Slots un-etiquette

SHE'S hovering behind you, leaning over so you can smell her garlicky breath and hear her tortured breathing from too much smoking, with her never-ending raspy commentary on each and every spin of the reels. "Oh, you almost had a good one that time. Look above and you can see the symbols you almost got. Keep going and you might hit something. This might be a lucky machine. Can't wait to see you get something. Let's hang in there and see what happens, honey."

HE comes over, holding his beer, somewhat tipsy and with food stains on his shirt, and he slurs, "How haf yo bean doin, buddsy? Win any mommy yet? How muff is if?"

SHE ambles slowly over carrying an oversized pocketbook that looks more like a suitcase stuffed with bowling balls or the heads of slot players she's recently decapitated. She then aggressively informs you, "You know I come here all the time and I have never seen you here. Everyone knows this is my machine. Everyone in this whole casino knows me. Could you go to another machine? I like this machine. You can ask anyone here that I come here all the time. I consider that my machine. I have given this casino enough money that they should name this machine after me."

"Hold up," HE says to you. "I'm playing all these machines, each machine in this whole row, you understand? Look up and down the row, these are all mine, you hear?" When you tell him that he hasn't played any of the other machines since you came over, he responds harshly, "Who are you, the slot police? I play them in a special super secret sequence and the super secret sequence hasn't called for me to bet any of the other machines in this row yet, got that? So all those machines belong to me or I can't do the super secret sequence, understand?"

SHE pushes herself up and goes right into your face when you tell her this machine was saved for you. See the card in the machine that says "reserved." Her massive jowls shake with anger, her face balloons up in a pulsating red color; then she belligerently shouts, "I don't care that the slot worker said she would reserve this machine while you went to the bathroom. You weren't here so the machine belongs to me. Go away." She throws the "reserved" sign at you and plops into the chair. "Get lost!"

"So what do you do for a living?" SHE asks as she gently sits herself on the seat next to you, an over-perfumed, stretch-faced, chicken-necked woman who wishes to recapture some youth. "I'm a retired language teacher and I love to come to the casinos. It's such a social place, don't you think? Do you come here very much? This isn't such a hot casino in my opinion."

She continues: "I'm here with my husband who is over there getting sloshed. The machines are always cold here. I don't think I ever saw anyone win anything on a machine in this place. My favorite casinos are in Vegas which is the best place to go to play. Have you ever been there? You should try it some time. Makes this place look like a cheesy dump and I can't figure who would ever want to play here except my inebriated husband…" [on it goes].

HE snorts as he passes by you with his loud, laughing friends. He pontificates at the top of his squeaky voice, "Playing slots is the dumbest thing in the whole casino. These people here," he sweeps his hand to include all slot players in the casino, "are all idiots; total, complete idiots. I'm a blackjack player. Now there's a game that can be beaten, sometimes, if you know what you are doing but no one has ever won on the slots so why do these suckers play these stupid machines? What the heck is wrong with these people? There's an idiot born every second."

"Want to know how to win on the slots?" asks the HIM, a slick-haired gentleman. "There's a great slots system that I am selling to special people and I can tell you are a special person just by looking at you. And you can buy it right now and here is what I can do for you that is unbeatable, really unbeatable. I sell you this system but it is free; no money down, nothing like that at all. I mean it is completely free. You play the system right with me next to you and whatever you win we split it fifty-fifty. How does that sound to you? You risk nothing using the wining system I am giving you for free and we get to take home some good money? What do you think? It's a good deal. You can't lose with it, can you?"

There it is; the un-etiquette of the slot world.