A proposal to give gamblers a new way to pay for their drinks and snacks while they’re gambling in Missouri’s casinos has moved ahead in the state Senate. Here’s a scenario:
You’re at the gaming table and you’re thirsty. A waitress brings you a drink. You reach in your pocket to pay her and you have no cash. You’ve already traded it in for chips. State law says you cannot give her a chip. Cash only. She walks away with your drink.
The situation is described as a vestige of loss limits when casinos wanted to keep chips exclusive to the tables for better accounting. Without loss limits, says Senator Jim Lembke of St.Louis, that standard can go away and gamblers should be able to buy drinks with their chips.
But one thing he has not addressed in his bill is making change. He thinks the plan might benefit the server who might bring a two-dollar drink but get a five-dollar chip. The server trades the chip for cash at the teller cage and keeps the change. .
Lembke says he saw a waitress walk away with a drink she’d brought to a patron at his wife’s gambling table one night because he only had chips. The senate has advanced the bill that he says will give gamblers like that their refreshment and might give the waitress a nice increase in their incomes. The bill needs one more favorable vote to go to the House.
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