'It cost the casino anywhere between $250k-500k': Casino manager makes workers stay after shift to work unpaid hours, costs company big in massive payout

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Aug 27, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

Every now and then, you'll come across some dense manager who thinks that they're a business genius for coming up with business strategies that no one else is using… and for implementing policies into the business that they're surprised aren't already being followed. All too often, there's a good reason why these strategies and policies aren't more commonplace… because—well, they're illegal. 

Still, laws and reason won't stop some people, who are either too stupid to realize they're breaking the law or are committed to the idea that they won't be caught. And these people can become a massive liability to the business if their superiors aren't aware of what they're up to.

This worker worked at a casino where employees were required to clock in early and clock out on the hour but weren't paid for the extra time. You know, the typical kind of behavior that you find from employers in retail and within the service industry—or any of endless employers who consider their time to be precious and yours to be meaningless.

A new manager, a bootlicker "company man" named Dandy, began making employees stay later without pay, causing dissatisfaction among the staff. Luckily, one wise old employee named Maggie encouraged others to clock in and out at the correct times and kept track of the extra time worked as evidence. She reported the issue to the labor department, resulting in the casino having to pay out for all the extra time worked over several years. So, Dandy's big idea cost the company between $250k and $500k, and he never tried to keep employees late again. It's safe to say that this gamble didn't pay off. 

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  • 01
    Poker table - BLACK JACK INSURANCE PAYS
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/Luckydays4ever One manager tried to save money and cost the company thousands. This happened awhile ago, but I've been thinking about it recently. TL;DR at the bottom When I was younger, I worked at a casino. For those that are unaware, casinos (at least then) use a different time format for when you start work. If you're schedule 8pm-4am, you actually start at 7:45pm, 15 minutes early for your shift. You get tapped out by your replacement at 3:45am, so it all works out. You'r
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 03
    Font - At the casino I worked at, you could clock in at the Q:31 for your shift, meaning if you were scheduled for 8pm, you could clock in at 7:31 pm, but not start your shift until 7:45pm. On the flip side, if you clocked out before the Q:01, you wouldn't get paid for the time. So, if you stayed on the floor for that extra 15 minutes, you didn't get paid. The place used a 30 minute time period, but rounded to the hour.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 04
    Font - Dealers would work 1 hour then get a 20 money break, with a "string" of 4 people and go on break at the '20s (12:00, 12:20, 12:40). Floors would work an hour twenty, with a 20 minute break and go on break on the '10s (12:10, 12:30, 12:50). If you had the last break of the night, you had the EO (early out) break. If you were dealing, the person ahead of you would take a short 10 minute break, they'd tap you out, and you could clock out at:31 knowing you'd get your full 8 hours. If you were
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 05
    Font - It worked until a new person got promoted. We'll call him Dandy. Dandy was a company man, through and through. This was the guy that bragged about never calling in sick for over 15 years, never taking vacation, and would pinch a penny until it screamed.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 06
    Font - Dandy started making people stay later, even after their replacements had shown up. So, you're starting work at 7:45, but being made to stay until 4am on the dot, instead of leaving at 3:45. Sometimes, he would just make you stand in the pit, maybe sort cards, or muck checks on a roulette game. If you were a floor, he'd make you just stand there and watch a game. He was the only one that did it. What's worse, is that
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 07
    Font - when you'd say something, like "hey, I'm off at 3:45, not 4" he'd launch into a his "Patented Dandy Spiel" which consisted of him telling you that "the company is paying you to work until the top of the hour, so you're going to work" and followed up by either "I've never called in a day sick in my life so 15 minutes won't hurt you" or "I haven't taken a vacation in 10 years, so 15 minutes won't kill you".
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 08
    Font - Dandy had forgotten one thing. By requiring people to be on the floor at a quarter to the hour, we weren't actually being "paid" for that time, because we'd already done that time at the beginning of our shift.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 09
    Font - Here come's Maggie. Maggie has been a floor person in Vegas, Reno, Tahoe, this old gal had been around the block, and had made her way up to my casino. She'd forgotten more about flooring and dealing than most people ever learn. She didn't deal with fools, and Dandy was a fool. Word comes through the gossip to start clocking in as soon as we can, each time we work. If you walk in at O:31, clock in. Don't wait until the X:45. Same thing with clocking out, wait it out, don't complain. Start
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 10
    Font - So, now hundreds of dealers, on all the shifts, and all the floors, are clocking in as early as they can and staying late, with no complaints. And Maggie is keeping track. She gets the information and goes to the labor board. The labor department shows up and all h breaks loose. SQ gets real for the company. Accounting is going crazy, people upstairs are
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 11
    Font - going crazy. They've been open for over 15 years and people have been clocking in and out at the right times, until Dandy. Now, for the past year, everyone is clocking out at the hour, but still clocking at Q:31. The labor board institutes a new time frame, based on 10 minute increments and they have to pay EVERYONE, for all their time worked based on those 10 minute increments going back several years.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 12
    Font - I was only a lowly dealer at the time and I got a check for about $800 bucks, and mine was on the low end. There were some people getting checks for 2-3 thousand. All because Dandy wanted people to stay an extra 15 minutes. It wasn't a small casino, either. There were probably around 200 dealers at any given time. Figure with all the dealers and floors getting paid out it cost the casino anywhere between 250k-500k. That's not even counting all the extra hours for accounting.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 13
    Font - After that, Dandy never tried to keep a dealer or floor later. TL;DR A new manager makes his own policy to keep people after their shift, assuming they were getting paid for it - they weren't. A bad-a old lady puts the word out to employees to not complain about it and she called the labor board. Every employee ended up getting paid and the company was out a lot of money.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 14
    Font - Suprflyyy 17 hr. ago We call that stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. I won't have managers like that under me. They crush morale, alienate the staff, and make the relationship irretrievably adversarial. Good on y'all for standing up to him. 587 Reply Share 100 ●●● Nevermind04 12 hr. ago I'm partial to "that fella is all dollars and no cents" (sense). I love a good pun Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 15
    Font - eGrant03 17 hr. ago Trying to get a nickel by tripping over a dollar. Or some version was a common expression on Shipping Wars by a now deceased shipper named Ray. Great dude, and I loved his hair. In Utah, we are literally known as the call center capital of the US, and many cut their teeth at call centers. It's worse than fast food, IMO, but you got to sit down at least. Telepreformance accidently paid their employees too much one
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 16
    Font - paycheck and said they'd just take it out of the next one. So, obv half the center quit that day, and the other half, my hubs included, didn't see the paycheck decreased. So the half that quit went to the Labor Board and the 200 or so out of the capital's office alone had enough collective dirt to get some back pay as a class action.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 17
    Font - Convergys was another example. It's now closed, so I don't mind spilling the tea. They exclusively handled the DirecTV account for over 2 decades! My sisters worked there in high school and my first "real" job as an adult. You easily had 10 websites/tools to open every day,
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 18
    Font - and they just said, "Make sure you get here early enough to find a seat and get them opened." You couldn't clock on until 3 minutes to shift, but I was regularly there 15 minutes early. I left and came back about 8 years later and the Microsoft account auto clocked you in when you logged into your computer and then you had 3
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 19
    Font - minutes to get logged I to the phones and bring up 8 main tools and 10 to 22 secondary tools before your stats broke. Found out it was because someone in another state complained they were being hosed out of those 15 to 20 minutes everyday and the non assigned "everyman for yourself" seating and intentional under stationing meant they justified some gray area firing practices. The guy did the math, and they owed him something like 12k after all the off the clock work he could prove due to
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 20
    Font - I looked into some black jack dealing videos for a volunteer gig I do here. They said the big casinos make you get there early enough to get set up and get to your station from the back for your shift. I always wondered how they got away with that, but it looks like now I know. 93 ↓ Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 21
    Font - שש ThatScottGuy 13 hr. ago I worked for a company that tried that. They required us to arrive 15 minutes before our shift but wouldn't let us clock in until the top of the hour. They also required us attend mandatory Spanish classes 2 hours before our first shift of the week that we weren't aloud to clock in for. Someone called the Labor Board and asked if that was legal and all ho broke loose. We ended up getting a substantial amount of back pay and the company had to send everyone to a
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 22
    Font - WhoSc3w3dDaP00ch 10 hr. ago Dandy is so common, it's both saddening and infuriating. My "Dandy" worked an office job. He was a new manager and cancelled all overtime for his region. "Don't work more than 40 hours!"was his directive. His team complied. On Management calls, he explained how much money he was saving in OT, but not how his revenue projections / pacing tanked...He went from "over 100% projection" to 80% projection in the span of a few weeks. (over 100% means a sweet bonus too)
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 23
    Font - Dandy had a lot of retail clients. Retail clients that didn't spend going into Thanksgiving. Being semi-competent, our boss noticed this, and tasked me (other regional manager) to get to the bottom of it... on Thanksgiving Day. I figure out the issue pretty quickly, and convinced the higher-ups to authorize ridiculous, voluntary overtime to get us back on track. We get back on track. Dandy is silent the whole time.
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 24
    Font - For Christmas, my promotion came early(They're usually in February and August at that company), and Dandy's region became one of my regions. For his Christmas, Dandy was demoted to individual contributor. He didn't adjust to his former position well, he was let go in a round of layoffs soon thereafter. 34 Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 25
    Font - UnihornWhale 10 hr. ago People who brag about never taking a sick day are people who get everyone else in the office sick. I hate those people. 31 Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 26
    Font - ImageSuitable 12 hr. ago Looks like Maggie kept time with her handy dandy notebook! 23 Reply Share toSayNothingOfTheDog 9 hr. ago . And Danny didn't have a clue. 45+ Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever
  • 27
    Font - SheWho LovesToDraw 6 hr. ago The people who brag about never taking time from work either for sick days or vacations aren't giving off the flex they think they are. Get a da dao life OUTSIDE of work! 47 Reply Share
    via u/Luckydays4ever

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