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I worked in the gambling industry for a few years, for two different companies. One in Ireland, one in the UK. It& #39;s a nasty industry, but I cite an incident with one of these machines in the UK as a big reason I left the industry and never want to go back. 1/n THREAD https://twitter.com/ProblemGamIrl/status/1199399148929396739">https://twitter.com/ProblemGa...
I saw people beating the machines, punching, kicking, headbutting, regularly. People often become vile to everything & everyone when losing. Taking abuse was par for the course in the job. If the customer was losing big the companies did nothing to protect staff 2/n
But that wasn& #39;t the worst of it. The worst was a guy who came in and won about £400 on the machines. He was delighted. He was extremely polite, courteous etc. He gave me a £10 tip & went off happy to the surrounding pubs.... About an hour and a half later he came back...3/n
He went straight back to the machine with whatever cash winnings he had left minus his drinking money, & promptly lost it. He put whatever cash he had left in his wallet into the machine & lost it. He came to the counter with his card & asked me to put £100 on the machine. 4/n
He lost it. He came back to the counter & asked for another £100 from his card. This happened 7 times in the space of 15 minutes, until his card wouldn& #39;t let him spend more. In the space of 20 minutes, he was down over £1000. 5/n
He didn& #39;t get angry, didn& #39;t get vile or nasty. He got sad. Every time he came up he had his head in his hands & looked like he was going to cry. I wanted to tell him to stop. Had I done so, I would& #39;ve been hauled over the coals by management. 6/n
I had to stand there & watch, even facilitate this guy pissing his money away & becoming more despondent. 7/n
I& #39;ve seen people sit in front of those machines for hours on end. Literally 8 or 9 hours, completely zombified. Spin, spin, spin, spin. That was normal. For me, anyway, the story I& #39;ve just told was the worst experience with the machines. 8/n
FOBT, fixed odds betting terminals. They are programmed such that they always win over the long term. This doesn& #39;t seem to matter to the addicts. They just keep spinning. I will never vote for any politician who votes to introduce these to Ireland. They are a cancer. 9/9
