Tuesday, January 22, 2008

My First Full Work Week as a Prop

So far I like it. Last week I mentioned that I didn't understand how there could be so much downtime, but the past couple of days I did spend a lot of time sitting and doing almost nothing. The floormen will occasionally ask me to leave a game if a wait list has formed. Fortunately, there were some football games going on on Sunday. So, for several hours, I was being paid while I sat around, watched sports on TV, and chatted with other props and service people who were also bored. It seems like this sort of downtime will constitute at least 10% of my work week.

Most of the time, though, I have been playing. After a slow start, I'm back in the swing of things with my limit holdem, which is what they have me play the most (20-40). They've also been putting me in no-limit games quite a bit, often as low as $100 buy-in, and these are reasonably soft. I've played high-low split stud 8-or-better for a total of 15 minutes and won $9. I'm not confident that I'd be able to beat that game yet, so I've been avoiding it when given the choice.

I've made a good enough impression on one of the servers that she now stops by while I'm playing just to give me an iced tea or bottle of water. I've usually been eating two free meals a day at the casino, but sometimes one is just a fruit plate or soup. I've also gotten two milkshakes and two slices of pie, all on the house. They were good.

On Sunday, in the 20-40 holdem game, I was playing 6-handed with 5 other prop players for at least 20 minutes before another player showed up. This other player happened to be the most offensively angry and vulgar woman I think I've ever encountered. It took me quite a while to memorize her name, which was on her casino comp card, but it was worth it - "Spomenka Zeljkovic." She's overweight, around 50 years old, and speaks with something like a Russian accent. Supposedly she is a semi-regular player, but I can't understand how she has managed to avoid being kicked out of the casino. If you're curious what sorts of comments she was making, you'll have to ask me later. I'm not prepared to write the full extent of it here on my blog, but I will say that she was spewing a nearly nonstop stream of filth, and occasionally it was impressively creative. One less creatively vulgar incident was when another player got upset about being called a "fucking idiot," to which she responded "I don't mean you in particular." Later, a dealer complained to the floorman about her at one point, and so the floorman told Spomenka that "it's not nice to say those things." Actually, she did settle down quite a bit after that.

Now begins my Tuesday-Wednesday weekend.

1 comment:

LW said...

So I just Googled that woman's name, and someone of the same name is a representative for the Serbian American Association for Peace. I think it would be interesting if she has such a foul mouth and works for a peace organization. On second thought, it would probably make perfect sense if she were one of those crazy radical protesters. Also, someone with the same name seems to be some kind of professional, and your blog entry about her comes up as the fifth link on Google. That can't be good for business.