So, me and the old man are celebrating 11 years of wedded bliss last week by snagging a free room at Thunder Valley Casino and then for whatever reason, they upgrade us to a suite, which we’re very excited about because the screens on the phones and the TVs say “Welcome Mr. D—-” and everything, and the sleek glass and chrome scale in the bathroom reads about 2 pounds lower than at home, so we’re feeling pretty special.
(image source: Thunder Valley Casino)
On the elevator ride back down to the casino — the one with no buttons for the 4th, 13th, and 14th floors (or any room numbers ending in “4”, for that matter) — my marital partner says something about how we’re actually going to pay for this free room somehow or another.
(image source: Thunder Valley Casino)
If only he knew what blatant foreshadowing his words bespoke.
We’re gambling our brains out at the slot machines when we decide to go to the bar because our cocktail server has forgotten about us. I should probably have prefaced this story somehow with how my husband has this method of gambling, where if he’s winning, he pulls out his voucher if it gets too high, puts it in his wallet, and starts over with another $20. It’s like a superstitious thing or something, I don’t know. But I’ll just keep playing the same voucher even if it’s got a bunch of money on it.
Anyway, I’d won $250 earlier that evening, so my voucher was up at about $291, when we decide to go to the bar because our cocktail server failed to show up.
So we jumped up and went to the bar.
Without my voucher.
I left the voucher for $291 in the machine.
I have never (NEVER!) walked away from a machine without removing the voucher and the one time it’s at a ridiculous amount, I just left it in there.
When I returned less than 5 minutes later from the bar where I remembered suddenly having left my money in the machine, you better believe it was gone. Someone cashed it out, left my player’s card in the machine and bolted.
To make a long story short that involved security and checking records and cameras and blah blah blah we learned that someone cashed out my machine less than 30 seconds after we walked away from it, immediately walked over to the cash-out machines, took the money and high-tailed it out of the casino.
Now, I realize that casinos are where the dregs of society hang out, waiting for idiots like me to do something stupid. But just once, I’d like to see an honest person come forward when I’m the victim. This has never happened. I don’t believe those Pollyanna yahoos who say that “People are basically good”, because people are not basically good. People are basically greedy, when given the opportunity. People are basically selfish thieves when they don’t think they will get caught.
People figure they’ve been screwed over enough times in their life, it’s about time they got their comeuppance. Only they probably don’t think of the actual word “comeuppance” because dregs of society have most likely not been educated to a level of using such words.
If people were “basically good”, then people would return stuff more often than not, and in my experience, this is just not the case. Also, people only bring this cliche’-ed phrase up during big disasters, have you ever noticed that? So essentially, “people are basically good” is just a sound byte, not a fact based on science or anything.
Whenever I have accidentally left anything lying around, it has never (NEVER!) been turned in later. Even when it was something completely worthless to them. Like a stupid notebook, with all my writing in it. And my name. And my contact info. And a Lost and Found department nearby. I’m talking to YOU, notebook stealer at the BlogHer conference in Chicago the summer before last! You can suck it!
But since I’m a happy and forgiving person, I’ve let it go. I hardly ever think about it. All the time.
I have no faith in people, basically, is what I’m saying. Maybe I’ve been living in the city too long, but I’m telling you this dark side of society comes more naturally to us than the goodness. It’s in our DNA.
For eons, we have clubbed each other the heads for that brontosaurus burger. We clubbed each other over the heads for that sweet piece of real estate overlooking the tribal fires. And then we clubbed each other over the heads before dragging our unconscious victims to our caves in order to reproduce our barbarian selves.
In other words, we bonked and then we boinked. It’s merely the biological instinct of survival at work here.
I knew I was never going to see that money again, and I mourned my loss and tried to get through the 7 steps of grieving as briefly as possible so it wouldn’t eat at me, meanwhile getting all self-righteous about how I would have turned it in, because it would have been the right thing to do, but since dregs of society don’t do the right thing, it was best to just let it go. Because I’m a happy and forgiving person.
The next day, as I’m walking out of the casino bathroom, I saw, of all things on the floor, a slot machine voucher.
Now, whenever I find a slot machine voucher, it’s always for 1 or 2 cents because nobody is as stupid as me to lose a $291 voucher.
However, this one said 28 dollars and something cents.
After making a big display of the irony or coincidence or whatever of this situation to my husband, I found someone official-looking and presented him with the voucher (and an overdramatic flourish) and said, “In spite of the fact that someone STOLE my voucher last night, I am turning this one in that I found on the floor.”
I wanted him to profusely thank me for being so honest and how that never happens and here’s a free meal or something and I wanted him to grovel, basically, at my saintliness, but all I got was, “Oh, well, we’ll try to track down the owner and we might be able to return it. Thanks.”
And while returning the voucher did strangely take away some of the sting from the night before, you know what all this meant, right?
Yes! It meant that I had now lost $291 PLUS another $28 dollars and something cents!
Did I mention that I’m a happy and forgiving person?
