Losing Money At Pechanga

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The third, and final, leg of our wedding anniversary last night, by request of my wife, was the Pechanga Indian Resort and Casino. She knows I am not one to gamble, and if I do it must be a situation where I have plenty of money for the trip, designated for gambling, and I must be of the mindset that it is perfectly okay to lose the funds set aside for the experience. "After all," I tell my wife, "the industry is designed to take your money."

She loves the slots. When we go to Las Vegas my preference has always been the craps tables. Craps is not available at the California Indian casinos, and I have never been much of a card player, so if we go locally it is usually to watch my wife give away her money to the slots. So, as we walked through the doors of Pechanga, she headed for the nickel slots, and proceeded to lose a few bucks.

We walked around after her shameless display of losing, watching some of the other folks mindlessly pushing buttons, and dropping more money into the machines.

"What a racket," I said.

She replied, "Pechanga took the fun out of it."

"How so?" I asked.

"The fun of slot machines is running around with your bucket full of coins, hearing the clinking of the coins when you win some, even if it is only a few, and just letting a few bucks last an hour or so because when you pull the lever it only costs a nickel; rather than these computerized machines with all of those lines, and complicated features, that say five cents, but are really twenty-five cents, and fifty-cents-machines with each button push."

"The industry," I explained, "is not only designed to take your money, but also to run as efficiently as possible. It is profit driven, and efficiency is a key feature of profit-driven industries. Coins are a hassle, costly, and takes additional time to handle (and we all know that time is money), so coin-less payment with coupon pay-outs are becoming the standard. Indian casinos have always been like that, but Vegas is catching up."

"Well," she replied, "it sure kills the fun. Plus, Vegas has more to do with the shopping, shows, and the themes of the different casinos."

"So maybe I should go to Nevada and open up Doug's Old Fashioned, Old West Casino, complete with coin-accepting slots, and gun fights in the shopping corridors. I could make it look like a saloon and old west town, and truly have the casino operate like they did decades ago."

"You'd make a bundle," she said.

"Yeah. Note to self, 'Once the public speaking thing generates a bigger income, look into investing into a casino.'"

"But you're not really a gambler," she said.

"True. But I am a Capitalist."

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