Players are entitled to clear views of opponents' stacks, and to make sure that high-denomination chips are in view and not hidden. (If cash plays, the bills should be in view and, if asked, a player should accurately reveal how many bills he has, since there's no way someone across the table can tell.) But players are not entitled to an exact count of opponents' stacks (in most places; there are exceptions).
So, as long as a player does have a clear view, any estimate his opponent gives is just table talk and really should not (IMO) be corrected by you. Players should also be aware of this, learn to do their own estimation, and to not be entirely trusting of an opponent's statement. (But OTOH, if you were dealing at a 1/2 table full of inexperienced players, and/or you thought someone was deliberately trying to angle by giving a significantly wrong estimate, I wouldn't mind if you corrected them.)

I agree with this post. I was speaking to the practice that some casinos have of scheduling people all over different shifts.

I agree with this completely. How do you handle a count request I have to make often, since I'm color blind? I try to keep a running count of everyone's chips in my mind, but when I'm new to a table I can't tell if a stack is reds or greens from across the table, much less the values of a mixed stack.

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I disagree. Ill put aside for a moment my belief that it is absurd to say that players in a NL game are not entitled to a count simply because i recognize that is a common rule.

BUT if a player asks his opponent for a count and is given a significantly incorrect count that s a problem. It can't be written off as just table talk. I think if the dealer recognizes the amount is significantly incorrect he should speak up to that point. Even if he doesn't give a correct amount pointing out that the amount announced is obviously incorrect at least protects the players from relying on incorrect information.

Stacks shouldn't be mixed. They should tell you what color the stacks are.

Is that a rule? Can you cite it?

TDA states:
Although, "correctly stack" can be open to interpretation.

Unfortunately, TDA rules aren't usually applied to cash games. Besides, as another post stated, "Big chips on top." The problem with color blindness, and Casino practice to make $5 chips red and $25 chips green, is that often I cannot tell if that's a stack of red or red with green on top. So, I just preface my count request with the statement that I am color blind. I don't usually ask for an exact count, just an approximation.

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As always, thank you everybody for the feedback. My management tends to make me question myself, since they're adamant that they simply can't give reliable schedules and that that's how it is everywhere so I should shut up already.

That's a pretty good idea. Floorman exchange program. And also just not having everybody change shifts all at once every day, as you said.

...

Something else I think is important... If you tell your entry level staff that they're there at the whim of the company and too bad about not being able to plan any kind of life... Well, the best and brightest are simply going to move on. Then as you look to promote from within, you've driven away those who would have been most qualified, which leads to long-term degradation of your brand.

For those who have worked the pit side of things... How is scheduling there? Is it as consistent as I've come to expect from most poker rooms?

Our pit has pretty much set schedules that rarely change unless there's something going on... Holiday weekend, big giveaway, other special event...

How do you do it? At our place, even those with "set" schedules have a three or four hour window of when they start, which can change day to day and week to week. And those lower on the totem can regularly find themselves working shifts that are eight hours apart, or even seven (or more) shifts in a row. The company claims there's nothing they can do, that this is just the industry standard. I say that's bull****, which is met with a sea of sour faces.

Even if that is the industry standard, I don't really understand why places do schedules that way. I understand if they might ask someone to stay late or come in early if they're extra busy, but not how they would know that ahead of time, so I don't get why they would even want to have the floating start times.

Pfap, to be honest it seems like the place you work doesn't have a clue or care enough to find one. This is hardly the first instance of you posting some bizarre stuff about them. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon (yep) to make a schedule for dealers with a bunch of start times on it that makes some sort of sense.

Do they not have an extra board? Do they not know how to use it? (IIRC) you're outside of the US right now, is there some funky labor laws in place we're not familiar with that's making basic scheduling a monumental task?

What it do?

Yikes, I've been out of it too long. What's an extra board?

Many of this company's policies baffle me, but I get the impression that over the years they've driven off people who give a **** enough to want to change it. So they're left with company men who just keep toiling away hoping that maybe some day it will get better. All our managers are also overworked and given ****ed up schedules, which in turn makes them less available to front line. How can you develop a relationship with someone when you both work different shifts all the time?

They seem to want to have everybody do everything. Most of the managers and staff have multiple titles, so they get shuffled around all the time. My personal view is that, while it's good to have people available as backup, it's inefficient to have everybody do everything. Three specialists who focus on three tasks can do them better than three generalists who get moved around between the different tasks on a daily basis. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one. I seem to be the only one around me singing this song.

I have more I could say, but I don't want to make it TOO easy to identify me. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my casino who reads 2+2, but you never know.

Different names and terms for it. "On Call" dealers. Extra Board. Some places just call it "part time" even though it's a little different.

In some places I've worked, there's three levels of dealers.

Full time - same schedule every week, full time hours.
Part time - Mostly the same schedule every week, might be asked to change a day here and there. Not full time hours.
Extra board/On Call - Fill in the gaps and cover for vacations and busy days when and where needed. This is where you start and tough to work your life around.

Some places I've worked only use full time and part time and move the part timers around at will. Some don't specifically list part timers and extra board as different, but part timers that have been around awhile have a set schedule, while the newer ones don't.

But judging by the PM you sent me, it seems that there's quite a few problems in management that aren't going to be changing any time soon.

Everywhere I have worked in Vegas a dealer is either FullTime or "extra board" or "on call" but the EB or OC dealers are effectively parttime. They get scheduled (some places the schedules are more consistent) and may even work 40 hours per week.

In some rooms I have worked there may be a third class of dealers who are actually extra board or OC dealers who don't get scheduled regularly but may get called in for special events or when they find themselves shorthanded. I am currently on an extra board like this for a room. the past 3 years I have worked 40-50 hours per year for them and this year I expect less. I tell people the only reason I haven't quit is that it would be to much effort to figure to who I had to give my resignation.

I am a fulltime dealer. In my room I have two steady days off. They never change unless I voluntarily switch days with someone else. But my daily start times change (within the same shift). For the most part my start times will fall within a range of 2 hours ... but there are occasional outliers. Fulltime dealers used to get steady start times (they bid by seniority) but they took that away.

Over the years here I've been able to beg and finagle my way into having the two days off that I want, a shift I like, and I recently got all my start times within a couple hours of each other. I've got it pretty good now in terms of scheduling.

This is why I like working in a smaller room. Work wed-sat start at 6pm and do a ten hour shift

I would love to work 4 tens as a dealer.

I have yet to meet somebody who prefers 5x8 over 4x10. And yet.

I can see how 4x10 could be problematic in a room that frequently runs into staffing shortages and needs the option to keep people on OT. But a mixture of 4x10 and then part-time (or simply dealers who EO every day) could probably fill in the gaps, I would think.

I wonder, who decides how to schedule things? When a new casino opens, how do they learn how to do it? Would a staffing department in one casino be willing to talk to someone from a different casino? Are these techniques trade secrets?

Seems obvious that whoever does your scheduling is a mental moron. Some people just can't grasp how to do schedules.

Seems easy enough to me. You know ~how many dealers you will need at any given times of any given day so you make sure you have that many dealers on at those times. This is your base schedule with dealer start times. Those times will only ever change if the casino gets busier or slower during any given period of time. Then you determine who will get what start times. Most places bid by seniority. The full timers and higher seniority dealers will get the more stable start times and part timers and lower seniority guys will have some variance in their start times when things need to get moved around. Casino schedules are easy in the sense that you can always err on the side of overstaffing because there is always a line of dealers that want to EO.

In my room there is a bar ~15 feet from a couple of the tables yet players at these tables still feel the need to tell me they need a drink.

#1 - I can't get you a drink no matter how bad you want it.
#2 - If there isn't a cocktail waitress around that I can flag down I have no way of calling them for you.
#3 - Even if I tell the bartender you want a drink, you still need to walk your happy ass to the bar to get it.

I realize these ppl likely do not know any of this info and I'm out of line, but it is one of those things that just annoys the **** out of me and I really don't know why. I need a vacation.

/rant

I get that all the time. My usual response is to say "I'd get it for you but I look terrible in a cocktail dress." It's good for a laugh and they immediately stop asking me.

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To be a little fair, the person scheduling is following a system set in place by way up on high.

Maybe I was spoiled by my first gig. The dealer manager seemed to be working on schedules all day every day, in addition to tending to his duties for the higher-ups. It took a couple of months for my schedule to settle, but once it did, it was the absolute same every week. On top of that, unpaid time off was as easy to get as "hey, can I get next weekend off?" (as long as you didn't abuse it)

This is a point I can't seem to get across. And to be fair, there are added expenses of just having a body on staff, with regard to benefits and the like. But still.

I like that dealer already.