Usually, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. So technically if you're there working every day, you're allowed to talk! Tourists see Las Vegas for the glitz and glamour, world-class entertainment, and the stunning blocks of hotels. But behind the scenes? It can get just as crazy.
Here, employees of Las Vegas casinos, bars, and hotels reveal their most memorable experiences working in Sin City.
(Comments have been edited for clarity)
Some Casual Casino Medical Emergencies
“At my casino, I’ve seen a man inject himself in the leg with insulin, and then leave the syringe sticking out of his leg for an hour because he won a jackpot when he injected himself, so therefore it must be a lucky syringe. I’ve seen people pass out after having sat chain-smoking at a slot machine for 36 hours straight. I’ve seen other customers get mad because paramedics trying to save lives interrupted their winning streak. And I’ve seen a man die of a heart attack at a poker table, and then watched as the rest of the players try to steal his winnings before security could get there.”
His Face Left Streaks Of Blood On The Door
“New Year’s Eve was always the craziest day of the year. The owner of the hotel I worked at threw a giant party for all of his high rollers, so there were no rooms available at the hotel (I worked the front desk). Tons of other people, however, would show up and attempt all sorts of bribery, trickery, and outright threats to hotel staff to get a room. The casino would be a tightly packed wall of bodies, and it would take forever to wade through it.
The one New Year’s Eve I worked, we had an elderly man die at a slot machine. Nobody noticed for a while. He simply slumped over in his chair with a bucket of quarters in his lap. Eventually, some woman wanted his slot machine and tried to rouse him before realizing he was dead. She panicked and began screaming. That kind of freakout is contagious, so other people around her started freaking out, but the place was so crowded, people couldn’t get away. It took hours for security to make it over to this area, figure out what was wrong, calm people down, and get the body out of there. The EMTs and cops eventually had to strap him to a stretcher and lift him over everyone’s heads to carry him out over the throng of people.
One time (not on New Year’s Eve), we had a couple come in and check into the hotel with a stolen credit card. It didn’t flag as stolen at first, so we had no idea anything was amiss. Then the cops showed up looking for them. They had me page the name on the card, which was female. When that didn’t bring anybody forward, they had me page a man’s name. A woman came forward hesitantly, and when she saw the cops, she dropped her tub of quarters and began wailing and crying. The cops handcuffed her while she sobbed, and we stood behind the counter at the front desk watching this.
They had us page the guy’s name again. At this point, the dude decided to make a run for it. He went tearing through the casino, leaping over tables and other furniture, with detectives chasing him. He ran past the front desk and tried to get out of the casino but ended up slamming face-first into one of the huge glass doors at the front entrance. It literally knocked him out cold. He slumped to the ground, leaving streaks of blood on the glass from breaking his nose.
It turned out this guy had broken into some old lady’s house, then beat her up and terrorized her for a while before taking off with her purse. She had been lying there all night before someone found her. Once he had her purse, he decided to take his girlfriend gambling.”
The Food Fight And The Cat Lady
“When I worked in Vegas, I saw some weird stuff, I won’t lie. It was a few years back so I don’t remember all the details, but here’s a couple things.
1) The craziest by far was four wasted kids who got ahold of their dad’s credit card, racked up $1,500 in room service charges, and had a food fight. With all of it. The final tally was like $16,000 in damage. I can’t even describe the carnage. Salad in the jacuzzi jets, potatoes and grease stuck on the ceiling. I’m certain the comforter was missing so I don’t even know what they were doing on the bed that they felt the need to take it.
2) Some lady brought her cat into the hotel and there’s a no pets policy. We were knocking on the door and could clearly hear her cat making cat noises, but she ignored us for a long time. Someone finally saw her leave, so security went in her room and there was no cat in there, but all of her stuff was still sitting around. Then we got a call from the front desk. She had stolen a housekeeper’s cart and was pushing it around with her cat on it, trying to get out the front door. It was a pretty weird day.”
When He Pulled Out His ID, They Realized Something Was Off
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“My craziest story was this man who brought a backpack full of money to my window. Crazy amounts of money. He requested $25,000 of twenties to be exchanged for hundred dollar bills. This happens quite a bit, but $25K was way over the limit of what was acceptable to do without proper paperwork, so I requested his ID. All I needed it for was to type him into the system that checks to make sure he isn’t evading taxes.
But the ID he gave me definitely wasn’t him unless he had Benjamin Button disease. The guy in the ID was in his 70s, and the guy in my window was maybe in his late twenties, early thirties.
This was grounds to call my supervisor and fill out even worse paperwork. We have to send those forms to the authorities, and, if I recall correctly, secret service.
I had scanned the ID he gave me, and when my manager got there, she pretty much told him, ‘Obviously this isn’t you.’ So he apologized, said he had grabbed his grandpa’s ID instead of his own, and his was in the car.
He took his backpack, still with some money inside, left, and never came back. So we had $25,000 in twenties that remained in our vault until we got the report back from secret service that said homeboy had murdered the man pictured in the ID, buried him in his own backyard, and robbed him.”
She Was There For One Reason, And One Reason Only
“This very old woman was playing slots. She was in a wheelchair and had an oxygen cannula. She was clearly not there by herself. Her family was nearby.
Well, this woman hit it BIG. And I mean BIG. Bells were ringing, lights flashing, the entire room knew something huge just happened.
Casino staff and personnel came and swarmed her, already getting out the paperwork for her to sign. The bells and lights were still going nuts. A crowd was gathering.
She’s clearly not able to handle all this, so her family stepped in, and they started talking with the casino staff. The crowd just got bigger, people started taking photos, and the bells and lights were still going nuts.
Quietly, off to the side, the old woman wheeled her chair outside the mass of people and started putting money into another slot machine. She didn’t care that she just won big, she wanted to keep pumping money into the machine. She wasn’t oblivious to what’s going on, but she clearly didn’t care.”
Not Where You Expect To Wake Up In Vegas
“There was construction going on in one of the clubs in the casino I worked for, and somehow this wasted guy found himself wandering in there. Well, he eventually passed out in the construction zone. Unfortunately the workers did not notice him when they started throwing up drywall. The guy didn’t notice until they started pounding at the wall. So yes, the head of safety got a call in the morning saying a guest was drywalled into a wall.
I just can’t imagine waking up with a pounding headache and realizing you are trapped inside a wall.”
We Were Pretty Shocked When The Elevator Doors Opened
“A guy and girl decide to use some illegal substances up in their room. The girl overdoses so the guy does the best thing he can think to do. He carries her to the elevator, takes it to the lobby, which is also the opening to the casino floor and drops her naked body on the floor and takes off running. The woman lived, since we had a paramedic that was on staff give her a shot of something (not adrenaline) that counteracted the effects of whatever substance she took. She started to flatline a couple of times on the way to the hospital, but she made it.”
I Didn’t Know It Was Her!
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“I was working as a security guard at Louis Vuitton in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace. One day this nice old lady came up and she was eating a cheeseburger, so I kindly tell her that there’s no food allowed in the store. She smiled at me and said, ‘No worries.’ She proceeded to finish her cheeseburger in front of the store and started chatting with the two huge dudes in leather jackets she was hanging out with. The Louis Vuitton manager at that point ran over to me and whispered, ‘WHY DID YOU NOT LET HER IN?!’ I told the manager I was just following store policy, and the lady hadn’t got mad or anything, so I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. ‘That’s Celine Dion!’ I looked at the woman. She had no makeup on and was dressed like one of us commoners, but sure enough, it was Celine Dion. The two big dudes were her bodyguards. She’s a headliner at Caesar’s and was on a shopping break. She proceeded to enter the store, randomly grab just about everything that tickled her fancy and spent $200,000 in a matter of 15 minutes.”
A Sickening Plan
“I used to deal cards at a casino. A lot of people had ways of trying to cheat the house. One night on a graveyard shift, a couple came in and the boyfriend kept feeding his girlfriend hard drinks until she was sick. She threw up on my table and aimed it at the chips. He freaked out, ‘Oh my God, babe! What is wrong with you?!’ and then grabbed about $6,000 in bloody mary/vomit covered chips and made a dash for the door, only to be clotheslined and tasered before he could make it past the buffet. I got to go home after that. I heard nothing else happened that night anyway.”
They Spotted A Strange Sight On The Surveillance Cameras
“On surveillance, we saw this man walking across the parking lot carrying a coffee can. As he walked he started taking his clothes off. Security barely stopped him just inside the casino, stark naked with a coffee can full of quarters. When asked what he was doing, he said, ‘Jesus told me to gamble naked and I would hit the jackpot.'”
Vegas Is Surprisingly Popular For People At The End Of Their Rope
“In 2001, I watched a man commit suicide inside the Luxor hotel, by jumping off an inside balcony. The inner hotel is a hollowed-out pyramid, so the balconies overlap inwards all the way to the top. As I was taking a guest’s order, I watched his body impact in the check-in lobby, head first. It exploded like a watermelon, all over a couple kids.”
Just Another Average Tuesday
“I was dealing one night to a table where this little old man was playing blackjack. There was something off about him, but I brushed it off thinking he might have had a little too much to drink. I got tapped off after dealing for about 40 minutes and went to Let It Ride, which was located just across the pit from my last table. I dealt like three hands when I heard a crazy scream from behind me, coming from the blackjack table. I looked behind me (breaking the #1 rule of dealing), and to my shock, the little old man had stabbed the player next to him in the neck with a penknife! The man who got stabbed (a young guy, probably no more than 25-26) was standing up, shouting his head off, and holding his neck as blood streamed out of it – all the while the little old man was grinning like a nut, holding the knife out in front of him like he was going to finish the job.
As you can probably imagine, the young man lost his mind, and leaped forward, knocking the knife out of the old man’s hand. Then he just started pounding him in the face! They both went down on the ground just as security got there. They promptly grabbed the young man, thinking HE was the aggressor, pinning him to a table. The young man screamed that the old guy stabbed him, and that’s when they realized that the entire time, the young man had been bleeding pretty steadily from his neck.
Paramedics and police officers finally got there and there was general pandemonium absolutely everywhere. All my players were shocked silent. Finally, a player broke the silence and asked me, ‘Is it usually like this around here?’
In my best deadpan voice I asked, ‘Is it Tuesday?’
The player responded, ‘No?’
And I said, ‘It’s a slow night, then. So who wants to play cards?’ I started dealing the cards like nothing happened.”
No One At The Table Even Reacted
“I saw a man die on the poker table. He had just won a large pot ($400 in a 2-4 game) and his heart couldn’t take it. He clutched his chest, slumped over and fell on the floor. It honestly seemed like forever before anyone came to help. First a security officer came and tried chest compressions, then the casino EMTs came and tried as well. By the time the ambulance company had come and tried the defibrillator, he was blue in the face. And the saddest thing was the table kept playing the whole time this was happening.”
When High Risk Does Not Mean High Reward
“So this guy comes, sits down at the table, and asks the patrons next to him to move down so he can play multiple hands. They agree and move down to the far left-hand seats. The guy pulls out around $20,000 in hundred dollar bills and has me change all of them out. It takes about 10 minutes for the pit boss to come over, give the go ahead, and then he stays and takes a seat to watch the action.
Now, even though this table has a $5 minimum, it has a $1,000 maximum. The guy proceeds to bet $1,000 on five separate hands. I deal out the cards to everyone and flip an ace high for my own hand. I ask for insurance, which all the players decline, and then flip over a queen to show a blackjack. The guy who bet $5,000 gets visibly angry, but you can tell he’s motivated to win all his money back.
Next hand, I dish out the cards for the guys at the left end of the table, and both guys get a blackjack on their $5 bets. The guys are obviously stoked, and express their excitement in the form of a half-grunt, half-yelp. The dude who bet thousands gets even more upset. Me and the guy go through the process of determining hits and stays for his five hands, two of which the guy busts on. I flip my cards, have to take another and end up with 21. The guy loses his mind at this point.
This dude is yelling at me, threatening me with physical violence and threatening to violate my female family members. The pit boss gets on top of this right away, calls over security and the Las Vegas Police Department, and the dude starts pushing the security guards around.
The security guards are pretty quick on taser trigger, and they start juicing the guy up with loads of powerful electricity, but it took a few jolts before the guy actually went down.
The crowd that had gathered around at that point was pretty large, and the other guys at the table were completely hammered, still sitting there and watching this guy’s night go from bad to worse five feet away from us.”
I Tried So Hard Not To Laugh At The Situation
“I’ve been in the casino industry for almost four years now and one of my favorite stories was from when I first started. I witnessed two elderly people get into a fistfight over an apple pie. I mean elderly, too. Walking canes, and one even had an oxygen tank. Racial slurs were exchanged and security was called shortly after I saw a wrinkly liver-spotted arm weakly smoosh against another saggy surface: the other old man’s face. I had such a hard time keeping my professional composure, but it was HILARIOUS.”
The Things People Will Try For A Payout
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“I used to work for the legal department of a large casino on The Strip. Until I started working there, I had no idea that a huge number of people visit Las Vegas for one reason only – to sue us. It is STAGGERING the things they try to pull. One woman shows up in town with her 5-year-old son, and breastfeeds him publicly in the front desk area. Because of the age of the child, people start freaking out, so she is asked to nurse privately. She then tells our casino she is going to sue us.
Now, all the lawyers on The Strip are friends (even with lawyers in ‘competing’ casinos, because they’re all just trying to keep the place together). After this incident, we notify all the other attorneys on The Strip, because people like this have a habit of hopping from casino to casino with the same con. Sure enough, about 30 minutes after we send out the warning, we hear she is hitting another casino with the same scheme. She starts breastfeeding and threatens to sue. She leaves that casino and tries to enter a third, but security wouldn’t even let her in, as a description of her and her son had already been sent out.
This is just one wonderful example of the type of people that visit Las Vegas!”
Money Doesn’t Buy Class
“Two young guys from somewhere in Central America come in at 4 in the morning. They are dressed expensively in Rolex watches, and obviously, they’d had years of English classes, but no experience actually speaking it. I’m guessing they are privileged rich boys in their country. They have that attitude where they are used to having servants, have never given a thought to how they treat other people, and never once have needed to pick up after themselves.
Anytime they need something, they pound on the bar and yell, ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ until I respond. It doesn’t matter if I’m in a conversation with someone or making a drink. They do this every couple of minutes. They insist on paying as soon as they order. They order the two most expensive steaks on the menu. The less wasted one gets a pint. The check is around $100. He looks at the tip portion of the credit card slip for a few seconds then crosses it out as soon as he realizes what it means.
The more wasted guy falls asleep immediately after ordering. After I put in the order and help someone else, the guy starts pounding on the table for me to come over. I ask him what I can do for him and he just stares at me. I ask him again, and he says, ‘Uh, where’s food!?’ He ordered two well done, 16-ounce steaks and he’s mad it has been three minutes. He stares at me anytime I’m in sight; if I make eye contact with him, he holds his arms out wondering where his food is.
The other guy wakes up, they take turns going to the bathroom, probably three times each. They come back sniffling and rubbing their noses. The steaks come out and these guys are hunched over their plates, shoveling food in as fast as they possibly can. One guy gets a piece of fat from the rib eye he’s eating and just hocks it out onto his plate. No discretion, he doesn’t try to be quiet, he just spits it out. A few minutes later, his brother does the same thing, but he loudly spits his food onto my bar, almost going over and into my ice. He sees me staring at him and quickly puts his head down and continues eating. I guess deep down he knows what good manners are, but he’s just grown up in a situation where he does whatever he wants.
They start slowing down. Their heads get closer and closer to the plate. They each still have their forks in hand. The wasted guy passes out first. He just puts his hand into the food and rests his head on it. His brother is asleep with his head hanging but in an upright position. I should probably wake them and tell them that’s not allowed, but I want nothing to do with them.
I come back a few minutes later. The more sober guy is asleep, hunched over his plate with his fork in his hand. The less sober guy has moved his hand and is fully asleep with his face in his food. I leave.
I walk around the bar again and there is another patron taking her picture with the sleeping guys. A cute blonde girl has her arms around them, doing devil horns. The hostess is begging me to let her call security. Since she gets abused so much she loves to be able to give a little back.
Security comes and shakes them both awake. As the more hammered guy sits up, a piece of potato and a chunk of steak sticks to his face then falls in his lap. His hand is covered in ketchup, which he then wipes all over his white shirt. Security sends them on their way.”
They Just Continued Playing
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“I was dealing while some old guy was playing roulette. At some moment, the old guy died and fell with his head on the table. Obviously pretty freaked out, I asked the inspector what to do, and the inspector told me to just carry on. So I kept going, and the other gamblers played on, reaching out over the dead guy’s body to place bets. After some time, they realized that what they were doing was pretty messed up, so the game finally stopped before the body was taken away.”