Earlier this week, I put in an application at a casino where I worked for a few weeks about three and a half years ago. Craps dealer was not one of the available listed jobs, but I took a chance anyway because it’s, um, not the best tip-earning job in Vegas, so there would likely be a fairly high rate of their more experienced dealers moving on to bigger and better things.
I guessed right. After going back a couple of times to talk to pit- and shift bosses, last night I managed to snare myself an audition. Yep, they needed a dice dealer on swing. I have some experience dealing blackjack, which helped as well, since casinos frequently have dealers fill in on other games in a pinch.
So, the shift boss liked what he saw and wants very much to hire me. But it turns out there are a couple of problems. The joint has been bought and sold a couple of times and is now owned by a Big Corporation. This corporation has deemed it necessary to run credit checks on prospective employees. My credit totally tanked within the last year or so, and I told the boss this before we filled in the paperwork authorizing the background and credit checks. He asked if I’d filed bankruptcy. I told him no, I have the paperwork started with a paralegal service but I couldn’t scrape together the two hundred for the court filing fee. He said that the Big Corporation was a stickler with the credit thing, but that given my circumstances, he would e-mail his boss and put in a good word for me. I did give him a bit of my history- some job losses in the past, having to live on credit cards for a while, then basically having to choose between school and my last job at Wal-Mart (“I had to choose between an eight dollar an hour job and my whole future”), and decided in favor of school, then the credit card payments kind of went by the wayside.
Then the subject of job history came up- they want your entire ten year history. Well, a few years back, I had been hired at another casino, told I would be dealing craps and occasionally filling in on blackjack, accepted the job, went to orientation, then called to get my schedule and found out that they had, in fact hired me to deal blackjack. My mother was a pit clerk at this casino, hated it, and convinced me that I should not start work there- the shift boss was a less-than-honorable woman, and I would never see dice again if I worked there. I hadn’t bothered to put this job on my application, but since it seemed there would be a likelihood that a computer search (easily available) would reveal this job, I gave the boss the brief rundown of what happened- he’s a casino guy, he didn’t strike me as a corporate drone, and I figured coming clean would be my safest option.
Thing is, there’s one other job that I never bother listing on applications. I worked for one day at a 7-11 (fired after one shift, corporate policy mandates three days training). Since I had to have a work card to get this job, it is likely that it will come up in a computer search as well. And I clean forgot that I had ever worked there- the job just doesn’t register on my consciousness in any meaningful way.
This job was six years ago, just before I started dealer’s school. I’ve heard that in the casino industry they really aren’t interested in non-casino jobs that you’ve had. Failure to mention a dealing job would be a serious issue, but they probably aren’t too concerned if you leave off an extremely short-term job off from before you started work in the casinos. At least I’m hoping this won’t be an issue- from what the shift boss told me, this company sounds like it could be very nitpicky.
Anyhoo, the guy really does want to hire me. He did say that he would try to persuade his boss that I should be hired in spite of my chequered credit history, and I think telling him about the other job where I was hired and never started work will also probably work in my favor- it would come off as something that I didn’t feel was worth mentioning on my application, not as something I was trying to hide.
So, right now I’m praying that the shift boss will be able to convince the Senior Patrners that I’m a good reliable worker who has just run into some difficulties, and not some kind of irresponsible flake.
Anyhoo, I’m putting out the call to my fellow Dopers. If you want to pray for me, send me good vibes, or do a mojo dance on my behalf, I would be extremely grateful.
