A total aside...

You guys KILL me!

There is a slot attendant at the joint named (here) Bob. Bob dealt dice in AC for a couple of years, then got out of the business and tried to make it in the "real world" until THIS casino opened, and he jumped back in.

Anyway... of all the people I work with at this house, VERY few have any actual dealing experience. My boss is one, and Bob is the other. Lot's of people with CASINO experience, but no dealers, if you get my drift. So, on those rare occassions that I get a chance to sit with Bob in the break room... we both have some serious fun "talking shop".

As with any specialized industry, there is a lingua franka used in casinos that allows ANYONE to understand what you are saying, but if you measure your time in the pits in decades, rather than years, terms like "stick", "toke", "hump", "wheel jack" and "puck wax" all roll off a tongue as easily as bad language in a good bar.

Sometimes, however, I fall into the habit of using terms from my previous life in the pits in my NEW job as a Director in NEPA. When I'm at a budget committee meeting sitting around a big table with lots of "suits" that make lots more money than I do, I find that I sometimes use terms that need to be defined for the bean-counting college kids or the marketing-degree flunkies that make up the bulk of the room I'm in.

Last OpCo meeting I had to sit through, I'm parked next to one of the senior hosts (a 23-year-old nerd that has never known the touch of a woman other than his mother), and the speaker makes a comment about something costing "$4400 times nine". Everyone laughs, as if this was some unimaginably hard calculation beyond the realm of possible solution without Big Blue on hand. I turn to the "nerd" and say "I didn't think $39,600 was enough to make that big of a difference." I must have said it lauder than I thought, because suddenly the speaker wanted to know how I knew the amount he was talking about...

"Last time I humped a table, we still paid a $44 "hard 8" $396... did something change in the casino business since the last time I was late from break?" I thought it would draw a giggle... but NO ONE got it.

Someone from that meeting asks my boss what the hell I was talking about, so she calls me to her office. I get there, and there is a room full of the same "break-ins" that still have wet ink on their marketing and bean-counting diplomas, and she makes the challenge that anyone that can offer a number between 1 and 1000, multiplied by a number of HER choosing (she dealt in AC, too) that I can't give an answer to immediately, WE'D buy lunch. If I did it, THEY'D buy lunch.

So, the numbers came from around the room... 788 x 35 (easy)... 17 x 11... (REALLY easy)... 543 x 9 (easier)... lots and lots of them. Then my boss started with her own challenges... what's $672 on the EIGHT pay? ( $784) What's an eighteen hundred dollar snapper pay? (twenty seven hundred) What's $170 straight up and $250 split pay? ($10200... 595 plus 425 x 10).

They really liked the "keys"... 11x, 17x, 9x, C and E, 6 and 8 placed, is a number a "proper bet" on the 6 and 8?

I eat free for a MONTH at this house! Until I gave them the keys, they thought I was RainMan, for Christ's sake.