Riverside Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, is a defining workplace in Linda May’s working life: she arrived as a cigarette girl, built a small business around the casino’s gamblers, and changed jobs when vending machines displaced her role. The casino offered a chance to earn more than she had from strenuous outdoor work, but its employment remained contingent on changing business practices. Linda’s recollections of the place hold both the confidence of a resourceful worker and the knowledge that a successful stretch of low-wage work did not guarantee security in old age.

Setting and First Job

Linda took a job at Riverside Casino after laboring in the heat on outdoor maintenance contracts. She had studied construction technology, and the work of mowing and clearing weeds in summer temperatures that could reach 120 degrees made her question whether that was what she had gone to college to do. In Laughlin, Nevada, she found a different kind of work: selling candy, flowers, and tobacco to gamblers from a tray carried on a shoulder strap.

The tray was heavy enough that, at first, Linda wore a back brace for support. The job was physically demanding in a different way; she recalled that running cigarettes helped her go from a size fourteen to a size ten. Yet the casino floor also gave her a chance to meet customers and learn their habits. The work was not simply a fixed hourly task: Linda sold directly to gamblers and could turn knowledge of their routines into extra income.

Sales and Initiative

Linda bought roses wholesale for 96 cents each and sold them for $4, usually receiving a dollar tip as well. She bought cigarettes by the carton and made 50 cents on each pack sold. She came to recognize regular customers, including a gambler who frequently complained of headaches and could be relied on to spend $5 on a packet of aspirin that cost 25 cents. On a good night, she could clear $200 to $300.

She also developed a second source of income by hiring and supervising people to clean the casino’s artificial silk plants. These earnings and side arrangements show how she made the most of a job that might otherwise have been limited to carrying a tray through the casino. Her success depended on initiative and close attention to what customers bought, but it remained tied to the particular demands of the workplace and the opportunities available there.

Displacement and a New Role

The cigarette-selling work ended when tobacco vending machines arrived. Don Laughlin called Linda to his office to explain that her position had become obsolete. He did not want to fire her and suggested that she speak with Dale, the general manager, about finding another job in the casino. Rather than wait to be assigned a role, Linda went to Dale and asked which jobs paid the most. He told her that dealing and cocktail service were the best-paid options; she chose cocktail service.

That move was a consequential change, not a simple continuation of her former work. The new uniform included a petite tailcoat, a red cummerbund, high-leg dance briefs, nylons, and heels, and Linda was initially nervous about wearing it. When she tried it on, her supervisor told her she looked beautiful, and Linda found that she agreed. The casino’s security staff also shaped her experience of the job: she felt protected by bouncers who intervened when gamblers disrespected cocktail waitresses. Her account presents the uniform’s exposure alongside a workplace where that protection mattered to her.

Memory and Economic Context

Linda looked back fondly on her years at Riverside Casino. She kept a photograph of herself in uniform, smiling with short dark hair and the Colorado River behind her. The picture preserved a period when she had found a place in the casino’s working life, adapted when one job disappeared, and taken pride in the work she did. It also marked a stage of life that would not last: Linda was in her forties then, and she later reflected that work options tended to narrow with age rather than expand to reward experience.

That narrowing became more urgent as she approached her sixties. Linda had spent much of her life living paycheck to paycheck, had little savings, and expected Social Security of around $500 a month. Her casino years therefore sit within a larger pattern in the book: work could provide immediate income and moments of agency, yet a succession of jobs did not necessarily build a secure retirement. The later shift from cigarette seller to cocktail waitress shows Linda responding resourcefully to change; the longer arc makes clear that resourcefulness alone could not remove the insecurity of low-wage work.