A month and a half ago, on a beautiful Monday night. My girlfriend and I decided to take a trip to The Saratoga Casino and Raceway. It's a pretty decent place to have a couple drinks and waste a night. The establishment is basically a harness track, and slot parlor all in one.
For the past couple of years, I have gotten the weekly slot free play offers. It varies from time to time, but its never less than $80. The play through is pretty easy to beat, as all you need to do is make $80 in bets, and whatever is left over is yours. More times than not, I leave with $70-$100. Which is usually spent on drinks at Gaffney's or a nice dinner on somewhere Caroline Street.
About a half hour after arriving, I was doing pretty well. I found myself at a machine called Wicked Winnings II, next to an older gentlemen who was probably in his early 60's. I can't remember if I was betting 2 or 3 dollars a spin, but I do remember he was betting the max. Which was $5 a spin. We got to bullshitting about baseball, the Yankees, and harness racing. You could tell he was the type or guy who was just looking for someone to talk to, but I didn't mind because it was a breath of fresh air. Definitely a change of scenery from the angry old ladies banging on the screen, and cursing at the small bonuses.
Well anyways, after a 20 mins or so that went by. My friend hit the bonus at max bet. I was happy for him, as he probably lost $200 since we had met. I wished him GL, and focused back on my machine. a minute or two later I looked over to see how he was doing. To my dismay he wasn't in his seat. The bonus was still playing and he was doing fairly well.
I quickly spun around in my chair and saw him on the ground twitching. I hopped out of my chair quickly, and got down on the ground. I had no idea what to do as it looked as if he was having a seizure, so I just started yelling for help. I started cursing at people to call 911, and screaming at people to get security. It seemed like an eternity went by as my buddy and I waited for help. Each minute that went by, his movements were fainter, and I got angrier. People were walking by, like nothing was wrong. An old lady actually said sorry to me as the chair she pulled out in front of the slot machine she wanted to play, accidentally grazed my shoulder. It was pretty fucking sad that nobody gave a shit.
When the house paramedic finally made his fat ass over to us on the ground, my friend was gone. He was dead on the spot. When the paramedics and firemen finally got there, he was probably dead for no less than 10 minutes. Security, a paramedic, and a police officer, then pulled me over to ask me what happened. I told them exactly what I stated above, and that was that.
I was bummed because it's not something you wish to see everyday, but it's not the first time someone has died in front of me. I found my girlfriend in the crowd and she escorted me back to my machine. I told her it was time to go, so if she would grab the car in valet, I would cash my ticket in and be right there.
Well as I made my way back to my machine, someone had cashed out my voucher, and my friends voucher. I immediately made a B-Line to the security cage as I was fucking furious. Here I am trying to help out a guy who was dying, and someone went behind me and cashed out my voucher. The only thing they told me was that they would look into it. I said look into what? Look up the voucher number and tell the cage to cancel it before someone cashes it. Or check the video cameras and see who cashed it. Fucking do something!
The head of security them told me that they will look into the video, check the voucher numbers, and get back to me tomorrow. In the morning I got a call from the head of security basically telling me that I left my machine unattended, and therefore my voucher was free game. I was absolutely fucking furious. I told him there has to be an exception to the rule, as one of their patrons was on the fucking ground dying. Not to mention it took your fat ass 10 minutes to get over there. Maybe if you were quicker, I could have gotten back to my machine faster. He of course came back a couple times with the same old, "well I feel your frustration in this matter but". I simply cut him off there and asked for the director of operations number.
Well to finally make this story a bit shorter, I never actually spoke to the director. I went back to the Racino a couple times to speak with her, but she was never around. I called a dozen times, but always got a voicemail. Until last Tuesday the matter was still unresolved. Tuesday afternoon though while picking up the mail I noticed a hand written letter from the Racino. Inside of the envelope? A heart felt apology from security, and a $20 voucher for Lucky Joe's cafe.
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Originally Posted by Baron Von Strucker
