Cashing in casino chips.

January 23, 2011 9:11 PM

Why did the cashier give me these two particular five dollar bills at the casino?

I recently visited one of the casinos in Niagara Falls Canada. I went to cash in two five dollar chips at the cashier. I told her I'd like to exchange them for two five dollar bills. The cashier took out a wad of five dollar bills ( maybe twenty five or thirty of them) and proceeded to "fan them out" in her hands. They all looked like they were identical. After thumbing through them she took two from somewhere in the middle and handed them to me. They were back to back in her "fan". It looked as though she was looking for something, but I don't know what. Why did I get the two fives she gave me and not just any two? This same thing happened on two different nights. I can't remember if it was the same cashier.

posted by Taurid to work & money (7 answers total)

Pure guess, but could it be a procedure they're instructed to use so that the cameras can easily see why they're doing and lessen the chance of some slight of hand shenanigans?
posted by alan at 9:49 PM on January 23, 2011 [6 favorites]

I'm voting with alan.
posted by bz at 9:53 PM on January 23, 2011

I have a friend who works in the surveillance department for a casino. Based on a couple stories he's told me, theft from the casino by employees working alone is the exception, not the rule. Typically it's an accomplice cashing in/out and the employee "accidentally" punching in the wrong amount. (Then my friend has to go digging through the last few months surveillance logs to find that the guy accidentally made the same mistake with the same patron three or four times for larger and larger amounts. Woops.)

So yeah, I think Alan has it.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 10:10 PM on January 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nthing Alan. I suspect this is pretty standard in industries where there's a butt-load of cash floating around. Also, when your cashier goes to count the till at the end of the night, they'll likely be sitting under a camera (or two or three) and will have to fan out each bundle of bills again, count them, and wrap them.

not bitter about the many hours of my life spent doing this, nope
posted by jaynewould at 10:43 PM on January 23, 2011

Perhaps with Niagara Falls being a tourist border town, she interpreted your request as wanting souvenirs to take back home and she selected a couple of nicer looking bills from the bunch. $5 is the smallest bill denomination and people often collect them from different countries for themselves or their kids.
posted by fairmettle at 2:39 AM on January 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Guessing here too, but maybe those two back-to-back fives are a placeholder. She knows there is a certain number of bills above the placeholder and a certain number below, or something like that.
posted by at the crossroads at 4:03 AM on January 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

Alan is correct. That action was done for the benefit of the security camera. It exposed the denomination and showed the removal of two bills. Your chips were probably next to the pile so the entire transaction could be seen by security.

If you watch the actions of casino personnel, a lot of stuff they do is for the benefit of the camera. I always liked the "nothing up my sleeves" move that a dealer does at the end of his/her shift.
posted by JohntheContrarian at 7:15 AM on January 24, 2011