People often experiment, for many reasons. When I hit a point in life where I really needed some action, and an opportunity to work for a betting company presented itself, I took it, almost without thinking. There was just something incredibly exciting about working in a company that takes bets. As an experience, it did not last long. It took me only a few weeks to discover that, however, some of the other employees really enjoyed it and took everything in stride. For some, it was a calling. For others, it was something that they did without bringing home. And then there were those like me – undecided and still figuring stuff out – who would drift from position to position. Some of them would find their place and stick around, others left, just as I did. But you learn a great many things when you work for a betting company, and the gambling part is only the cherry over the cream.
It takes a lot of patience
When you’re sitting next to the phone, ready for people to call and place bets, you do not expect anything else to actually happen. People will call you, place their bet, and that would be it.
Only, it’s not. People will call to prank you, people will call to complain about losing, people will call to claim that they were cheated out of 50 cents in their win. The list is endless. And so is the patience necessary to actually be on that phone for at least eight hours a day. It can be exhausting, and at the end of the day, you will not want to talk to your family or call and hang out with friends. I began to hate phone calls of any kind.
It may cause inner conflict
I am not an overly religious person, so I was fine with working in what is essentially a branch of the gambling industry. Sure, a betting company is not a casino, but we are still taking your bets and making money off of that. Some of the people who bet are and will be gambling addicts. If your company is decent, they will train the employees to notice the signs and offer help – I had one guy spend so much money on bets, that I asked him if he had a problem. Predictably, he denied having any sort of problems. When I asked him what he did in his spare time, he said he was researching online casinos and proceeded to tell me how the biggest London Casino is the Hippodrome, and how he couldn’t wait to try it out. And he had a family.
Some other employees had inner conflicts because of religion, others left because they felt that they, personally, were cheating customers out of their money, so they abandoned the job as well. To each his own.
You are a part of the action
A betting company is not a casino, that’s true. But it can be like a casino, a place where everything seems to be happening all at once. You have the programmers trying to fix the latest bug in the program, you have the people taking bets talk and teach you all of these things you didn’t even think about before. When a person places a bet, it only takes a moment. For the one who takes the bet, it’s one of many, and the action behind the scenes can be somewhat incredible.
On some days, you get home exhausted, yet, you feel like you had an interesting that will never be repeated in the same way. As a workplace, it can be so unique that no other workplace will replace it (except maybe working at an actual casino – which I haven’t done yet, but I might just try out).
You may become a pariah
One of the worst things about working at a betting company is the looks some people will give you over the fact that you essentially work for the gambling industry. Many people hide the fact that they bet and gamble because of the stigma of gambling. Imagine that stigma and increase it tenfold.
It can affect your dating life – imagine going on a first date with someone who is not as open minded as yourself. The date, obviously, will not end well. And yes, the right person will not be put off by your job, but then there’s their friends, family members, etc. and when you tell them what you do, you get that look again.
The problem is that many, many, many people think that all betting companies – as in each and every one of them, no matter how legit a betting company actually is – cheat people out of their money. When you work for one, you are the kind of person who condones it, approves it, and does it on a daily basis, even if you’re not actually doing that. Imagine telling your mother about this cool new job of yours that actually comes with a lot of health benefits and everything. And when she asks what the job is and you tell her, and she starts yelling, asking you how can you do this, I didn’t raise you to become such a person. So, be prepared to have a lot of patience – both at work and out of it, or keep your job a secret from everyone you know.
You get to learn a lot about sports
Before I took the job, I used to think that people only bet on football and horses, and while I knew a bit about football betting, I knew nothing about horse betting. However, working at a betting company meant discovering just how little I knew about betting and sports, in general. It took me a while to understand that yes, people like to bet on almost anything that you can place a bet on. They bet on politics. They bet on fantasy games. They bet on horses, and they may work for ten hours to come up with the perfect bet (which they will proudly tell you, because they expect to win. You better not be around when they come to you to complain about the fact that they either didn’t win as much as they thought they would, or about the fact that they didn’t win).
You get to learn almost every sports’ phrase, idiom, and term that exists, and you will learn to use said terms daily. Your life will be drenched in sports, so much so that you will actually find yourself unable to watch a sports game that you enjoyed immensely previously – without feeling like you’re working. But, in the end, everything in life is an experience, and often, people who were unsure about working at a betting company ended up being employees of the month. So, you never know how much you will enjoy something until you actually try doing it.
