I mentioned on Monday how I spent two months working for a gambling company called Cashino. I promised that I would talk more about my experience working for them. So here we go.
Cashino are a chain of high street adult gaming machine shops, some of them are open 24 hours a day. They have an impressive list of games to choose from on their machines, whether you are a fan of traditional fruit machines, themed slot machines, roulette or poker, they have something of interest to you if you are looking to gamble.
My brother started working for them and had quickly worked his way up to shop manager position and encouraged me to apply for a job as the work was easy and because of the new law that came into force where the maximum bet on machines in bookies was reduced to £2 Cashino (who had the limit for ages) were seeing a massive increase in gamblers moving over.
I applied for a position as a team member and received an interview rather quickly (I didn’t know until after the interview that I had the job before I even turned up for the interview) and was soon given a date to have my training. Because of my previous experience with William Hill I knew most of the training, the shop manager completed the bits that I did not know, which I thought was weird.
My job was simple: I had to greet people as they walk through the door, make sure they were old enough to gamble, offer them refreshment in the form of tea, coffee or a cold soft drink, tell them about any offers we might have on at the moment, make sure they don’t smash the machines up, and clean up the shop.
Because I was a man I was put exclusively on nights. When I asked the shop manager why I always did nights she replied that the girls (there were only two men) had all refused to work nights so myself and a guy called Nosa worked a lot together. On the rare occasions where I had to work with a female member of staff I was unable to take a break or use the toilet if people were in the shop and them being on the floor alone, of course this did not stop them going for their breaks, so I had to gulp my food whenever the shop was empty.
People would try and smash up the machines every day and when you ask them (no matter how politely) not to they then take their frustration out on you, I was threatened at least once every shift that I worked. You’re supposed to put them in the incident book, but I was rarely allowed to as it meant more paperwork for whoever I was working with.
The job made me miserable, mostly because of the nightly threats, but working with Nosa was also a factor. He would leave me in the shop alone (you are not meant to be alone after 10pm) to go shopping, he would drink alcohol on duty, he would allow customers to take drugs in the toilet, he would buy stolen goods from drug addicts in the shop, he would sleep on the shop floor, and he would be really creepy to the female staff (two refused to work with him and a third even left the company because of his advances).
The shop manager and area manager were both well aware of these incidents, but for whatever reason they just looked the other way. I even spoke to the shop manager about how I did not want to work with him any more and she pulled him into the office and told him I had requested not to work with him any more, she then went home and left me and him to do an 10 hour shift with him demanding to know why I didn’t want to work with him – that was a long awkward shift!
I came into work one evening in a pair of trainers, I had ripped my shoes and as it was 9pm at night I could not buy a new pair, I tried to explain this to the shop manager and she deemed it such an offence that she sent me home and told me I could not work until I had bought a new pair.
Buy the time I had got home I had decided to resign.
Two months after I left Cashino I was still getting taxed for having two jobs, it turned out that the hopeless shop manager had put my resignation letter in a drawer and had forgotten about it!
Photo by Lewis Johnston from FreeImages
