08/11/2026
I wanted to share an experience I had at the casino during my shift yesterday. I want to preface it by saying, I don’t believe I did anything extraordinary. At the same time, it felt like such a potent reminder of the importance of attendants in this industry and the profoundly human role we sometimes unknowingly play in the lives of the people who walk through our doors.
Toward the end of my shift, a woman who we will call Jennifer came into the casino.
Upon first glance, I assumed she was high. Her eyes were red and swollen and her demeanor was erratic and unsettled. She quickly made her way to a machine where she began fumbling through her purse for money, keeping her head down and seemingly determined not to make eye contact with me or anyone else.
It would have been incredibly easy to accept the narrative I had already created about her. To make an assumption based on a thirty-second glimpse into a life I knew absolutely nothing about and carry on with my shift.
But something inside of me repeatedly whispered, “Lean in.”
And so I did.
A few moments after she sat down, I made my way over to her, bent down, and gently asked her to look me in the eyes.
A bit startled, she stopped digging through her purse and slowly raised her head until her eyes met mine. Almost immediately I knew there was something much deeper happening beneath the surface.
Instinctively, as our eyes locked, I reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Are you doing okay? Like really okay? Because I can’t explain it, but something deep in my soul is telling me you need an ear right now. Or maybe just a friend.”
And immediately, she broke open.
Her entire body surrendered as guttural sobs erupted from somewhere deep inside of her, stealing her breath and rendering her temporarily unable to speak. It was raw and unfiltered and primal. A deep type of grief that refuses to be contained once it finally finds a safe place to land.
And when she was finally able to form words, she apologized. Over and over again.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I squeezed her hand tighter and reminded her that she was essentially apologizing to me for being alive and fully human. And for having reached the threshold of what one human heart could reasonably hold and finally allowing some of it to spill out.
She looked at me, tears still streaming down her face, and released the deepest exhale, squeezing my hand back with what felt like equal parts desperation and relief.
And for the next twenty minutes, as Mikey came to relieve me from my shift, we sat together.
She told me the love of her life was terminally ill and she was his caretaker. That she was exhausted, terrified, and worn impossibly thin from trying to remain strong while simultaneously watching the person she loved slowly leave this world.
They weren’t from Montana and had traveled here from out of state because he wanted to experience Montana during his final days. And she was doing everything within her power to give the man she loved one last beautiful experience while quietly unraveling beneath the enormity of what that required of her.
She told me they had no family or support and had been living in her truck, finally scraping up enough money to get a hotel room next door. She had walked to High Tide to understandably escape the intensity of her life for a brief moment.
I sat and listened, acknowledging the enormity of her grief and holding space for a woman who felt painfully alone inside of it. Of course there was nothing I could say that would change what she was facing. I couldn’t make the love of her life well. I couldn’t lessen the anticipatory grief of knowing she was going to lose him or somehow make the weight she was carrying more bearable.
And I think sometimes we forget that people rarely need us to rush in with solutions anyway. More often than not, they simply need somewhere safe to put their pain for a minute.They need someone willing to sit beside them in the uncomfortable and unbearable without trying to clean it up, reframe it or make it more palatable. They need to feel seen and heard and understood exactly where they are.
So that’s what I did.
Before we parted ways, she looked at me and quietly asked if she could hug me. I pulled her in tightly and we wrapped our arms around one another like two women who had known each other our entire lives rather than two strangers who had met beside a casino machine twenty minutes earlier.
When we finally pulled away from one another, she reached into her purse. The same purse I had watched her frantically digging through when she first walked in. And she retrieved a single, crumpled one-dollar bill.
Her very last dollar.
She held it out to me with both hands as her eyes once again filled with tears. “It’s all I have, but I want you to have this. You have been kinder and more compassionate to me than anyone has in years.”
(She also said my boss needs to give me a raise and I can’t argue with that.)
And I swear my heart cracked open. I immediately refused, but she kept insisting. It was important to her that I take it, and eventually I realized refusing it was almost denying her the opportunity to give something back in a moment when so much of her life felt completely outside of her control.
So I accepted. And I will probably keep that dollar for the rest of my life because it represents a woman with nothing tangible left to offer who still wanted to give to me.
And yes, I plan to multiply that dollar and hopefully help my new friend afford a few more nights next door so she can remain beside the man she loves as they navigate the final chapter of their life together.
What is so interesting is that she thought she was giving me a dollar. What she actually gave me was a reminder of why connection matters so deeply in this industry and in this world.
Pain has a thousand different faces, and sometimes it looks disheveled. Sometimes it looks erratic and sometimes it avoids eye contact and digs frantically through a purse because keeping your hands moving is easier than allowing yourself to feel the magnitude of what is happening inside of you.
And sometimes we are so quick to assign a story to another human being that we forget there is an entire lifetime and sentient being existing beneath the tiny sliver we are being allowed to witness.
This experience also reminded me why I feel so strongly about protecting the human element of the gaming industry. As attendants, we do so much more than pour drinks, pay jackpots, clean machines, and cash tickets. We bear witness to people. We become woven into the fabric of people’s ordinary lives, and within that ordinariness there are sometimes extraordinarily sacred moments.
Yesterday mine happened beside a gaming machine, holding the hand of a complete stranger while she allowed herself, perhaps for the first time in a very long time, to stop being the strong one.
And maybe that is the reminder I needed yesterday too. We are all walking around carrying things nobody else can see. So perhaps the invitation is simply to become a little less certain about our assumptions and a little more curious about one another.
And most importantly, to pay attention when something deep and unwavering inside of us says, “Lean in.”
Because every once in a while, on the other side of our initial judgment, is a human being desperately hoping someone will do just that.
