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Politics

Part II

(reference: "Politics"; "Complacency Part II")

by Jim Goding

In Complacency Part II, I wrote about a Surveillance department being "buttered all over the universe," meaning they are spread so thin, have so many responsibilities compared to their manning and training, that they become ineffective as a result. They are simply spread too thin. This is often a result of management decisions to keep costs down in an area where it is not all that apparent how the department produces income (see "Surveillance as an Income Producing Department).  But I have seen in the past where it has been a result of a decisions on the part of management or owners to hide things from regulatory agencies or the stockholders. Sometimes it is a result of regulatory requirements, or a "public position" by the parent company, to provide Surveillance coverage and presence in an area that should properly be handled by management of another area---at the expense of areas more properly placed under the supervision of gaming Surveillance. Once I saw a Director of Surveillance get canned as a result of the fact that his department detected a thief in the finance and accounting department. After it was revealed that the thief had been operating  for some months, the Director was fired because his people had not detected it earlier. The accounting manager retained his job, despite a record of having disregarded Surveillance reports of procedural violations and other vulnerabilities in the cage, count rooms and accounting. The Director of Surveillance was clearly a scapegoat in this situation, as I have seen happen in several other areas. The Director gets in trouble when his crew detects an internal thief. Yet if you looked at the actual situation (as I have), company policies and regulatory requirements in every such case that I have personally seen have prevented Surveillance from practicing true due diligence in the areas concerned. In one casino I know of, the Director was forced by management to invest forty hours of investigator time in reviewing video of the area of a drain to see if kitchen staff were using it for grease disposal. That was just one instance.  The same Surveillance crew spent an investigator's time for days finding out whether a shift manager in a services department was taking extra breaks or spending too much time on the cell phone. Another close watch in that department was to see if a night shift manager was accessing porn on his company computer. This same casino ended up with serious problems of theft off the table games by staff.  Surveillance seldom had the time for watching actual games, and their reports of procedural violations and vulnerabilities seldom got action. Often, when Surveillance have been able to do their jobs of observing, reporting and documenting situations and vulnerabilities, lower to upper management sometimes makes decisions that the changes necessary to handle the vulnerabilities were unnecessary, or too costly, or even too inconvenient. So, what is the solution? It comes back to the post-situation analysis: "What can we now do that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent this situation from happening again?" Often a company has talent already within it that, if tapped, could produce suggestions to be worked up into low-operating-cost preventive measures. Failing that, hire outside experts---always realizing that they will have to find out things that your current staff likely already know.  A few thousand dollars---or a few man-hours, if it is your own staff---invested in an analysis of the situation could prevent many more thousand of wasted--or stolen---dollars in the future. Sometimes the solution is very simple, involving preventive measures already used in other areas. Sometimes it takes a new look, and a unique idea could be presented, or refinements of ideas used in other areas, custom fitted to the current situation. Perhaps the final decision will still be to leave things alone, absorbing the costs of potential internal theft. But at least the company would be going into it with open eyes, rather than wasting the talent it has already recruited, bringing in new and unknown people to replace experienced people who are already acquainted with the current operating procedures and regulatory environment, in an apparently desperate effort to place the blame. Where do you look for inside help? In a gaming establishment, ask those who have already done the job. The company likely recruited them specifically for their experience. Well, now is the time to utilize it.

Copyright 2010 by Jim Goding. All rights reserved under US and international copyright laws. Unauthorized publication or duplication is a violated of law and of the rights of the author.