Don't Be a Pig

3 December 2019

By Frank Scoblete

We’ve just finished Thanksgiving and the Black Friday crowds in every corner of the country have shown once again that mobs certainly act like mobs and not like bright, articulate individuals gathered together to share something they like, in this case enjoying sales at various department stores on a holiday where we are supposed to be thankful for everything we have. In the case of Black Friday that “everything” is about to be whatever product the raging shopper can rip from someone else’s hands.

Whole displays have been toppled by groups battling over this or that; people falling all over each other in and between boxes and then demanding that they are the sole ones who deserve the product on the floor as they lurch towards it like soldiers crawling on the ground going into combat.

Indeed, I have been watching video of numerous mobs going berserk; fighting over television sets, toys, clothes, electronic equipment, seductive sexual outfits – you name it and probably some Black Friday shoppers physically battled over it. There have been fistfights galore; men and women of all sizes (many amazingly plump!) pounding on one another and even preteen kids beating the hell out of each other over some merchandise on sale.

There were some 150 million shoppers on Black Friday and none of them were calm. When the store doors opened monstrous crowds acting monstrously rushed the workers who were trying to actually get the doors fully open. Some of these doors were torn off their hinges by the surging crowds.

Despite the madness, despite the frenzied crowds, despite the violence, despite the embarrassment of seeing our fellow citizens raging almost unchecked for discounted merchandise, our newscasters happily, lovingly recounted the wonder and glory of our fellow humans maniacally shopping.

However, there was one good point on this vicious day and that is the fact that blacks and whites and browns all went nuts simultaneously throughout the nation. This was true equality. No one group was the worse than another; they all shared equally in the fiery fighting and that is in itself a wonderful testament to the equalizing fury of buying goods on sale.

And that got me thinking about the casino players who act just like Black Friday shoppers when given comps. Some such players feel that because they can get “free” stuff they should get stuff they won’t eat, use or desire. They just want to pile the products in their comp-cart so to speak. They will order food they wouldn’t normally eat and probably don’t even like; and bottles of expensive liquor and wine, and gifts the wrappings of which they will never open.

One host I spoke to recently said that many newly minted “high” rollers are actually pigs when they enjoy their comped luxuries, especially high rollers that are relatively new at those higher betting levels. “The beer drinkers will order expensive wines they would never order in real life and they barely finish the bottles. You see them in their excesses and restraint is the last word I would ever use with them. If they have lost money in the casino, they think they have to make it up by going crazy on their comps. These people leave a bad impression, a very bad impression.”

My mentor, the legendary late Captain of craps always said to treat comps as you would your own money. Eat what you normally would eat; drink what you would normally drink and don’t make a pig of yourself. That is good advice for casino gamblers and those shoppers acting idiotically on Black Friday.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com.