What's going on?

Here's the story so far.

I have been in family businesses my whole life. Never really ventured outside of them for my career. Any of my careers. Sure, I had a few short term jobs, grocery stores, restaraunts, retail, theme parks, but never for more than a year. When I turned 20, I joined my parents business. The own the largest portrait photography studio in the country. I worked there for 5 years. Then, she came along. My beautiful bride. We met online, match.com, actually. About 2 months after we met, she was offered a job with her mother's company 6 hours away. It was something she simply could not turn down, and I couldn't just let her go. I joined her, thinking that I could make a living playing poker. I started my own business, which was running a bar poker league. It was good money, but the hours completely sucked. Atlantic City was my next choice, but it was 2 and half hours away, so going down there to play really was not as realistic as I had hoped it would be.

So I got myself a job with her mother's company. The company is the home base for all of our sales reps. What do we sell? Sex toys. Yep. If you knew anything about me and my life that I grew up in, you would find that hysterical. Trust me.

So after about 4 years of working there, (a wedding and a bouncing baby boy (now almost 2 years old) in between, I find myself laid off. Then, the perfect storm of chain events happened to straighten my life out and put me back on the track I left 4 years ago. Gov. Edward Rendell legalized table games in the state of PA.

I knew that if I wanted a real life, and steady income and to still be in the environment I love, dealing was the best option. So I got to work. As soon as I got any indication that the casinos were getting ready to hire, I made contact. I did whatever I could to find out how to get this job. Now, keep in mind there are 3 casinos within decent driving distance of my home.

My first choice at the time was the closest one. I've never really loved this casino, but it was by far the closest to my house, and would give me the easiest commute. Plus, they were the only ones advertising a table games job fair. So I found out who to contact as the casino and I sent her an email. Her response was not as exciting as I was hoping for. I offered to send her my resume and talk before the fair, just to get a feel of what they were looking for. She basically shot me down. She said I could hand in my resume at the fair.

Things only got worse when I happened to be looking through the local paper and found an article about the upcoming job fair. It was very clear that anyone without actual table game experience could come down, but would not be interviewed and would be shuffled over to the community college desk to talk about classes.

Now don't get me wrong. I was 100% sure that I would need to go to dealer school. Way before I even made the decision to talk to these casinos, I knew that dealer school was not optional. Of course, there were a couple stumbling blocks. One, it costs $1600. Yep, sixteen hundred US dollars. Thats a lot of money for someone who is currently on unemployment. The other stumbling block was that I had heard that the casinos wanted to get the games up and running by June. Now, dealer school is 8-12 weeks, depending on what you are specializing in. Thats all well and good, except that the only school in area was not starting classes until late April, or possibly early May. Now, if my math is good, which it is, that puts graduation sometime in August. Clearly, these casino's knew something I didnt. Or maybe they didnt and I just happened to be better at math than them.

So I decided, while I was waiting for this job fair, to check out the other two casinos. I shot off an email to one of them, which I still have not heard back from. I found out a couple weeks ago that they are in the same situation as the first one, in that they are sending their applicants to the community college.

When I went onto the 3rd's website, they had an application available to fill out right there. I filled it out, making sure to highlight my time as the owner of the Poker league, and submitted it. For anyone who knows anything about applying for work online, I'm pretty sure that most online applications are not connected to anything. Just a test to see who will waste their time. So I still felt that the first one was still my best shot because they were at least having the job fair.

The very next day at 10am, I got a call from the 3rd one. They wanted to see me for a group interview a couple days later. I was pumped. I asked the woman about training and she explained to me that they were going to be conducting their own dealer school starting February 15th. The school is completely free, but you have to get through the interview process to get in. She was very clear that getting into the school was no guarantee for employment at the casino, but clearly this is how they were doing their hiring. My guess is the only way to get into the school, pass everything, and not get hired would be to have something on your criminal record, which they won't run until after the school.

So, I went in for the interview, I dressed nice, and talked whenever the opportunity presented itself. I was not intrusive, and I was well mannered, and well spoken, while still giving off the appearance of having fun. Nothing at all like how I was feeling inside, which was nervous as all hell. To my surprise, I was the only one dressed in a suit. A couple other guys wore slacks with a tie, and the rest were basically in casual clothes. There were actually more hoodies in that room than ties. Unbelievable. I realize that I live in Nascar country, but people really need to think about how they look when APPLYING FOR A JOB.

They ended the group interview by saying that those of us who moved on to the private one on one interview would be called within the next couple days, the rest would receive letters in the mail encouraging them to apply again in the summer.

I was called within an hour.

So I went into the private interview wearing my suit, and ready to take a math test. I actually did pretty well on the math test, only missed a couple, and it was because I was rushing to seem impressive. I talked to the nice woman, who I am pretty sure was the one I talked to on the phone a few days earlier. She told me that she was happy to offer me a spot in the dealer school. She then went on to say that it was no guarantee of employment, but then looked at me and my resume and said, "but I don't think you have anything to worry about."

She offered me which ever game I would like, I immediately said poker, since its the game I love. The poker dealer school doesn't start until March 8th, since the classes are only 6 weeks long. After discussing it with my wife, our conclusion is that they are doing it that way so that when the school is over, they can hire me right away, instead of giving all the students the time to take the free education and run off to any of the other casinos. Makes sense to me.

So here we are. Less than 3 weeks until school starts. My goal with this blog, and my twitter account that I set up specially for this. (www.twitter.com/PAPokerDealer) is to update daily once school starts, and to post all the stories and fun events that I witness from behind the felt.

I hope you will join me on my journey. Good luck.