Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Year of the Tiger

The Lion and the Tiger
By Dorothy Sweeney

In September of 2001, I had started a new job, in marketing, at the Tropicana Casino, in Atlantic City...I had moved to the Jersey Coast in the summer of 1999. I went there with a substantial cash reserve, but the expense of buying and lovingly refurbishing my first home (a massive, crumbling victorian on the waters of the back bay) were eating into it. At first, I found a job at a very small local bank. The people there were lovely and kind, but the position they gave me was temporary, and, I think, born of their kindness. After nine months, at the end of the summer season, when their economy slows substantially, they were forced to let me go. I collected unemployment benefits for the first time in my life and was grateful to have them. I searched and searched for a local job, but there was none. Simultaneously, I was giving a half-hearted search for a job in Atlantic City. I was wary of if. The stories that I had heard from my native Philadelphians and from my new Wildwood NJ neighbors, was that, while there was good economy there, the people working there were hard-boiled and tough. Plus, I was dreading such a long commute.

But, push finally came to shove and instead of faxing resumes, I got on the bus for the two hour ride to AC and went to a few casino HR departments in person. My primary target was the Trump Taj Mahal. There, in their Human Resources Dept., I was treated like a criminal. My anxiety level rose. I lost the heather-colored leather tablet holder (a beloved gift from my beloved mother) which held my resumes and papers on the boardwalk. I was about to call it a day, but a grit inside told me I would have wasted the trip if I did not see about the job which caught my eye at the Trop. And the Trop was clear across town. So I boarded a local bus and went there sans papers. Upon arrival, I was told that the job I asked about was filled. I stood in the middle of the room filled with other seekers (of every hue and country!) and collected my frazzled thoughts. I noticed a board on the wall, which garnered much attention from the others and walked to it. It held lists of the available jobs. I saw one labeled marketing and approached the main intake desk again, saying "This one! I want to apply for this one". I was given the appropriete forms to fill, which I did, and left.

I was startled to receive a call that Sunday, to interview. Long story (another time) short..I was hired. For the first month, my fears of working amongst unfriendly faces came true. But I had no choice. I had to keep going. Every morning, as I watched the outline of Atlantic City loom closer and closer, I could feel my own dread rise higher and higher. But slowly, as I relaxed a little and started to reveal my personal traits of kindness and humor, I could feel the folks there starting to warm to me and things were getting easier as I learned.

However, one of the things that was not getting easier, after a full three months, was learning the buildings themselves. You see, when you are a visitor to a casino, you enter into an inner yolk, that is polished fantasy. This creamy center is protected by an outer shell that is a ghastly, ugly maze of secret doors and staircases, concrete decorated by ugly half paint or no paint, confusing signs, electric wiring and populated by an ever-changing array of fantastically-costumed strangers in a BIG HURRY! (there were 20,000+ employees). Like you are back-stage at a strange show. I was forever getting lost.

Another thing that was not coming easy was 'the rules'. There was an interminable list of employee rules. But, there was one rule I knew. Employees are NOT to exit or enter the building via the loading docks. A rule which I invariable and foolishly broke every night. To exit my office and follow the maze and elevators the appropriate way took forever and I several times got lost. I feared missing the bus back to Wildwood, because on top of the two hour ride, missing would add a two hour wait for the next bus. To exit via the loading dock was a straight shot out. Down the freight elevator, hop skip jump (literally!) across the loading docks, and out to the street. Besides, I was SHOWN this route by my supervisor. How bad could it be! She did warn me though, not to get caught. This was so out of character for me, an avid rule-follower, but it was just too easy.

So, life was easing into a semi-familiar groove. Part of my new marketing job, which I was starting to get good at and starting to enjoy, entailed comping show tickets. And from day one, the show was always the same show..Furco Brothers Magic of Illusions, or something like that. Half magic act, half animal trainer act. I gave away thousands of these tickets without one thought about the show. One non-descript wet, chilly December night, I started out at the end of my shift, via my normal, illicit routine. Out via the loading docks.

As I cleared the cleared the docks, on to the wet, cold pavement, I was stepping from behind a large structural column and, suddenly, rudely, forcefully was grabbed and lifted by the lapels of my overcoat, right onto my toes. I was one inch from the face of a very tall man. A man with a strange eye-job, black dye-job and deep tanning-bed job. I recognized him as one of the smiling Furco Brothers. Without missing one beat, he said to me, in a thick, slurpy, bossy Russian accent "YOU TURN AROUND AND GO THE OTHER WAY!". Being from the "big city" and fearing missing my departing bus, I was about to launch an insulted tirade, when his tone changed and he whispered very closely in my ear " the lion is coming!". !!!!! I looked over his shoulder and the lion WAS coming. On a leash! Three feet away! I felt my knees weaken. He held me there, with his back to the lion, while the heavily-gloved handlers opened yet another secret door, which I had passed every night and day and had not seen, and guided the bored and exhausted-looking lion inside. Just then, I heard an huge clang and right behind the lion, a enormous steel cage containing one ENORMOUS tiger had slid out of the giant trailer parked at the curb, by a metal ramp. The breath escaped from my body and the ONLY things holding me up were the big hands of the Furco Brother, still clamped on my lapels.

Slowly I regained my standing and was released, back into a now small crowd of other waiting pedestians. I put my eyes down and walked on, not looking back. To say that that was the last time I cheated and used the loading docks would not be true. And the whole incident DID give me pause to think about the wisdom of giving the best customers the FRONT seats to the lion and tiger show...lol. But you KNOW I proceeded with caution and only used the docks if it absolutely necessary and only after that show went out of town. And, I was not that scared of Tony Orlando. This is just something to think about as we enter 2010, the year of the Tiger! (Feb 14, 2010)...Not a good time to break the rules!