Inside an Online Casino

The online casino's headquarters were located on the 6th floor of a 24 storey building. A special code was needed for entry through heavily tinted glass doors. Once inside, a narrow corridor led to a main hallway with a kitchen/break room, two unisex bathrooms, a server/data hub, and a few tiny offices for administrators on one side and a pair of rooms for customer support/salespeople and casino managers on the opposite side. The customer support/sales rooms were rectangular and cramped, their perimeters lined entirely by desks, each topped by two flat screen computer monitors adjoined together like Siamese twins. The rooms' walls were covered with clocks set to different time zones and bulletin boards containing information regarding various casino promotions. Each room had a pair of circular windows in its northeast quadrant, but the shades over these windows were almost always drawn closed, leaving the rooms in a grim, perpetual darkness that was only occasionally interrupted by low wattage fluorescent lighting, though usually the lights were off. The rooms were also very cold, due to the AC being kept at extremely high, frigid levels, no matter what time of year it was. In addition to the darkness and cold temperatures, the rooms were incredibly loud, filled to the brim by the sounds of computer keyboards clicking and a cacophony of chatter in various languages by casino employees. The employees of the casino tended to be on the young side, mostly 20s and 30s, a few early 40s, though never older. The majority were covered in tattoos and had faces full of piercings. None of them ever looked happy. Perhaps this resulted from not only their low pay, but also because of the shifts they were required to work. Since the casino boasted of 24/7 customer service, manpower was needed 24/7, which meant employees were forced to work rotating shifts ranging from 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, 11pm-7am, and one particularly dreadful 3am-11am. Shifts were rotated every week, randomly, meaning an employee could work 7am-3pm one week and 11pm-7am the next. As a result, employees had irregular sleeping patterns and often appeared groggy and red-eyed, with expressions on their faces as if they had just awoken from a bad dream. Apart from their lack of sleep, contributing heavily to their malaise was the continual abuse they were subjected to by the casino's managers. There were three managers in total. One was a short, borderline midget, slightly chubby woman, who, when disapproving of something, waved her fingers in employees' faces and made clicking sounds with her tongue, and who seemed to refer to everyone, employees and customers alike, as retarded. Another manager, likely the head manager in charge, was an actual midget, wheelchair bound, with a shiny bald head, and striking resemblance to the Austin Powers character Mini-Me. He had crooked, shriveled little fingers and sat in the largest of the administrator rooms in front of a computer with a gargantuan monitor, which he never seemed to remove his eyes from. No one ever spoke to him or even knew his name, except for Ali, who was the head manager on the floor, and the most abusive of all. Ali was a tall, lanky fellow, of Middle Eastern descent. He had a large hook nose, slicked back hair, and wore open collared dress shirts, well-ironed slacks, and wing tip loafers. Though his clothes looked pricey, there was something second rate about them. Perhaps this was due to his boorish personal manner. Never once did anyone see him smile. His mouth was permanently locked into a frown or sneer and his eyes were constantly bloodshot and squinted.

Ali was hated and feared by all casino employees. Upon simply entering a room, all nonbusiness related dialog drew to an immediate halt, as if someone hit the mute button on a TV or stereo. Apart from the uncomfortable silences he caused, his presence was easy to detect nasally as well, because every day he wore some sort of cologne or aftershave that had an extremely pungent smell to it, a smell resembling more of a skin lotion with heavy perfumes than a cologne. Possibly it was a skin lotion he was using to combat a skin disease or rash he suffered from. Whatever it was, though, was extremely noticeable. It was possible to catch a whiff of him in the next room over, and when he entered a room his scent drenched the air. Employees spoke in horror of not being able to get his stench off their hands for days after shaking hands with him during their initial interviews. Far worse than his odor, however, was his demeanor. He constantly yelled, in broken English, at everyone and about anything, especially employees not taking in enough money from bettors or spending too much time on breaks, in the bathroom, etc, but mostly his gripes regarded (betting) bonuses, which enabled players to gamble larger sums of money and were a continual point of contention. Frequent bettors demanded more/higher bonuses all the time, and new customers would always beg for free playing chips, bonuses, cash back rewards, etc. (Many customers made such a common practice of begging for bonuses that they became labelled as bonus whores by casino employees.) Nearly every bonus or reward had to be okay-ed by Ali. If a customer support or salesperson failed to attain his permission for a bonus, failed to give a correct bonus, or made virtually any mistake, he/she would be castigated. (Mistakes regarding VIPS, the casino's cherished high amount/high frequency bettors, were treated particularly harshly.) Agents would be phoned at home if an error was discovered whilst they were out of the office. Ali would berate agents mercilessly, screaming at them, degrading them, using a host of derogatory terms to insult an agent's perceived lack of intelligence and/or failure to adhere to company policies. Employees were routinely and without second thought fired. One employee was even fired on her wedding day. Respect and consideration were not high on management's agenda. Neither were ethics. The casino's raison d'etre was to separate as much money from its customers as possible, as is of course the case with any casino, brick and mortar or online; however, the methods employed by this particular establishment were questionable at best. Management encouraged employees to tell customers just about anything necessary to get them to deposit more money into their account or to convert someone playing casino games in demo mode to a real live account. On their adjoined computer screens employees would have up-to-the-minute customer account details and nearly twenty five chat boxes to players open at any given time, and through these chats, customer support/management used several different aliases, sometimes up to ten, to attempt to cajole customers in a multitude of ways. Often the same customer support or salesperson would pretend to be various people, all with better limited time offers, in attempts to churn more funds out of gamblers. As for the customers themselves, they were not held in very high esteem by the casino's employees or management. The mutual hatred of customers on the part of both employees and

management might have been the lubricant that kept the casino's operations running smoothly. Customers were demeaned and laughed at by all casino staff on a regular basis. During online chats or after phone calls they were mocked and called virtually every profanity known to man and even some crafty new combinations of vulgar expressions never before used. Many of the customers claimed to have gambling problems. Some would demand the casino to cut them off, only to come back a week or two later, begging to be let back in. Every so often a customer would phone up the casino in tears, pleading to have his/her money refunded, claiming they're unable to pay the mortgage, car note, food for their kids, etc. Such callers would be read the company's terms of service verbatim and then hung up on, but more often than not, such phone calls would conclude with the customer putting more money into his/her betting account.