The thing about the slots
The advent of the industrial revolution in the late 1700s and the early 1800s was a monumental event in human history. This was a period when machines started replacing man in a growing number of functions and chores. Back in 1811 in England, organized groups of workers incensed workers formed their own forms of retaliation to this trend. Both the employed and the unemployed, now more famously known as the Luddites, went around the city smashing machines and protesting the fact that men are now being replaced by these infernal devices that they see as soulless, without a heart and inhuman. The jobs that the said workers traditionally performed had become obsolete, as well as the workers themselves. Machines have taken their place, effectively outperforming even the most reliable and fastest worker. This monumental change has ushered in a new world where man looks to machines to do most of the physical labor as well as aid them in trying to find out the most important answers in science.
Corollarilly, the slot machine revolution of the 1970s in the United States started with one poor worker who had been recently dismissed at the Landmark in Las Vegas a take a sledge hammer to a machine in the casino floor and was said to have been heard screaming at the poor machine that it was going to kill all of them (which we will deduce as the casino workers). The former worker, said to have been a dealer at the casino, was also trying to mount his own protest because he was worried that the new machines were going to take over their jobs as well as the casino industry. He couldn’t have been more prophetic in his pronouncements. At present, about two – thirds of casinos’ earnings actually come from the machines. In fact, in some areas of the United States like Tunica, close to 90 per cent of the hold is taken from the simple act of pulling a handle and pressing a few buttons.
Even though human dealers have luckily not yet been replaced by machines (right now there are actually more dealers employed today mainly because of the explosive growth of casinos all across the United States), the actual percentage of gaming employees who are dealing directly with the games in casinos have fallen in direct correlation to the increase in the number, scope and type of machines being introduced. This recent shift has even affected the way change is made. The people who have been hired to cash bills for coin (called change persons) are now being slowly phased out in exchange for slot and video poker machines that also have the function of accepting bills and then replacing it with change. Another opportunity for sledge hammers to be used, if we ever saw one.
And what is really getting the ire of the casino workers all over the world are the very things that are actually enticing people to enter these establishments and spend their money and their time – the slot machines themselves that are easy to use, gives the illusion of high odds of winning and is incredibly smart.
Written by BettingBots on August 20th, 2006 with
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