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On Writing Reports

By Jim Goding

 Occasionally a Surveillance crew feels that writing reports on personnel is of no value, or is unjust to the people being reported on. After all, “There are many who are doing the same thing that are getting away with it,” right?

Often these same Surveillance personnel spend their time complaining about how poor the dealers are, how badly they interact with their customers, how easy it would be for change personnel to be stealing, how rich they could get if they worked in Soft Count or Hard Count, etc.

They complain about how the dealers don’t spread cards, don’t cut out cheques properly, have their hands in the trays, don’t clear their hands, deal craps one-handed, toss cheques to the players, turn away from the tables, and do all the myriad little things that people who are not watched get away with. The common refrain is, “Things really weren’t this sloppy when I was in the Pit.”

It is true that a good part of the responsibility for slovenly dealing and customer relations belongs with the actual supervisory personnel, from the dual-rate, part-time floorperson right up to the Casino Manager. After all, these people are not, obviously, demanding and getting the best from their juniors, if Surveillance, from a remote location and with, at best, part-time monitoring of any single working area, can see and spot errors easily.

However, it is also best to remember that middle and upper managers, especially, are often working in a vacuum of information. The lowest level of supervisors, such as Pit floormen and Slot floor supervisors, have many duties in addition to watching the dealers, change people, slot floormen, etc. They have paperwork without end, money tracking, fills, player cards, table cards, markers, comps and so on. And remember, it is often much easier and more personally rewarding to spend one’s time talking with the players and doing the paperwork than trying to watch, isolate errors, correct and train dealers (who usually feel they know more than the floorperson), especially if one is only a single step up from dealing.

There is a lot of pressure in some companies for the Pit personnel, especially, to be watching the money, tracking how players play, watching for possible counters, rather than watch the personnel in their area for sloppy procedure and correct it. Backflash from juniors and a general lack of real authority over them plays a big part, together with a general lack of knowledge and training on how to handle recalcitrant juniors.

Thus, personnel start to get away with small things—poor card spread, inattention, tossing cheques, mixing tokes with the bank in the change booth. Pretty soon they feel they can get away with bigger things—going to the body without clearing hands, hustling the players, occasionally correcting their own errors, and so on.

After a while, the front-line personnel know for a fact they aren’t being watched and can get away with almost anything. A few of them—as much as ten percent—take the final step and begin stealing.

So you can see that the last line of defense for a casino is in the Surveillance Room. And you can also see that letting a dealer or change person get away with little things is really no favor to him or her. If they know they are being watched, they won’t get as sloppy. You know, or even remember, that if the boxman on a crap game is correcting his dealers regularly for the little things that lazy craps dealers do, they don’t do them—at least with that boxman on the table.

If no reports are written from Surveillance, then the upper levels of management—Pit Supervisors, Shift Managers and Casino Managers—are operating in a vacuum of information. They don’t know, except from personal observation, when the front lines are fluffing off. Trusting their own junior supervisors, they may think everything is just fine. It is, after all, not the job of a Shift Manager to watch dealers. His job is to coordinate and supervise his own Pit Supervisors, and through them, floormen and so on.

It is very possible for a dealer or change person, through not having been caught at all the little errors and lazy tricks, to get the idea he or she can get away with just about anything.

It is also very possible for one, having been caught and corrected, to straighten up and fly right. We have seen it happen.

As long as lower level personnel think they aren’t supervised, they will get lazier and sloppier, and eventually a few of them will start taking what they can get. They’ll get away with it, too, and even move up to supervisory positions. Then you have to detect their theft through the paperwork, a much harder job.

So you see, Surveillance itself shares heavily in the responsibility for sloppy dealing and all the other stuff they complain about. With no reports going out, no one feels they are being watched. So what is to stop them from getting lazier, sloppier, and even taking that first step into criminal thinking: “Maybe just a few bucks to cover that late payment . . .”

So don’t back off on writing reports. You might think that, because everyone is getting away with it, it’s unfair to single this one out. But that is because of poor supervision and a lack of reports in the past. Remember, every report also has on it the supervisor’s name. He needs correction too. If you keep on writing those reports, the management has to eventually take note that things are getting really sloppy. One or two reports might get passed off, but fifteen or twenty will get attention.

No one gets in really serious trouble from a single report, unless the error is grave and obviously intentional. However, unreported errors building up over a period of time will, by reason of being ignored, be the downfall of many a dealer, floorman, cashier, change person or other personnel.

Properly used, reports from Surveillance can be very specific in pointing out areas or personnel that need further training. Rather than a heavy-handed, read-and-punish attitude, a manager can use Surveillance reports to fine-tune his own organization from the supervisor level down.

Sooner or later things will get corrected. And who knows, some of those reports, and the correction that may have followed, might just give someone the idea he or she is being watched, and he might never try that first little theft.

Copyright © 1998, 2002 by Jim Goding. All rights reserved. Duplication in any form, electronic or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author is forbidden, is a violation of the proprietary rights of the author and is actionable under law. This article may be purchased for a nominal fee by clicking on the following link.

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