The Pav
Personally I try to avoid gambling. Mostly because I’m not good at it, I never recognise when I’m chasing the win, I have no self-control. Whenever I gamble I often spend much more than I’m willing to lose, so I stay away as much as possible, despite enjoying it. Mix it with alcohol and I could shovel 3 figures into a fruit machine, given half a chance.

That’s a bit apocalyptic, as I’m by no means a fully-fledged gambling addict, I’m just your average stupid punter. But the reason I stay away is because I know what it can turn into. At the end of my GCSEs, I had the epic 10-week summer everyone gets, and being an aspiring young Rook I chose to get a job serving fish and chips at the local seaside town’s Pavillion. Incidentally, the town in question was recently voted chavviest in the South West. That should give you an idea of who I was serving, in holiday season – the worst kind of council estate brummies, hanging round the beach drinking Stella and smacking their kids. Pop to the Pavillion for an overpriced lunch and admittedly excellent whippy ice-cream, and head inside to play the fruit machines.

The thing about the Pavillion was that there was the part where I worked, serving fish and chips, ice creams and sweets, and delivering pizzas in the evening, and in the main building on the Pier there was the amusement arcade, where all the kiddies and old ladies would sit there smoking and shovelling pennies into the penny falls machines. As an aside, do any of you actually think these things are legit? First off, what the hell are these people going to do if by some magical coincidence they turn a reasonable profit? Change up bags of 2ps? Yeah, you’ll do that before feeding them back in. And secondly, think about the principles of the thing. It’s self-sustaining! What goes in, comes back out. So you might think, where’s the profit for the owner? Well, it’s in the massive bucket underneath the payout tray, where, I would say, about 10% of the coins go. They would empty about 15KG of 2ps out of those every couple of days over the summer.

I’m getting distracted. The other part of the main building was the usual screened from view casino, with all the £2 a play casino machines and computerised fruit machines. The difference here is not only would you get the drunk brummie Dads shovelling their dole money in, you would get the ‘regulars’. I developed something of a friendship with quite a few of these people, as I was working 6 days a week, 6-12 hours a day, and they would get given meal vouchers by staff to come and buy what they wanted from me.

I distinctly remember one couple in particular – they were both edging on 70, at a guess, both came from separate farming marriages, and their respective spouses had died. So they had gotten hitched, sold both their farms, and moved to a flat on the seaside with several million sitting in the bank. Now these were both lovely people, but they were bored, and they clearly didn’t know what to do with themselves. They would turn up every single night, mid to late evening, go into the casino, and I’d see them once or twice a night when they’d get fish and chips or a hotdog. Only after working there for a few months and talking with some of the staff in the casino, did I find out their situation and that when they visited, they would generally put about £1000 a night in the machines between them. Now when you’re putting that amount in you’re obviously going to win a few jackpots, and the machines in here weren’t rigged at all – in fact they were set at about 95%, and a few at 102-103% to attract people in. But the fact is they were just spending vast amounts of money, every single day, and I don’t see how there’s any pleasure in the win. It’s agiven, and you end up just playing the odds. All you end up doing is chasing the thrill of the win but it’s always tepid because it’s not really a win. And I know that if I ended up gambling as much as I would like to, I’d end up throwing that sort of money away, but I don’t think I’ll be lucky enough to be able to afford it, like they could.

I have many more stories to tell of the Pavillion which can wait for another day, such as the 16-year old employee who got knocked up by the manager (despite him having his own girlfriend and kids) and ending up marrying the 50-year old pizza delivery driver, the old Manc woman who was completely trashed and tried to snog me when I took her hotdog to her, the teenager who jumped off the end of the pier when the tide was a little too low and ended up breaking both his legs, the batshit crazy lady I would deliver pizza to who, no word of a lie, would generally answer the door naked, with a python round her neck. A ridiculous cliché, but an excellent tip for me!
( Rookie You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel, Fri 8 May 2009, 10:51, 1 reply)

Hmm
I'm guessing.. Weymouth?
(Buftoon posted this on, Fri 8 May 2009, 14:43, closed)