WotL OOC Thread II

[djhyland]

I've lived in the midwest, and specifically in Wisconsin and Minnesota, my entire life. I was born in Madison, lived in the Twin Cities metro area (albeit in Wisconsin) as a kid, went back to Madison for college, and recently moved back to the Twin Cities, this time in Minnesota proper.

There's nothing wrong with South Dakotan hotdish, Chris1234, assuming such a thing even exists. It's a bad joke, I guess. Hotdish is a very stereotypically Minnesotan dish, and one that is somewhat scorned by the rest of the country. Hence, we take a certain defensive pride in our hotdish, which is why I wouldn't trust a non-Minnesotan hotdish.

[TristenC]

like the American Midwest version of Shephard's pie or cottage pie. Milwaukee (where I was mostly) was heavily settled by German and Irish (I did a lot of research while I was there on the origins of the communities and state) so it's no surprise similar dishes became so popular I can only speculate about Minnesota, but Madison and Minneapolis were nice the few times I went.

[HorizonsDream]

BishGada- You would think it would be fun. I kind of thought a long the same lines when I started working there, but I quickly changed my tune. Aside the typical stupid people, we are constantly verbally abused. Most of us are sexually harassed at least once a night/day. People end up having fights within the casino, especially when we boxing or MMA as an event. Personally, I've had my butt grabbed/slapped, I've been punched, and I'm constantly told "F%*k you!" when I tell customers to stop abusing the machines. Oh yeah, I've also been kissed on the cheek. I now try to avoid eye contact with people while I'm there.

Tristen- Southern hospitality. The south and the Mid-West is known for it. Since I was born and raised in Oklahoma, I was constantly around it. I hated it. They always came off as incredibly fake. Seattle has the opposite problem. They have what they call the Seattle Freeze, which means that it is pretty hard to make new friends in Seattle. I noticed it when I moved here from Oklahoma. The people are a little more closed off, but once you get to know them, they are pretty awesome. It just takes some time. They are my kind of people. :p

[Chris1234]

@Horizon: Sorry to hear what you have to put up with. I'd kind of thought that type of treatment stopped 10 or 15 years ago. - But thinking about it I guess that's based on nothing. You have a lot to put up with. Do the men get similar level of aggravation? Or is it worse for women?
Re you comment to Tristen, is the 'Mid-West' like the middle square in the left hand column if you divide USA roughly into 9 squares (3 columns of 3)?

[JadedDM]

The American Midwest, also called the North Central region, consists of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.



It's largely rural, mostly farmlands and such, although there are some big, famous cities up there.

Never been there myself, though. Nor have I ever been to New England (the northeast).

[Chris1234]

I can never get my head round the size of the the US.
It must feel like so big that 'why would anyone want to travel to anywhere else'..

[BishGada]

Horizon - yeah, I'm sorry too to hear what you are going through.
I actually imagined this morning a conversation you might have had. It was something like this:
*Angry dude* "Your *$%^&king roulette is off balance! The ball falls on the Black much more than on the Red!"
*Horizon* "So why do you keep betting on the Red?"
*Angry dude* Thinking a moment his eyes loks upper left, "Err...", then returning back to look at her, "It is my favorite color... No, wait... Blue... Whaaaaa!" flying off the bridge.

[Chris1234]

Bish: funny

[HorizonsDream]

My department is full of mostly women. The few guys that are in my department don't deal with the stuff we women have to deal with on a nightly basis. Some of the women actually use the guys as fake boyfriends so that the men hitting on them leave them alone. If they are getting really lewd, that is when security is called.

BishGada- Yeah, that is basically how it works. Table Games has a whole list of different problems they have to deal with. I work with the slot machines, so I mostly deal with customers saying at the machine didn't pay them right. People come up with all sorts of way to try to scam us into giving them free money.

[Chris1234]

Proves it is an unequal would. Men can be bigger arses than women.

[djhyland]

BishGada- You would think it would be fun. I kind of thought a long the same lines when I started working there, but I quickly changed my tune.

That's not surprising at all. My father worked in HR at one of the local casinos before he retired, and his stories put me off of ever wanting to work at a casino. Even without the stories, the high employee turnover makes it sound not so good.

[mgbevan]

I sometimes wonder if people behave differently depending on the environment they find themselves in.
For example, the things people say to each other over the internet or aggression and sexual harassment in casinos / nightclubs. Are the people always like that everywhere they are or do they do it just because they are there in a certain place.

[Chris1234]

Probably they do, but that's based on nothing.

[HorizonsDream]

I've worked in customer service for a long time, so I know the place makes a difference. For example, Macy's was probably my favorite customer service job. The employees were pretty nice to one another, and the customers weren't assholes.

The small town grocery store I worked in wasn't too bad either, now that I think about it. There were a few crappy customers because ever customer service job has crappy customers, but they were nice for the most part.

Waldenbooks/Borders Bookstore before they went bankrupt was one of my favorite jobs too. I got to spend all day with books, it was quiet like a library, and the customers were pretty friendly. I had one guy ask me out while working there, but he was completely respectable about it. When I told him no, he didn't press the issue. He simply smiled, said okay, and walked out.

Wal-Mart, on the other hand, was full of crappy people. Actually, the Wal-Mart in my hometown in Oklahoma wasn't too bad. I had one guy jump down my throat because I checked his ID for cigarettes, but that was really the only bad customer I could think of. Now, when I moved to Washington, and I worked in a Wal-Mart up here, the people changed dramatically. I watched two customers, standing in two different cashier lines, get into a physical fight with one another. My favorite person was the one that belittled me because I wasn't as "important" as her. I was simply a lowly cashier, and she was a doctor. She didn't have time for my mistakes, yet she made it a point to seek out my manager only to force him to force me to return all the items I just rang up, and then rescan them again to make sure that we had the right amount of items. All the while, she was sitting there telling me how much I suck, and how unimportant I was in the world. That was the first time that I had ever cried because of a customer.

The sexual harassment was pretty low in all of those places though. It is when you add drinking into the mix that it starts to get really bad.

[Chris1234]

Think that confirms it..
You deserve a hug, HD!