This 60/20 rule is pretty much the industry standard. And believe me, you need that break for numerous reasons: repetitive stress, rest your feet and back, rest your eyes and brain from the numbers, rest your lungs from the smoke and your hands from the cards, cheques and felt. The tradeoff is you don’t get a lunch break, but over the course of an eight-hour shift, it amounts to about six hours of dealing with about two hours of breaks in between. Over the course of your shift, that’s the rotation 60 minutes in, 20 minutes out, 60 minutes in, 20 minutes out…you get the picture. The industry standard for dealers is they deal for 60 minutes, then take a 20-minute break. What I didn’t realize is, in the intervening years, the powers-that-be changed the dealer rotation. I returned to the Blue Chip floatin’ Casino for my second stint as a dealer back in 2008. And they’ve been doing this for quite some time, too. But guess what? That’s pretty much what Boyd Gaming and Caesars Entertainment are doing to their dealers. I’ll pay you an additional $25 and all you have to do is work 3:20 more hours a week! What? $7.50 per hour doesn’t sound like a good deal? It’s not. I don’t mean just today, I mean everyday you work! That’s right. What if I told you that you could pocket an additional $25 a week and all you have to do is work an extra 40 minutes? Whoa, not so fast.
