Reality Check

Back in the day, about 9 years ago when I was working at the casino and able to support myself, I was being taxed on $26 an hour.  Whether or not I made that amount made no difference.  Thanks to the IRS it was determined in a few days that if two dealers could average that during the three days that they were observed then it must be so.  Of course, this in no way takes into account the fact that not only are some months better than others, some days, some shifts are better than others and in some cases who liked you and who didn't.

The company itself only paid dealers on average around $6 an hour out of their pocket did not provide "free" healthcare either, an employee had to buy it.  For my own family I was paying $800 a month for it and this did not even include a dental plan, well they said they had one but what do you know it was like a sort of discount, hey guess what, lucky you, we are going to take 10% off that dental bill.

Needless to say, what ended up happening was that the paychecks were now non-existent because they were not big enough to cover the taxes we now owed on money that we were supposedly earning.  Pre-tax money for the less than generous health insurance now came directly out of my less than bulging pockets.

Now let's do the math with the $20 an hour I'm supposedly ALWAYS making. (and not, dealers do have bad runs but for arguments sake lets go with that.  Remember my hourly wage is now non-existent.)

$20 X 40 = $800
$800 X 4 = $3200

Take off $800 for health insurance                                                         $2400
Take off $1100 rent for a 2 bedroom (in CA)  not-luxury apt.                $1300
Take off $100 for electric                                                                      $1200
Take off $200 for gas  (gas had soared to $4.00 a gallon)                      $1000                                             
Take off $150 for cable and cell phone                                                  $850
Take off $400 for car payment and insurance                                         $450

What's left?  $450 but wait a minute, my little children and I still need to eat.  We need to buy shoes, clothing, an a few toys.  Still manageable?  Maybe, maybe not.  I remember going to the dentist one month with a tooth ache and receiving minimal treatment and it costing me $300, yes that's after my generous discount disguised as dental insurance.  I haven't been back to a dentist now for over 9 years.

(Note here that in three years of working for this company my hourly wage was increased by less than one dollar a day.)

But wait, and here is the kicker, now lets say you find out you are married to man who is a cheat and liar.  You are the only one working and you now have two children.  Easy enough, exit husband from picture, you say, but wait, who will watch your children while you are bringing home the rent money and how will you pay them?

You are now officially UPSIDE DOWN and do the only sensible thing you can think of.   You move home and ask your family for help.  Unfortunately, not all families are created equal and yours now lives in a place where there are no casinos hence no way for you to earn anything more than your average laborer.

So starts the steady decline of your economic status.

Let us not forget that this particular casino is now very successful.  They rake in millions of dollars a year and still only pay their employees a meager hourly wage after all why should they when they are getting tips.  Raises in hourly wages consist of a few cents per hour per year. Tips go up and down depending on the volume of customers and of course, with a declining economy the customers are either less generous or don't come at all.  Nowadays they only hire part-time.  Everyone works 32 hours a week and get no health care.  Those who are full-time pay for it.

This is how Las Vegas was built and generally the same model that corporations use to make billions.

Another company I recently worked for...part-time of course...didn't actually have to pay their employees anything or provide any benefits whatsoever!  This company is also a major corporation and provide cable, phone, and internet service.  First of all, lets just say that even though I was desperate for money (at that time and now) I still have integrity and I could not in good conscious make my living by taking advantage of what was by and large the elderly population.  That's right, for most of the people we were calling to "upgrade" their service had been receiving their service for tens of years.  Now you might think that as faithful and loyal customers they might be receiving a decent and fair rate for their services, NOT SO, these people were paying a rate not double or even triple but four times what a new customer would pay and for much less.  Most of them did not even have more than 20 channels or a digital box, much less internet or phone.

The entire trick here was that our job was to talk these vulnerable people living on a fixed income to upgrade their services.  ("Don't mention the extra service fees and start up costs until the end", we were told.)  At any rate, regardless of how unethical this company (hint: very big, well known) was, the low down was that if I wanted to make enough money to even half way support my family I would have to sell over a specific amount money of which I would then receive a very meager commission.  If my commission money turned out to be less than $7 an hour, the company would pay the difference to that amount but I wouldn't last long I was told.  As it was, I found out that I was not made to rip off innocent elderly people to make the rich richer.  Ridiculous, this company actually pays their call center employees NOTHING!