate casinos and haven’t stepped into one or gone to Vegas since I was 17, never gambled as well due to childhood hatred for it.
We were each given 5 dollars to play in the casino arcade then they would leave us there for an eternity. It was truly awful. I can't even think of doing that to my own kids. Never.
This may be the darkest thing I’ve read in a long time. Fuck.
Dont worry! odds are their parents hit it super big and their christmas morning was amazing, haven’t you heard the saying “the house never wins?”
I think we might've worked at the same casino. The poker story sounds familiar, and we also put Christmas trees outside the gaming floor.
Every hoods the same
Jesus
I had a guy get thoroughly pissed because we wouldn't cash a check made it from a trust fund bank account. "This is my nephew, legally I'm completely in charge of the money." Fuck you dude. Your nephew has a huge asshole for an uncle. Another guy brought in his federal tax return check. He had completely scratched out his name from the Pay To like and hand wrote in the casino name. All of a sudden it was the casinos fault that now he couldn't cash his check at the bank because his name was no longer in the check. And yeah, the heart attack thing happened on my shift, too. Paramedics were shocking the guy on the floor and this douche tried pushing thru us because it was the shortest path to the machine he wanted.
Wow. People are really terrible. This whole thread has made me really wonder why casinos are legal. Whole gambling thing seems like a serious disease.
You should watch SoftWhiteUnderbelly YouTube interviews on gambling addicts. Fascinating to hear their perspective and explain the addiction.
> I've seen little kids asleep in chairs outside the casino floor cause their parents were busy gambling. I've been that kid. There was a tour company that had a casino package. You get picked up by the bus from whatever town you love in, and come to the city for a weekend. Stay at the hotel/casino. My grandma used to do that a few times a year, so naturally my mom would go pick her up and we'd all go for supper. It would always start with "Stay out here for fiveminutes, I'll go get grandma from the casino." But grandma was on a lucky streak, so she wouldn't leave. Then my mom would out $20 in the slots and play while waiting. Then grandma's lucky streak was over, but my mom would wait until she went through her $20. So grandma would play while she was waiting for mom, and it would just cycle through like that. Five minutes turned into 10, and then 30, and then an hour. Usually by that time, they would come out because they were hungry. But that was if we were planning on going to eat, if it was the afternoon, it was always a longer wait. Worst part is that my grandma had a hotel room there. I could have just sat in the room and happily watched TV all day or brought something to do. But they never let me.
We never had cable so a hotel was a treat. A few times my folks went downstairs to the bar for a bit and I could watch cartoons. Sad you just had to wait and hope for a quick return.
It’s better than them sleeping in situations like you described, but I’ll never forget the revulsion I felt in my bones the first time I saw casinos were adding kid day cares. I understand that some of the kids there are children of casino employees, but a lot of them are the children of parents losing the rent money. The ones near me will take kids as young as 6 weeks old. Fucking disgusting.
I kind of agree with you but am torn on this one. My good guy hat says: It feels like the Casino is responding to creating a safe place for these kids. The shitty parents are going to come anyway and leave their kids in rooms, cars, hallways, anywhere they can, in unsafe manners so how to stop that. If you say just dont bring your kids they will continue to do it and leave the kids in the car for 5+ hours. My bad guy hat says: They are just doing it to enable parents to lose more money. Honestly I don't know what to think its too easy to say they are the bad guy but dumb parents have been doing this for a long time. It could be a response to try to make it safer.
That was my first thought as well. Is it a ploy to lure these parents in, or is it altruistic to at least have somewhere safe for the kids to be if the parents are gonna be at the casino either way?? Sometimes I wish I could see the world in black and white
I worked at an Apple Store when they had personal training for $100 a year. A guy had a heart attack during one of the premium group trainings. People were pissed we closed the store so the guy could get care. Luckily, one of the members was a nurse or a doctor and sprang into action until paramedics arrived. But in the distance as we asked people to leave, a couple of people were bitching “I just need to get some headphones!” It’s like dude, you’re in a mall and a guy is getting chest compressions. You can easily get some headphones at one of the kiosks or other stores, go for a walk. We had another heart attack a month later and same thing happened. Except it was some guy waiting for his iMac to be brought from the back. Our back of house people stopped between the warehouse and floor in the office area because they overhead the store was closing due to a heart attack. The guy was livid he couldn’t just pay as we asked everyone to leave as a man fought for his life feet away. This time it was in the same area, but feet from him on the other side of the table. People can be self absorbed idiots.
Some people are monsters. A guy was stabbed and he collapsed in the doorway of the store I worked at. I had to run and turn off the door to keep him from getting crushed by the door. We employees were all scrambling getting towels, medical supplies, calling 911 etc. Customers were coming to the register which was less than 10 feet from where all of this commotion was going on and start bitching about no one there to ring them up. Uh sorry that a guy’s life is a wee bit more important than your small bag of dog food. And while we were waiting for the ambulance and such to show up, we were trying to direct arriving customers to the other entrance about 30 feet away or better yet come back later. The bitching and moaning about the inconvenience of walking 30 feet wasn’t even the worst of it. One lady literally stepped over this dying man and was on her phone and I heard her say in such an annoyed tone “some crack head got stabbed here.” I was so shocked at the absolute lack of care from like 90% of these people but her heartless callous remark as she stepped over him was so vile.
That check one is sad. Probably the check was signed by her spouse and she was supposed to mail it.
I was driving cross country for work and stopped in West Memphis for the night. Went to the casino to burn a few hours. Fron my machine I saw a lady playing slots with tears running down her face. I heard her scream and looked up to realize the machine hit zero and she started bawling uncontrollably. She was screaming that she had nothing left and to please have her money back. Got removed by security. I hit for $150 and cashed out but the walk to my car was terrifying. I'm not a target demographic for mugging, but the desperation on people's faces was noticeable. Never going there again.
Southland? Yeah I've been there a few times during the day and I've seen a hell lot of sad degeneracy there. People spamming large bills into slots at maximum pace, people freaking out over a huge loss, lack of hygiene, hours long sessions at a single machine, etc.
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Worked Valet at a casino. One night we got the car and they dropped it off, left the keys in (normal here). I hopped in to move it and it smelled like death. I moved the car and informed my super. He called the cops as it was the smell of a decaying body. Cops came and we opened the truck.... full of groceries.... from 4 months ago.... in the missouri summer heat. It was chicken. They came to claim their car and were told to not park here in valet again They said the person who normally carries their groceries up to their second floor apartment left and they don't have anyone to help them anymore. So now they go to casinos and eat out every night.... They didn't have money to do this, no idea where it came from. I will never gamble or go to a casino after working valet those years. Many many more stories
I'd like to hear more of your stories, please.
We would get people that had been in there a while request to get something out of thier car. We would bring it up and they would dig through it and then leave. One night I was accused of stealing $300 out of the glove box. Security took me back and I was searched.... $300 was not discovered on me. Turns out the person had been in the casino for 2 days and after Security reviewed video surveillance, they found the person already went to valet to get the $300 the day before... they didn't remember it
Gosh. So sad. I bet that job got depressing REAL quick.
Casino worker here - winning big can ruin your life. It’s like a drug and I have seen so many people try to chase that high again. They start at higher denomination machines and slowly over time you see them move to $1, .50, .25 and eventually down to the lowest level.
I have lost approximately $2K gambling at a few trips. That high is so high and the losses hurt worse and worse. Chasing a loss is so scary. Luckily I have stopped at my budget but I have gambled enough to taste the emotions of it.
I only bring into the casino what I am willing to lose that day. No credit cards or bank card.
On the rare occasion I do go to a casino I have my “playin money” in my left pocket. My winnings go into my right. When the left is in empty I leave. It works for me but I don’t gamble often.
Solid strategy. I’ve used something similar. The big denomination chips go in my pocket, and they don’t come out until I’m cashing out.
It’s a really important rule that I live by too. It’s my fun money - if I win, I buy a nice dinner or take a shopping trip, if I don’t, I had fun watching it go because the rent and bills are already paid. I *really* like gambling, I totally understand the draw of it that can ruin people’s lives as we’ve seen in this thread. So I’m really glad that I’ve had the discipline to keep that budget rule firm - and to a degree, glad that I’ve never really had enough of a “fun money” budget that I felt an urge to push the rule.
Yeah, I used to manage casinos in a different life and always told people the people with the best luck never win. You'll see a thousand responses in this thread about how people don't understand why people go to the casino. Those people have never made money in a casino, and they don't have "the itch" and will save themselves mountains of money by never playing. A big win forever changes your mindset, you win once and you'll be back again next week to lose it all back, then the week after that to donate some more.
Not a worker but… Back when casino boats used to actually cruise the river, every Friday night we went there was a guy who would grab a $1 poker machine, feed a hundred dollar bill, lay his face down and hit Max bet. Rinse and repeat, 1,2,5 times, once we saw 10 times. Never saw him win a penny. Cruises were 1 hour 15 minutes, he took about 10-25 minutes max, would get done, leave the machine to take a seat by the gangway exit.
Bro cant manage his time OR his money.
I spent a lot of time in the casino, my dad had a gambling problem, it’s sad to watch your hero fall but he pulled himself out and away from that but the things I’ve seen…. Seen a blind Chinese man come in with his bodyguards to help him gamble I’ve seen couples blow their entire money and just stand there looking at each other half in tears I sat next to a woman who lost it all and just couldn’t bring herself to get off the chair because reality wasn’t setting in My dad used to really hit it big, and once he would make me play on one machine and he plays on the other…. His was losing and mine started winning big I got shoved off that seat so fast…. I don’t miss that place it’s full of greed and misery
That pained look of having lost it all is rough. I've never gone to a casino and not seen that at least once.
Is there any other institution that society allows that can basically ruin you so quickly?
Stock market. Head on over to /r/wallstreetbets and you'll see lots of posts of people losing their life savings.
We had a roulette and black jack table room that joined with a night club I worked in. There was this guy who spent more money than I made in two months in just a few hours. He wasn't drunk. I tried to get him to stop playing (he was the only player at the table) but he just said he is lonely and playing blackjack was the only thing that made him feel ok. He was far away from home (I think he was Russian) and just really really sad. It was tough to watch. His face looked just as vacant when he left as when he started playing. So sad
I worked a whole host of positions in Casinos over the course of 6-7 years. In that time I saw a lot of really funny, really sad, and really frustrating things. The one that hurt me the most was seeing the father of one of my Highschool friends coming in over the course of the years. He started showing up every now and then when I was 19 and had my first job there. He was an older guy (late 50's-early 60's) but still pretty healthy, had a lot of money, drove a nice car had a nice house, even owned a small plane that he flew recreationally. Slowly but surely he was coming in more and more frequently though. He started gaining more weight, he was looking more pale and sickly, drank almost constantly. It turned out that his home situation was going downhill fast. He and my friend (his son) had a massive falling out, and eventually his wife left him and took their other daughter with her. He had nothing left but his money and himself, and even that didn't last. He was never winning anything and had to have lost millions in that time frame. He was in the building for days at a time without moving from his machine. Because of that and the amount of alcohol he was consuming combined with the lack of sleep, aging body, and constant second hand smoke exposure, his health was quickly plummeting. He was always nice and happy to talk to anyone, but even that didn't last as he started snapping at every little thing and not interacting with anyone at all. I left that job years ago but every now and then my family will go back to that same casino and see him at his same machine looking like a husk of his former self. Even now that shit is heartbreaking to me. Gambling addiction is a dangerous horrible thing, but you never really realize just how bad it is until you see someone you've known your entire life driven to the very brink by it.
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There's a PBS documentary called "Donut King" about a Cambodian man who escaped the war, came to the U.S., and opened a chain of donut shops. He was quite prosperous, until he discovered Vegas, and within a year, everything was gone, including his family. He somehow got enough money to return to Cambodia, and that's where he was living when the movie wrapped.
Fucking hell that’s brutal. Did her family know the depth of her issue? Or was it a total shock?
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You are totally correct. I can’t even imagine the numbers they’d be gambling. Hell, my wife and I sulk for the rest of the evening when we lose $20 at the casino. I’ve had a few family members lose thousands; one almost ended in divorce when their spouse found out how much they had secretly lost. It amazes me that we can be related and yet totally different when it comes to gambling. Fantastic storytelling……even if the subject is depressing as hell lol.
I remember a Facebook post that was like "I don't get why people like casinos. I just lost $5 and I already wanna blow the whole place up." It really do be like that, for me at least lol.
What happened to the teenage girl? Could you help her at all?
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Thank you for doing what you could, and for easing my mind a little.
Fuck, this one hits hardest. I feel for the family and I'm sorry you had to experience that
I'm not a casino worker. I was at a bar on the casino floor and an elderly man in a suit and hat sat down a few seats over and started talking to the bartender. They made smalltalk and then he mentioned that his wife of 50 years had died of cancer a few weeks beforehand. He said they never had kids and not many friends, so he took all the savings they had and came to Vegas to "have some fun until the money runs out, then I'll be going home to be with my wife." Bartender never followed up on it but just kinda let him drink. I just awkwardly kept scrolling on my phone. What do you even say to that?
You say hey gramps let's party
Yup. If I'm at that stage of life, only future is becoming less and less able to live without embarrassing assistance. Let me go out having some fun. Personally I wouldn't pick Vegas but...
lol yeah looking back I should've hung out with the dude. He was going out on his own terms. We should all be so lucky.
I might have asked about how they met, if they took any trips, what his favorite story about her was...let him walk down his memory lane...
This one's very different than the other stories about all consuming addiction and misery. This one is a man choosing his own epilogue to a long life and hopefully 50 happy years of marriage. Bittersweet for sure but I could see myself making the same choice in that circumstance.
Yeah you're right, bittersweet is the better term I guess. It was just sad that this man's whole life had died a few weeks before, but I guess that was just a testament to his love for his wife and their relationship.
I watched my dad kill himself slowly after my mom died. For a minute, he tried to be happy but he just couldn’t. I’ve never seen someone so miserable. He finished working to Retirement age, then retired and went straight downhill and died in 2022. Maybe the old man had the right idea.
unless the money doesn't run out cause he keeps winning then 10 years later he's like "gee whiz!".
Our mom and dad were married for 66 years, and when our mom passed, we worried about how he would take it, but he handled it pretty well. He's now 96, and still sharp. Our oldest sister lives with him and helps him when he needs it, but he's still able to take care of his own needs. 4 out of us 5 kids live fairly close to him, and all of us are there weekly and talk to him a lot, so he never has a chance to get lonely. He never made much money, but he's rich in friends and family, and has his DNR on the refrigerator and says with whatever the future holds, he's good.
You guys are great. Being rich in friends and family is priceless
I had a custmer walk up to me as a slot attendant, with four quarters on his open palm. He asked if I had any idea about any machine that might be ready to pay out. He explained he had driven a little over two hours to get to the casino and this was literally all the money he had left, he hadn't bothered to fill the gas on his car and it didn't have enough to get him home. Best I could tell him was one particular bank of machines had had several decent payouts, but that was about all I could say, as even slot attendants don't have much idea when any particular machine was going to hit. I got called off to another customer, I don't think he even won enough to buy some gas...
I hated that question so much. I always told them that the only machine designed to give them money was the ATM.
And even those you lose, because they charge like $5 fees
Last time I went to Vegas the ATM fee was like $9 lol
There is a reason why I refer to slots as reverse ATMs
>Best I could tell him was one particular bank of machines had had several decent payouts, but that was about all I could say Not a casino, but many years working in a convenience store that sold lotto and scratchers. My go-to line when someone would ask similar questions was "if I could answer that, do you *really* think I'd be working *here*?" I'd always say it with a smile so they'd know I didn't mean it to be snarky, and it got a few chuckles out of people over the years
Couple jumpers off the top of the parking garage every few years, guy hanged himself in the bathroom…security and maintenance saw a lot more than I did as a slot tech. I just heard about it, I didn’t walk in on it.
Not a casino worker, but still a sad story. Managed an apartment portfolio decades ago and one of the properties was in Vegas. Keep in mind that this was before the days of paying your rent online. We had a zero cash collection policy, but the manager of the property told everyone is was "lifted" for the month to help boost our collections. The perfect storm happened on a Friday that aligned with a lot of paydays. She collected about $80k (roughly $150k in today's dollars) in cash for rent and then went to the casino and put it all on red. Her thinking was that she would double it, then deposit the $80k on Monday and nobody would ever know the difference. She did not win. Monday comes around and I see that the money didn't get to the bank so I call the property. Nobody has seen the manager. Alarm bells immediately ring in my head. I fly to Vegas. We eventually found her at some dude's house and called the police. So stupid.
Area Manager for a fast-food chain (12 stores). One Monday, a store manager did not show up to work, after calling her house w/no answer I grew concerned and went to the store. The entire opening crew was waiting outside for someone to show up. When I opened the safe, all of the weekend deposits (6) were missing. Fearing the worse I called the police to report the possibility of robbery/ kidnapping. The manager was found two days later at a casino, she had gotten so drunk, she passed out, fell and hit her head on a slot machine. Same thing, she thought that she could double the money, pay it back and no one would be the wiser. This was a 72-year-old grandmother that went to jail for felony theft. Sad for everyone involved.
Some guy on a local radio show who was down on his luck did this with 5 or 10 grand and also lost..Everyone was warning him not to do it but he wouldn't listen, thought he had a surefire plan
God damn, she probably thought the odds were 50/50 too.
0/00
Oh man, I have a ton from my 15 years as a casino manager, but I’ll just write a few and come back later: Woman who was an anesthesiologist asssistant hit a “bad beat jackpot” at a 1-2 no limit poker table for around $120k. For non-poker players, this is the lowest stakes no limit hold’em game offered by most poker rooms. The buy-in range was from $100-300 min/max at our room, so by poker standards not terribly high. After she hit the jackpot she started playing the bigger games, first 2-5 no limit ($200-1000 buy-in) and then moving up to 5-10 no limit ($500 min, and I believe at the time it was no max). Next thing you knew she was out playing in the high stakes blackjack pit playing $100 a hand. She got bumped up to a black card quickly from all the blackjack she was playing. Fast forward about 4-6 weeks, maybe 2 months tops and we don’t see her around as much. A few players asked if we’d seen her and a couple let it be known that she borrowed money from them and hasn’t repaid it. She started showing up late at night wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and playing slots. Shortly after, security determined that she had been living out of her car and sleeping in the parking garage. The fall went QUICK. It was just like all the lottery winner horror stories I’d seen on tv but playing out in real time.
Story 2: kid steps up to roulette table and puts down $100 on whatever number and it hits ($3500). Keeps playing and he’s on absolute fire. Runs it up to $30,000 in about an hour. 6 hours later he left down $600 (gave it all back plus another $500 out of his pocket). 22 years old and out on his birthday with friends. Friends should have told him to walk away!
Story 3: guy at poker table had a heart attack. Tried to reach into his jacket pocket. Supervisor puts it together that he has a nitro pill (he knew him) and gets it out and gives it to him. Ambulance comes, guy pulls through, pill saved his life. Supervisor was suspended for over a month while they investigated whether or not to fire him for administering prescription medicine to a patron. wtf.
Story 4: did not witness directly but happened at one of the properties in my company. Guy has crush on server at buffet. Always requests her/sits in her section. Never gets out of line, just polite and cool about it. One day he brings her a gift, something small, nothing inappropriate on its own accord, just situationally inappropriate I suppose, although you tip your servers so I guess it’s questionable at least. She tells her boss that it made her feel uncomfortable and manager ends up banning him from the buffet for life. Next day he comes back, sets a fire in the parking garage to draw away all of security, walks up to her and shoots himself in the head. Fortunately it was just him not her too, but still insanely traumatic.
Story 5: high stakes player who’d played poker and blackjack for 48 hours straight walks up to me and says “I need you to call my wife and tell her I’m at the final table of a big poker tournament and that’s why I’m still here.” I say “just because I work at a casino you assume I have no morals?” He raises his voice and tells me to just do it or he’s leaving. Shift manager notices and comes over, he tells him what he told me and the shift manager calls his wife with no hesitation. This was a manager I had a lot of respect for and was like a mentor to me. Lost all respect for him after that.
Story 6: quadriplegic who would get wheeled into our room by his daughter, he’d play poker but occasionally would smell so bad we’d have to call her to come get him and often she wouldn’t for hours and he’d just sit there at the edge of the room. We couldn’t have him at the table because he smelled so bad. It was clear his hygiene was being neglected badly but casino upper management wouldn’t report it or allow anyone to go further with the situation. This was like every other week for a year…
When I was single and childless I had a lot more money so I would frequent the casino a lot. Once I saw an. infant in the car seat covered in a blanket moving around in an unattended car in the parking lot garage. Security had already been alerted and the parents were found inside at the slots. They were arrested and made the news that night smfh.
Not a casino employee, but I used to work at a bank. Had a customer asking about something on her account, so I was reviewing her statement and saw these frequent $2,000 withdrawals at the casino nearby. In the one statement I was looking at, there were over $10K in withdrawals, and this customer’s total account balance was somewhere around $60K. I started going backward in her statements and found she had sold a house and received something like $700K less than a year ago, and had steadily gambled it almost all away, month by month. It was one of the most depressing things I saw there, which is saying a lot at a bank.
I used to be in a fintech where the customers linked their bank account. When they called in for support I get anproved access to their history to troubleshoot money transfers. I only saw people who had trouble getting by. It's absolutely depressing to see bank accounts hitting zero or negative so many times in a short time and the people on the phone are so calm because it's just life for them. They just accept their losses in life as the banks racked up overdrafts that drain a huge chunk of their paycheck IIRC, Touched hundred of accounts a day but deep dive into like 5-10 a day Edit: my thoughts during these was always that these people were gambling when they bought lunch. The bet: Will I get lunch for the already overpriced menu price or will $35 be tacked on for overdraft? Pro tip turn off overdraft. Better to not get lunch than not have 4 lunches worth taken out of your account by the bank. The fintech wasnt associated with the banks
Former casino worker of 20 years. I’ve seen a lot of things, but this one stands out to me. I was the games manager on shift and there was a lady in her 40s playing blackjack. She had been there a few hours and had made quite a few trips to the ATM and her buy ins were getting into the thousands of dollars. I was doing paperwork in the pit when a dealer called me over while the lady was on another ATM trip and said she was crying just before. I kept an eye on her and after she lost a few more hands I could see the tears start and she was silently crying while playing. I went up and as discreetly as possible, asked her if she was ok and offered help through our partnered addictions help program. She looked me right in the face and got mad at me for asking and told me she’s fine and to leave her alone. She was making staff very uncomfortable at that time and it was obvious she was crying more and more as she continued to play and lose. I made the decision to ask her to leave for the night and comped her cab ride home. I tried again to offer her information to organizations to help with her gambling again, but still not interested. Addictions are heartbreaking to see and I really hope she was able to get help.
My dad was a security guard at a casino for 15 years and he’s got stories. When he started working there the chairs at the slot machines were made of cloth they had to change them to vinyl because people would not get up to go to the bathroom and they would piss and shit all over the chairs. People would sneak their kids into the hotel in luggage when kids aren’t allowed in the hotel. Others left them in the car in the parking garage. One guy took a loan out against his house to gamble and lost it all. He dropped dead in the casino. People would literally spend days gambling in the same clothes. People would beg for money at the exits of the highway for money pretending to be homeless and use the money to gamble. I could keep going Edit: the casino my father worked at did not allow kids on premises period. If yours does then fucking good for you!
I saw this video just the other day of a guy [who lost his life savings at the casino](https://new.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1dkakdz/guy_throws_a_tantrum_at_the_casino_after_losing/) and threw a major tantrum. I imagine this happens more frequently than I think, maybe not the tantrum or dropping dead part, but someone who is so deep into the gambling deepend that they bet everything they own and come out with nothing.
Most certainly, and the incidence of tantrums and dropping probably increase when the person loses everything. All three at once is a statistical rarity i'd bet
How do people have enough money to gamble for days!!! I take $100 and I’m out in less than 2 minutes
Not a worker, but I saw a guy try to bet his prosthetic arm in Vegas.
Was he playing blackjack with Rocket Raccoon?
He couldn't beat the slot machines, so he decided to join them.
Former cage supervisor - in the span of a month, 2 people committed suicide by jumping off the top of our 6 story parking garage. Saddest part was that when it happened the second time, all the staff were just like "Really? Again? That's inconvenient".
I lived in Vegas for 6 years, all my jobs except for the last were in casinos, I've seen some shit. The tamest is at my first job we didn't work directly for the hotel (just leased space there) so we could cash our paychecks at the cage. One payday, one of my coworkers cashes his check on a break, hits the tables on his way back, comes back 20 minutes later having lost it all. And this wasn't minimum wage either, it was a tattoo shop and he was an artist, so we're talking a check for thousands of dollars. He just laughed, and at least waiting a couple weeks to do it again. Second job not gambling related, but I worked at a nightclub in one of the casinos, some girl in line to *get in the club* was already drunk off her ass and popped a squat and pissed and shit right there in line. Like, full on diarrhea all over. Third job was for a casino downtown. I would start my day walking the property, including the casino floor, and end it that way as well. I'd frequently see the same people on both walks, sometimes days in a row, and each time they looked worse and worse. It was awful. Edit: this was secondhand but it comes from my last non-casino job - driving for Uber/Lyft. Picked up friendly older guy, don't remember where I took him but I think he was local. We started talking about gambling, and he told me about a friend of his. Former cop, retired and moved to Vegas with his wife. Within 4 months his $400k pension was gone. It was a miracle his wife didn't leave him.
Casino worker for 35 years. All I'm going to say is, that I believe everyone of these stories. I don't know if they are all true, but I've seen it so many times, nothing really surprises me now. It's truly sad.
Ex-craps dealer. Have seen people run $100 to $10,000 in an hour. And then drop that $10k and 500 more back to the casino in 3 or 4 more hours. Even after I told them to put some of those black chips in their pocket and to not take them out until they got to the cashier.
The saddest thing I've seen was an elderly man who lost his entire pension in one night. He just sat there, staring at the slot machine, looking completely lost.
One of the saddest things I've seen was a regular patron who had clearly lost more than just money over time. He'd come in frequently, always chasing his losses, and it was evident that his gambling habit had taken a toll on his personal life. Over the months, he became more withdrawn, and his clothes and demeanor showed signs of neglect. It was heartbreaking to watch someone lose not just financially but also in terms of their well-being and relationships.
Not a wild story as I worked in a standard UK city casino with quite strict limits. I once saw a person lose their house over the course of a short summer. Not much exciting just a general sadness and anger from the regulars.
My sixth form friend’s dad did that. Lost his house then lost his wife and kids, because unsurprisingly telling his wife that he’d lost their house did not go down well. Really fucked them all up, the aftermath wasn’t much different to if he’d been addicted to heroin instead- he wasn’t a part of their lives and he’d destroyed theirs on his way out. Awful. Don’t even know what happened to him, he just kind of fell off the radar
Not a casino worker but I saw a woman stage an impromptu intervention on her father at a blackjack table. Was playing at a table with all veterans at potawatomi in Milwaukee. We were all doing well except this one guy who was playing table minimum and losing. But we were laughing and taking and having a good time. This guy losing is sitting to my right. A woman comes up on his right and grabs him by the shoulder. She says, 'I knew I'd find you here! You said you were going to get groceries! How'd you even get here?' He says, 'your uncle brought me...' cue to her Uncle waving to her from a table over. She says, 'you have kids at home relying on you. How could you do this again? Come on we're going home...' He says, 'olay, fine but I'll just come back later...' as he cashed out like $30 and sulked away. As if on cue the 5 remaining guys at the table push their chips in and cash out. I still think about that family 15 years later.
I was at the casino one night and a guy was on a decent tear. I saw him hit a bunch of jackpots in the $1200 - $3000 range. I would say at one point he was up about $7000. He was tipping the floor people who handed him the money like $100 here, $200 there for each jackpot he won. I went there with $1000 to play with, and at $2 a spin I was there for like 5 or 6 hours. I watched this guy just absolutely tank. He went from machine to machine putting in hundreds and hundreds into each machine. He was not some high roller, just a normal dude. Just as I was finishing up, with about $750 to take home with me, one of the floor workers went up to him and this was the conversation. "So I see you're having a run of bad luck right now. I would really hate it if you went home with less money in your pocket than what you gave out to us." He said something like "Oh. Ill get it back don't worry." Within 10 minutes he was at the ATM taking out another $1000. Then again at the ATM taking out another $1000. Then again about 10 minutes later taking out another $1000. Dude left about the same time I did, having given out around $1000 - $1500 to floor workers as tips, losing his initial money he came with and at least another $3000 on top of that. I walked to my car a few minutes after him and he was smashing the steering wheel of his truck and screaming.
I was a scuba diver at a vegas hotel and we started at 3am to get the tanks cleaned before people started coming in during the day. My diver was in the tank and I was spotting. I noticed a lot of commotion and EMS going into the club across the “hall” in a casino sense. About 20min they come out with a dude strapped down hard, laughing like the damn joker with his face COVERED in thin razor cuts. I mean absolutely dozens of them. Just laughing his absolute head off, actively bleeding and just totally disfigured face. It was so surreal but I will never forget that laugh man.
I have several stories. I worked as a cashier and also a slot attendant for 5 years. The worst was when a guy was just sitting at a slot machine with a bewildered look on his face. Like he was in shock. I asked him if he was ok, could I get him a water? He just looked at me and said, "I need help, man. This just isn't fun anymore." I called my manager on the radio and asked him to grab a casino host, then sat down with him. A casino host couldn't help, but he could take him to a quiet area to talk. My manager came by, I introduced the player and said, "Guy_name is having a hard time right now. Think we can all go somewhere quiet and talk?" The manager took it from there, but I felt so bad for him. He was just quietly crying in desperation and whatever realization he had just experienced. As a cashier, my first Christmas Eve there was the first time I'd ever worked on Christmas Eve in my 28 years. It was also the first Christmas I hadn't been with my family. Around 8 or 9pm, a lady came to my cashier window and asked for $250 in quarter tokens (several years before paper tickets). I did the thing and she said, "No, no, no baby! You've got to put some extra luck on these! I need to win, I haven't bought my babies anything for Christmas yet." I tapped them twice, wiggled my fingers towards the quarters and squinched my eyes, and said, "Done! That was all the luck I brought tonight!" Ol girl was tickled pink, she just knew she was gonna get that jackpot for her babies! Another cashier sat with me at dinner break and told me it only gets easier after that. She lied. Last one for now was the lady who had just won a $5000 or $10,000 jackpot on a dime machine. It was very clear she didn't want it. Turned out she was banned for her gambling addiction and behavior. She was begging to just forget we saw her and give it to anyone else. She just wanted to play. Unfortunately, the law is the law and she was handcuffed by gaming officials and arrested. White: Just thought of another good one. It was an employee this time. She got caught stealing tips players have to the slot attendant. The cool thing about casinos is when they catch you, they make note of it, save the video evidence, and do nothing other than add to a report. Once the employee steals enough, I think $500, it's a state felony because technically every non-player penny inside a casino is state property because it's state regulated. Like a bank is federal. So they catch a co-worker stealing tips. One day she's just coming on shift and is counting into her jackpot payout bank when gaming stops by and starts talking to her. Gaming guys aren't friendly if they have to leave their office. They're like extra angry chihuahua's that haven't eaten for days and suddenly are being teased with hot dogs, small children's fingers, and pupperonis. Everyone in uniform stops and backs up, then they start loudly reading her her rights. Not only was she arrested, but she got called out in front of everyone she was stealing from.
I lived about 2 city blocks from a riverfront casino. Gamblers regularly left their kids and infants in their car while they played the tables. Many times I would walk my dog on the river and come across lonely men (usually) sobbing with their heads in their hands.
Used to be a supervisor in a casino. Anything $10,000.01 or more I had to hand pay with a security supervisor. $25k+ had to be paid by check, which could be cashed for up to $50k. Had a guy win $125k. He cashed out $50k of it, tossed it all back in the machines that night. The rest went in over the next month. This was a guy that really could have used that money to better his life too.
My ex was from a suburb outside Vegas. When she was like 7 and her dad was AWOL her mom would take them to his favorite casino and send her and her brother out to play "Go Find Daddy".
Video poker casino, i worked graveyard shift,10pm - 6am, and we got robbed at gunpoint one night. We had about 5 people there playing.The robber disarmed the security guard and forced all the people to go to the ground. So they did their thing and fled. I am sitting in the cage, smoking stressfully waiting on the cops and those 5 people fucking got up and went right back to their games. Cops were in questioning them, and they are just playing away. I am in the cage talking to the cops and my boss while they are dusting for prints and such, and these people just keep coming to change out money. I quit the job the next day.
Not a casino worker, but back in the 90’s working at a gas station part time, we had a few regulars who would stop in every Friday and gamble away most, if not all, of their paycheck. Edit- on daily Numbers, but mostly scratch-off cards. (From a stone mason to an ER nurse - hardworking guys with families…). It was sad. To make it sadder, the owner of the place would extend ‘credit’ if they wanted it, which is highly illegal, obviously… this is why I never gamble. I can’t believe where we’ve gone with the whole sports-betting thing - it’s fucking devious, and the masses are buying in, and it was already ruining so many lives.
15 years in the casino, on the F&B side. I have seen: -People shit and piss on themselves so they don't have to leave a machine. Shit in the line to the buffet and roll it down their pant leg so they don't lose their spot. Completely not even batting an eye at their actions. I have more shit / piss stories than I care to share. -People get an opportunity to buy a home, finally, and find out they can't get a lone because 95% of their income has gone into the casino for years. -Someone die, just to have people try to step around the barrier to get to the free soda machine, or over the body even, because they could care less. -Fentanyl classes had to be given to my team in the event someone found something on the ground. I am glad we did that as a company, but sad it was there and that common. -Someone throw themselves off the parking structure. -Someone stir up a car chase and end it in the valet, basically suicide by cop. (not really the casino's fault here) -Don't get me started on Covid handling both pre and post closure. Needless to say, I am long and gone out of that world. I NEVER gamble.
Not casino related, but one of your scenarios reminded me. We had an employee at our small family run business, been there many years, everyone knew he was good at his job. Well he didn’t show up to work one day, so my father went to his house to check on him and found him dead on the floor, from a heart attack (he was older and smoked. Everyone was shocked, but not really surprised). Well, he calls the cops, emt’s, etc., and pretty soon the word gets to his family, who shows up and are quite literally stepping over his body to get into his house and take his stuff, bickering about who gets what the whole time. He was the patriarch of that family, and the only people there who gave 2 shits about him were my father and the first responders, and they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Not a casino worker, just somebody who likes casual gambling. First time I was ever at a casino the woman in front of me at the atm took out her last five dollars. And paid a 9.95 atm fee to get it. Her account balance flashed on the screen as she walked away. Almost made me wanna go home.
Similar story. My roommate and I were 21. We tried some nickel slots and didn't hit a single win (I played $5, he played $10), so we tried some blackjack. It went the way we expected, so we cashed out the last couple chips that weren't even enough for the table minimum. While waiting in line at the cage, we watched a guy slouch to the casino. We promised each other not to ever be that guy. The lady behind us said "that's his third trip to the ATM tonight"
Was in AC 20 years ago. it was midnight and there were a bunch of small kids sleeping on coats outside the casino floor… in the bathroom alone, etc.
Not a casino worker but… my freshman year of college in the mid 90s i drove out with a friend to meet some friends at a rez casino. the dude i was with started the night by pulling out $300 each trip to the atm…after about his third time i was like bro we gotta go…ofc the dude refused and became a dick…ended up staying and catching a ride home… by the second quarter of school i asked around about homie and he left school…ended up blowing his entire student loan on the casinos and couldnt afford to stay… dont think he ever came back
My mom works at a casino. She was walking through the tables and a guy in front of her pulled a gun from his pocket and shot himself in the head. The gun landed a couple feet from her...feet. This made me think that she's never really mentioned it since. I should probably check to be sure there's no lingering issues.
Oh don't worry, there are.
A lady came to my casino on a bus day trip. She never went home. She gambled until everything that she had was gone, and then she sold her house to some shyster and gambled that money. The last time I saw her, she was begging on the sidewalk. Never found out what happened to her, but I never forgot her. It broke my heart. I tried to talk her into going home, but she was either into the early stages of Alzheimer’s, or dementia, and nothing would get through to her.
A friend of mine got divorced after his wife playing slots in the grocery story fairly often. She was buying $50 in groceries and getting $100 cash back to play. Multiple times a week, he was confused why his grocery bills were so high with the relative lack of food at the house.
If you ask a casino/hotel what one of their biggest maintenance problems are they will tell you the plumbing, because these players wear diapers to stay at the table/slot then flush the diapers clogging up the pipes.
Playing poker at a tribal card room. 20-25yo kid at the table was terrible, and all the other players loved him. As he rebought chips for the 3rd time (that I was present), he mentioned he has just been laid off from the local factory, and he figured he would come to the casino with his severance check. Suddenly, I was far less interested in playing with him. A few minutes later he busted again, and didn’t rebuy. Pretty quiet when he stood up and left.
Not casino worker, but having seen that video of the person sitting at a virtual slot machine and entering like 20k directly from their bank account into the machine FROM the machine is just terrible. It's one thing to have atms cause at least there's the small chance the person stops and thinks before withdrawing the money. But when they can do it at the machine, it is just terrible.
I worked for a Gambling Control Agency in my state. The saddest thing I ever saw was a woman come into a casino still wearing a hospital gown because it was her first stop after being released.
Used to live in Vegas when I was a youth. My step-dad liked to randomly gamble his entire paycheck. One time he gambles his whole check, borrowed money from his mom, gambled all of that, too, then involved me in making up a story about losing his wallet and someone stealing the money from his mom. Fun times, those were.
Obviously everyone at the casino is trying to win, but the sad truth is people are addicted to losing. The high comes from the anticipation of the win, not the win. That’s why people don’t leave when they win. I used to do shows at casinos and I once watched a guy blow through $5,000 at a craps table in under 30 minutes. He was making big bets and pushing to keep his bets working even without a point being on. It was sickening to watch him lose so much so quickly. I was up doing simple bets and I paid close attention to his bets to learn what not todo. A few days later at another casino I watched someone blow through $20,000 in under 30 minutes. He looked like he could afford it, but the look on his face indicated he could not.
I was at Mohegan Sun during the Kentucky Derby last year or the year before (it was the race where the massive underdog won and had odds like 1000:1) I saw an older gentleman walking the casino floor dressed to the 9’s in the usual derby way (full suit and vest, dress hat, etc) with this look of absolute shock and despair on his face. I’ll never forget it I felt so bad for whatever he was going through.
There’s the women who would try to sell their jewelry in the bathroom to get money to keep playing. The little boy calling for his mommy from the edge of the gaming floor. The guy who called his kid from the table with some lie as to why he couldn’t be at his birthday party that day. The guy who died on the table and the player waiting for a seat who stepped over him. I could go on. Unfortunately.
I wish the guy who worked the blackjack table at the casino my dad went to could respond here about stories of my dad. My father had a successful plumbing and sewer company in Miami. If it wasn't for his addiction, we would probably be millionaires, and I would have taken over the now defunct corporation. My sister told me a story that he won $10,000 and proceeded to lose it all and about $15,000 more in one night. I feel for anyone who has this horrible addiction and the ones affected by it.
Worked in a tribal casino for a little over 7 years. One evening a fight broke out between two males. The older guy was in his 60’s I’d guess when he got up to use the bathroom or go to the ATM, his chair was free and open to anyone. A young guy in his 20’s sat at the machine and started gambling. Older man came back started yelling and getting in the young guys face, younger male punched him in the face and dropped the older guy. Young kid ran out the casino, older male was killed from the punch. Older guy lost his life over a machine and younger dude will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Sad end for both.
You wanna hear about the guy who looked at mashed potatoes with a label that said mashed potatoes and then looked me dead in the eye and said "What is this?" While gesturing towards the mashed potatoes. American accent. White guy. How has he never seen mashed potatoes before? This was in 2008 and it's stuck with me since. Or about the guy who literally lost 125,000$ and the casino gave him...a hotel room and a free buffet meal. He was quite an unhappy customer.
I always felt bad that I lost $500 at a casino one day.. and that was the only time… until I read these stories. Jesus.
I am going with my GF to Vegas for a week in September. I have no issue with gambling, and have never lost more than 50 bucks before calling it quits. She has never gambled in her life. I think I am gonna take your guys' advice and leave the cards and most of the cash in the room, just in case she has the bug and neither of us know it.
Look up Area 15!! There are a ton of cool experiences, like interactive art exhibits, different augmented and virtual reality scenarios you can do, and a ton more. I really reccommend checking out Omega Mart, I'm going next week! Its basically a 'supermarket from another dimension,' with a ton of hidden passageways and rooms, and a lot of surrealist products. The whole thing is interactive, and you can buy a lot of products too!
My girl used to work in the gift shop at a casino. People would come in with shit and/or piss in their pants and have to buy new clothes. They weren’t disabled, they just didn’t want to get up from their slot machine *even if it meant shitting and pissing in their pants*. There were other stories, like people being stuck at the casino with no money to get home, people begging her and her coworkers to make phone calls or borrow change for money to catch a bus. Sad stuff.
[удалено]
I was a bartender in a local casino and especially older people would sit at my bar 8-10 hours a day, feeding money into the bar top machines, all while talking about their homes being foreclosed on, their lights getting shut off, etc. They got free pop, coffee, juice, and then after feeding all this money in them, would tell me, "Sorry I cant tip you, I have to watch my money!".. not even a damn dollar. I had to quit because the whole scene went against what I believe. My next door neighbor came in one day and asked me if I could lend them $300.00 cause this machine was "getting ready to hit". He said he was in there to win money to pay his light bill. That was a big fat NO!
It's not really sad by the time you see it. The sad thing is the first time you spend time in a Casino, which for a lot of people is the first day. The first thing that strikes you is the smell. It's like a sandwich, the ingredients hit you one after another. First there's cigarette smoke. Even in casinos that have banned smoking, the smell still hangs on. Then there's the smell of stale liquor, cheap liquor. The place smells like a wino. Right under that is the smell of unwashed humanity. Sweat, piss, fart, shart, halitosis, and that unmistakeable old person smell. Then you realize these smells are wafting equally from the casino and the clientele. Then there's the sound, or lack of sound. Despite all these people gathered here for 'entertainment', there is no cheering, no laughter, just the maddening noise of game machines all shouting over each other. The players stare zombielike into the screens, the security look out silently over the players, people mill about among the machines in silence. It feels like a cubicle farm. Then there's the sights. Casinos are dressed up like resorts and theme parks mixed together, but have none of the excitement or people either have. You don't see happy families or college kids on skip years or swedish travelers. You see ragged, worn out people in their pajamas shuffling in to disappear into the machines. Contrasting the bright colors and blinking lights and patterned carpet and very nice uniforms. All this will change your impression of a casino really quick, on your first or second day, before you even see something really terrible. This place is just selling vice, catering to the beaten down people who indulge in it. It's all just part of the delivery mechanism where they take money and give the products, alcohol and gambling. These people are here to feed, not to play. If they win all they win is a chance to get a little more. You come, you buy your loss, you buy your liquor, you go home, you come back tomorrow. It's so mind crushingly mechanically miserable that when you see the misery manifest it only confirms what you had already worked out.
Not the saddest, but I did watch the Louis Theroux documentary on Las Vegas and they showed a couple guys who were both more than $20,000 down during their visit to Vegas. They kept insisting they could win at Blackjack. Nope.
Swing shift as a guard. I walk by a pale old guy, leaned uncannily in his chair with his mouth opened just a bit. I check on him verbally and the guy playing on the machine next to him makes a dismissive comment ("just sleeping"), waving me off. I ignore him. No response from the pale guy, so I call a medical on the radio after failing to feel a pulse. Guards flood in. We pull pale guy off the chair and pull his shirt open. We hook him up to the AED I ran to grab and it fires off a few times. EMS arrives and they cart this guy up. Dismissive guy is just playing his machine the whole time, a few feet from it all. My manager tells me something horrible. EMS asks dismissive guy if he's going to ride to the hospital with pale guy. Dipshit huffs and cashes out his voucher. See, my manager told me that dismissive guy was pale guy's family. Brother, I believe we decided (presumably surveillance pulled their info from their player cards, which track a ridiculous amount of information). Shit head was so fixated on a bunch of flashing lights that his brother being defibrillated and sent to the hospital was just an annoyance and obstacle. The hospital the guy went to always let us know if the people they intook survived. Pale guy survived, so I got a gift card. Hooray.
Worked as a floor attendant at a casino through grad school. Saw two people with diabetes flop over in their chairs and die because they wouldn’t get up to eat/take their insulin. Saw several people piss and shit themselves not wanting to leave their machines. Obviously the money factor is tragic, too. One particular guy stands out to me because he’d been playing my entire 8-hour shift and was there long before I got there. I knew he wasn’t winning, but I’d lost track at how much money in checks I’d cashed for him. He started getting super frantic by the end of my shift, then the tears. He told me he’d spent his daughter’s entire college savings and then some: around $80k. Maybe it doesn’t sound like much alongside other amounts here, but it was rural WV in 2006. No one in that area had or has that kind of money. As someone who was racking up student debt at the time, that one hit me hard, and I felt so awful for the strain that was going to put on his relationship with his daughter (if he even had one at all after that). Edit: spelling
I live in a city with a lot of casinos. I've been three times. I'm 34. I only ever play about $40. I figure that with the free drinks, I'll almost break even. I came up once and cashed out $400. Another time $200. Then the last time I lost the entire $40. I've been heartbroken ever since and refuse to step foot into a casino again. I also sat next to an elderly Chinese man who was playing $1000 a hand blackjack. He lost $40k while is at and watched. I will never step foot in another casino.