☰
We asked Jean Scott, who’s spent innumerable hours ordering drinks at gaming machines over the past few decades, and here’s what she told us.
"There’s no 'rule' about how long it’s proper to wait for a drink you’ve ordered from a cocktail waitress roaming the slot floor.
"If you really want the drink, but you’re done playing or you simply don’t want to lose money while the drink is being delivered, it’s perfectly acceptable to quit and sit, then wait until the drink is delivered and leave.
"If the wait seems unreasonably long, you can and should leave without guilt feelings. The cocktail waitress isn’t out anything, other than having to carry the extra weight of an undelivered drink on her tray and losing the potential tip from you."
We should add that we answered a question (4/3/15) in which a Vegas bartender claimed slot-floor cocktail waitresses have to pay 25 cents per drink poured for her customers. It isn’t true, but there are a couple of tip issues that arise.
One is related to the IRS, which estimates tip income for tip-position workers, such as cocktail waitresses. The other concerns a waitress' lay off, or the percentage of her tokes that she shares with the bartenders and/or bar backs.
But we seriously doubt an unserved drink here or there would impact either of those situations. If a cocktail waitress is so slow, or has such an adversarial relationship with her bartenders, that enough drinks don’t see their players to hurt her financially, she probably won't last long in the job.
Jean Scott concludes, "One needs to be thoughtful in this area. Don’t order a drink if you know you’re leaving the machine in just a few minutes. However, you’re in charge of how long you stay at your machine and you aren’t obliged to hang around and play longer than you want to when a drink order isn’t delivered."