Thanks, now I can feel better about my 50-cent string-tokes.

And RR is underselling when he says "he is very well known in a field other than poker". I think "famous, but not a household name" would be a better description. Like some baseball player that all baseball/sports fans know, but you wouldn't expect your mother to know, that type level of fame.

Everyone knows that the 50 cent chips are only for tipping the wait staff....and then only acceptable if you are playing 2/4 and drinking tap water.

Honestly I had no idea that they were still in use.

there used to be a 2/5 reg in my room that brought a roll of quarters to use for tips. i was embarrassed for him. yes, he was old and nitty

Off shift BJ dealer went to the cage and bought 20 bucks worth of fifty cent chips. They were not in regular circulation on the games - not in dealers racks, nothing. Apparently they were used in 1963 or whatever for stud game antes. Took awhile for them to even find them to give to him.

He of course proceeds to play 3/6. Holds on to the chips. Does nothing with them.

Until... a certain dealer sits down. And he proceeds to use only the 50 cent chips to toke him while he went on a huge rush.

And at the end of this dealer's down, he busts up laughing and gives him all the rest of his 50 cent chips. He did it just as a joke to bust his balls.

It was funny. Maybe you had to be there. *shrug*

I've seen this before. At an old room i used to work at we had .50 chips for the rake but almost never got them as a solo tip (often as $1.50 though) and almost never was asked to chop a dollar in half. Anyways, other poker dealers would buy into our $1/$2nl game with 2 racks of them ($100) and just make it rain on their favorite dealers. Aaahhh what a life

Never the beginning of the down or $5, but there's a player in my room that tips only at the end of the down and always $1. I wouldn't really care, but he's in a lot of pots and is a human rain delay with his decisions.

Human rain delay, I like that. Sounds like a great guy to deal to.

I have a question for any dealers who work in California card rooms that aren't Indian gaming/federal regulation gaming......

I'm looking to find how hourly rates work in other card rooms. The room i work in only pays for physical dealing time. Example if i work a 12 hour shift but only deal for 7, I would only be paid for 7 hours, even though I am required to be available on property to start new games, assist player, etc. In this example I also will never make overtime pay even though I'm there on property for all 12 hours.

Is it a standard practice in California card rooms??

That sucks, OD. I'm not in CA, but I've never heard of such a thing. My current employer docks us 30 mins a day for lunch (and lets us push five minutes late coming back from break once a day, in an effort to ensure we've had a 30-min lunch break), and that was the first I'd ever heard of such a thing. Sounds like you get that every break? Without the late push? Hard to believe that's legal.

Oh, and before anyone else PM's me to ask who the bigwig was in RR's story, as several of you have already done: PM RR and ask him, it's his story, it's up to him, who he wants to share that with. He told me, but he and I go back a lot of years, in real life, and he knows I can keep my mouth shut. If he doesn't know that about you, don't get all butthurt that he wants to keep the guest's name out of the public domain.

This seems really fishy to me. I would send an email to your gaming commision and/or your state's DoL. I know consultants, doctors, even myself as a teacher who have been on simular "on-call" senarios. All of them have been saleried or at least had a pay/day wage. Paying 7 hrs for 12 hrs of your time sounds like exploitation to me.

Sounds like complete bull**** to me and I'd be looking elsewhere.

I am reminded of a lawsuit filed by a police officers group against the department they worked for in California. The department required the officers to change into their uniforms in the department locker room before they were scheduled to go to work. They also had to change out of the uniforms before leaving work. The officers were not paid for the time it took them to change clothes either before or after work but they were docked if they were late.

The lawsuit was won by the officers and they were paid back OVERTIME pay for that time going back several years.

Sounds fishy to me expecially in California so I took a quick look at the CA Dision of Labor website and found some things which make me believe this is not kosher.

for one thing the website tells me that an employer must provide a meal break (actually two for you if you are working 12 hours) and that

Based on this I really don't see any likelihood that what is going on with you is legal.

What I would suggest is that you take a look at his website http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/ and then either visit the nearest office, or a labor lawyer.

It's not legal for any employer to require you to be at a job and not pay the employee for that time. The only way around this would be to put dealers on salary which would never happen because then they would be on the hook for salary for dealers who wind up eing forced out early.

Taking a slightly different tack from a thread in B&M, if you are a professional dealer how many different rooms have you dealt in, how long have you dealt total and what are your favorite rooms / cities to deal in?

If i listed all the rooms I have dealt at in the past 8 years it would sound like I was the kind of a guy who couldn't keep a job.

I've read where employees that are in primarily tipped vocations (like waitresses, etc) can actually have there hourly wages reduced to like $2/hr due to the fact that their primary income comes from tips.

If that is true maybe the cardroom in question uses the dealing time/box time model because of the other income these dealers are making?

I used to wait and hourly was more or less a min wage buffer. officialt I had like 3.45 or something like that an hour plus tips if my total didnt cover what I would have made with min wage. If I got over my cap in tips then it was reduced to around 2.

I used to be a casino employee for a California Indian casino, we were required to show up an hour early to ride buses to and also had an hour long ride home from the casino which adds up to almost 2 hours a day for over 5 years (for me personally, not to mention the other 1000's of employees and hundreds of thousand of unpaid hours) and we were never paid a dime, sounds like I should call a lawyer, lol can anyone recommend one?

california does not allow this

do you remember if you got paid overtime?

The rules may very well be different on "federal" land within the state. I'd definitely go to any in-state worksite and look at their posters, and contact whatever agency seems relevant. They might have their own interpretation of how the rules translate to federal land within the state.

CA labor officials are VERY aggressive at coming down on employers who try to manipulate the rules against employees.

it was a part time mid shift job. I never had more than 30hrs and was always in and out within an hour of what I was scheduled. I never had the oppertunity to worry about OT.

Bitching time.

Wife leaving today taking a bunch of players on a trip to Lake Tahoe (she's a host, ldo). I don't get to go because my PTO was denied when I put in for it last month. Can't wait to go in today and see how many dealers EO because of how slow it's been.

So ridiculous. I'm pissed off.

Christmas gift suggestion for your boss: crystal ball.

Is August typically slow near you? Here in DC, it's the slowest month of the year because of Congress break, lawyers and judges taking vacations, etc.