#105 Only Eric

Only Eric could get fired for doing his job too well.

When Eric first moved to Las Vegas none of us were sure what he was going to do there. He had just left a great job in New Zealand that he just didn’t like, and 6 months before that he had graduated from law school and decided not to practice law. He came home and bummed around for a while and then headed to Las Vegas with the vague goal of “working in the gaming industry”. Once he got there he started learning how to be a dealer and found that he really enjoyed it. I think his idea was to get a job in a casino and work his way up. After becoming certified as dealer in blackjack and some other games he did find a job in one of the less splashy “starter” casinos off the strip. He loved this job. He used to tell me way more than I ever wanted to know about dealing and how much fun he was having and how much he was learning. Until the day he caught a cheater.

Eric was dealing blackjack and I don’t know enough about it to give to specifics, but he was pretty sure one of the guys at his table was cheating. He watched for a while to make sure he was correct than called his pit boss and followed procedure to report it. The next thing he knew he was called in to his boss’s office and fired for not finding the cheater fast enough. ?????? Apparently there were some concerns that Eric might have been in cahoots with the cheater and then gotten cold feet and turned him in. If you knew Eric, you’d know this was impossible. I guess they felt badly for him too because while they did fire him, they never put him on the “no hire” list, so technically he could have worked as a dealer again.

Eric was devastated. As well as angry and frustrated and insulted. And none of us blamed him.

Despite this, Eric still loved the gaming industry and found another job that let him be a part of it. Eric knew how to follow his dreams and not let temporary setbacks keep him down. We all should have that ability.