A barn. In the middle of the woods. College Station. Its a frat party. Oh boy.

Cases upon cases of beer, dozens of boxes of wine, some white claw, bottles and bottles of cheap liquor, coolers, hunch punch. Tonight will be crazy. Not to mention that we are legitimately in a barn that was recently painted for the night, in the middle of the woods, in the rain. YAAAYYYYY!!!! I should have worn my boots.

The first order of business is to complete set up. There were so many tables. I begin to set up my table with all of my different colored chips in their nice neat stacks of twenty. They won’t stay this way. I now that. Especially with the amount of booze that I have seen here. Frat brothers are showing up dressed for a fancy party. As they arrived they would stop in front of the Texas A&M photo backdrop located near the entrance. More attendees were arriving every minute, there were people in fancy dress, club wear, and wacky wear. I need to step to the restroom.

I used the restroom, the hot, smelly, not very clean restroom. It was so hot and muggy in the barn that I had to peel my pants down in order to use the toilet. I finish and head for the sink. There is no soap. Okay, this is yucky. There is no way to dry my hands. Bleh! =/ I’m not having a blast yet.

Guests step up to my table, they are very unsure of what they are to be doing. They buy in for the colored chips that allow me to differentiate between individuals who have placed bets on the table. The first several chips on the table are in the basic spaces, black or red, even or odd, so on. When I begin explaining the pay outs involved in placing riskier bets, and the guests are well over the legal limit of consumption, the table gets interesting.

The wheel is spinning, my table is full, 29 BLACK! we get a WHOOOOO!!!!! accompanied by a god knock into the table. The carefully stacked colored chips waterfall in every direction. I knew this was going to happen. At least the people at my table are entertaining! Several of the gentlemen hold conversations through the game and I am constantly reminded of my brother and his friends who are about the same age as all of the guests here tonight. The air is filled with the stench of juul vapor and hard liquor. I am having fun at this point because these fools are hilariously intoxicated! Their reactions to both winning and losing are over the top and exciting! What started out as a rough experience has become one to remember.

A couple of hours late my table has begun to clear a bit. There is a guy who is very out of it standing at the end of the table. The person next to him one a payout of 35 to 1 on a straight-up 31. With his extremely animated excitement, his drink went flying all over the table. That wasn’t the worst part of it though. . .the very out of it guy I mentioned was standing in the whack zone. As the winner’s hands went up, one hit the guy and he began to vomit. Some on the table. There are no paper towels. What do I do? How do I clean this beautiful hand crafted table before Boss man sees it. Oh I know! Let me use my clothes. That was disgusting. The smell was awful. I smelled like I had crawled into the cooler of hunch punch came out and smoked an entire case of juul pods, the mango kind. Ugh.

I moved on. I had hand sanitizer near by and I scrubbed as much of my arms and hands as I could. The table didn’t look half bad. Cool. There was to be a raffle for a new cooler for those who had earned enough to redeem for tickets. So things began to wind down as people cashed their chips in. There was a raffle, somebody won the cooler!

The event is over and its time to break down. There are three of us dealers who remain to complete this task. I am unable to lift a whole lot still since my surgery and the other two were not going to be able to get everything loaded up in a timely fashion on their own. Very much to my surprise, Fraternity brothers are way more respectful and helpful, even when drunk, than I thought they would be. Several of them helped us load the trailer so we could be on our way. I was pleased.

Trailer loaded, my feet hurt, we had an hour or more to drive before I could get out of my gross clothes and get clean, but it is check time. This is my first check as a croupier for Blue Label Casinos LLC. I open it up in the car on the way out of the woods to find that there is a lot more than I expected. I only worked two event and I earned how much??!!!?!?!?!?!

Despite how interestingly tonight went with all the gross and all the smells, it was a lot of fun to people watch all the trashed college crowd. I really do love this gig! I cannot wait until the next event!

It is time.

My kids will have a well-rounded meal. Breathe. I am ready to go. Breathe. My ride has arrived. Breathe. We are late. Panic. Where is the event? No one is answering their phones. Panic. Found it! Breathe. I have a vest. I found my table. I sit down. I people watch. Breathe.

The first gentleman sits down and hands me a voucher for $5000 worth of chips. No problem, I can do this. Three purple, two orange, ten black equals $5000. That wasn’t so hard. He makes conversation. He doesn’t really know how to play. This is easy enough conversation. All I have to do is explain what I know and we go from there. He places a low bet, I deal cards, no problem. House wins! The first gentleman leaves the table after  few more hands are dealt. The next few guests find themselves seated before me now. I begin to deal and begin to question my hand motions from one end of the table to the other. My blue nailed right hand serves it’s purpose. Awesome. It was an appropriate choice to help. I deal several more hands making sure to follow my own lead from black (left) to blue (right) one the deal and blue to black on the take and pay.

The first blackjack is dealt. Everyone at the table hoots! Not only are the guests enjoying themselves, but I am having fun! This is great. My table is the first one full. I deal, we laugh, we make conversation, everything is running smoothly. I LOVE this job! While my table was the first one full, my table also is the first one to be empty. My math was pretty on point. I only mistakenly did not pay out once. The guests were friendly and kept the spunk alive at my table. I can’t wait for the next event, which is great since I work again tomorrow. Tomorrow I deal Roulette!