It Wasn't in the Cards

I had been living and working in Las Vegas for six weeks as an assistant manager at a gas station/ convenience store located five miles from the Strip. Most days began at 6 a.m. and ended at 2 p.m. Other days I worked from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Standing in front of a cash register 8 hours with no breaks caused my head, back, and legs ache. I was not quick at counting money and the register had so many buttons, buzzes and numbers, I was cautious when operating it. The lines of customers coming in were constant without a breather. “Hey lady if you can’t do the job, get out of here,” customers snarled as they walked out slamming the door. I knew that I would eventually learn the cash register but what I hated most about the job was the uniform. Blue polyester, high wasted pants, a white button down shirt with emblems of the American flag on one shoulder, a badge on the other shoulder that stated "We Card Because We Care “and my nametag, Sheila, Assistant Manager, with a scowling photo of me attached to my lapel. I had moved to Las Vegas from Minnesota as I heard work was plentiful. I had been divorced for a year and half and was fresh off the Minnesota farm where I had lived for 25 years. Now here I was a cashier in a town full of scam artists, drug addicts and people living on the edge.

I dragged myself home each day, praying to find an escape route from this job from hell. One evening when I was complaining about my job to my landlord Chuck, he suggested I try out dealer school.

Chuck said, “My friend Dana, works as a Blackjack dealer at the Wynn Casino down on the Strip, he makes $90,000 a year. I was going to dealer school for a while last summer, but didn’t finish because I had some health problems. We can go check out dealer school tomorrow when you have the night off.”

“Okay,” I said.

The American School of Dealers was located in a mall west of the Strip on Las Vegas Boulevard. Chuck introduced me to the owner Mike, and Mike introduced us to the teacher, Lauren. Lauren and Mike had been dealers in casinos for 25 plus years.
Mike told me to check out the windowless one room school which was made up of several gaming tables where Blackjack students were practicing pitching cards or taking stacks of ten chips in one hand and sliding them to the edge of the table to make believe customers. Other students were playing Blackjack with fake money. People were smiling and having a good time. This place didn’t smell like gas and no one was wearing a shirt that said, “WE CARD BECAUSE WE CARE”.

Cost for the school was $400. I like learning new skills, meeting new people and the money I could make as dealer sounded good. Besides, I was in Las Vegas…why not become a dealer?

Chuck said, “Being a dealer is easy. You meet people from all over the world, get tips, and the casinos feed you for free.”
Mike nodded and said, “If you come everyday for 4 weeks, you can graduate with a certification from here. Some people get through the school in two weeks while others take longer; it depends on one’s schedule. We are flexible here. The hours of the school are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. everyday except Saturdays we close at 6 p.m. and Sundays we are not open.”

I was working 40 hours a week at the convenience store and had a 14-year-old son, Tim. I did not want to spend too much time away from Tim, but figured that dealer school wouldn’t last too long.

“Okay, I think I can handle it,” I said as I wrote out a check for $400 that was good for learning the two games I has signed up for, Blackjack and Craps.
I drove the following evening to dealer school after I had put in my stint at the gas station. Chuck went along as Mike said he could finish up the training he had started in early summer. Dealer school was quiet, when students were playing Blackjack. Blackjack was the biggest draw at the school with dealing Poker a close second. Roulette, and Craps were taught a couple times a week. The school became noisy when the Roulette and Craps students came in.

Lauren was the teacher for Blackjack. The first two weeks, all I did at school was pitch cards. My fingers felt like heavy clubs. The cards were slippery, awkward, and sprawling every which way in my hands like large pieces of cardboard. Lauren would come over snorting, take the deck from my hands, hold them deftly in her hands and pitch the cards like they were a birds taking off in flight one by one. Slowly I started to get better at pitching the cards. I was not great and my pitch was not always steady, but I was starting to feel comfortable with the cards.

When I was not at dealer school I would pitch the cards into a bowl while lying in bed before I went to sleep. I had to learn how to shuffle two decks of cards and this I also practiced at home, another skill was picking up ten poker chips in one hand.

“It’s easy,” said Lauren “My hands are smaller than yours and I can do it,” She balanced ten poker chips between her pointer finger and thumb and slid them like butter to a student. Lauren’s two-inch blood red nails curved downward like ski sloops and resembled talons. She could scoop up cards that were fanned into a spread in one swift upward motion. Lauren barked and snorted at students and bragged that she was one of the greatest dealers ever. She was 5 ‘2”, built like a box, wore large sweatshirts and baggy jeans with a hole in the seat that showed off her flowered underwear. She had a wandering left eye, stringy dyed black hair with long wisps of gray strands tucked back into a thin ponytail that hung out the back of her baseball cap that had a large badge of the Ace and of King hearts sewn on to it. Lauren was partial to the Asian students, particularly Philippinoes as her husband was from the Philippines. I was at dealer school for nine weeks. I was not consistent going to school day after day as I worked 40 plus a week and my son needed me. I got the flu in the middle of my session and missed a week. Lauren had no sympathy, though she had lectured us to not come in when sick. Her job as a teacher was to get students in and out of the school quickly. She watched me like a hawk and pounced on every mistake I made.

“Did you just give a $100 chip away? You are fired,” she snarled at me. “Why are you still here? These guys you are playing with came in last week and passed dealer school in ten days…you are never going to make it as Blackjack dealer.”

I was worn out when I arrived at dealer school. Most of the students did not have other jobs. They came every day and spent 8 to 10 hours at the school while I came in increments of two and half hours to three hours and once in a while 5 hours. I started to see that it was similar to being a cashier as I was on my feet all day. Another obstacle I had was that dealer school was 11 miles from where I lived and the traffic was often bumper-to-bumper.

I started hearing whispered stories from other students that it was getting hard to get jobs. The jobs offered were the graveyard shift, at Casinos on the outskirt of Vegas and wages started at $6.50 an hour. The only way anyone could make a living was on tips and the outlining casinos were not busy after midnight.

My roommate Chuck was doing worse than me at the school; he never shut up and was telling other students how to deal. Lauren banned him from the school. She wanted to ban me as Chuck had told the owner I was his girlfriend and I definitely was not. I began to investigate being a dealer further by speaking to people in the grocery line, my hairdresser who had two sisters that were dealers, and I went to the casinos to play Blackjack to speak to the dealers.

“I liked it when I started,” said an Asian woman named Crystal, who was dealing a $2 game of Blackjack at the Hacienda Casino in Boulder, Nevada, “but now I get called in all hours. I live 20 miles from here. The customers are not nice anymore. People are more desperate…life is not as good in Las Vegas anymore. People are losing their houses and their jobs. Dealing is not what it used to be.”
I decided not to get my certification from dealer school. I did audition for Blackjack at two casinos and did fairly well. I was called back for the graveyard shift, at $6.50 an hour, but declined because of the low wages and the smoky casinos had poor ventilation.

I stayed at the gas station, conquered the cash register, was offered to be manager which I turned down and became a substitute teacher on my days off. My brother Kevin, who is a fisherman in Ireland, sent me an email when he found out I was substitute teaching; “I’m disappointed that you are no longer going to be a Blackjack dealer, I loved telling my friends that my sister was a dealer, it is not as exciting telling them you are a teacher.”