Organizing out-of-office hours social events for their employees is a priority for my employer, BEKK. They even have a highly dedicated group of people who spend a lot of time handling these events, and as far as I know, they have a reasonable budget to play around with. Personally, I don’t attend that many of these events, but every know I then I crawl out from underneath my rock, put on my social face and fire up the smalltalk machine¹.

Most of the events are themed and yesterday “One Night in Vegas” was held: Texas Hold ‘Em, Black Jack, Roulette, but very little mafia. For me this was a great opportunity to do a little light-weight gambling before me and the guys go to Las Vegas later this year. Unfortunately, I discovered that I have a serious gambling problem. Not the kind of gambling problem where people pour their life savings, pink slips, kids and grandmothers into the pot, but rather the exact opposite: My risk aversion prevents me from using much money at all on gambling. Even though we got a stack of chips for free and was never playing for real money, I just didn’t want to use the chips. They felt perfectly safe in my pocket.

But eventually, as my blood alcohol level increased and my way too rational self started to loosen up a little, I decided to sacrifice a chip at the roulette table and placed it on 29 black. And of course, what you’d expect to happen, happens: The white ball stops effortlessly on 29 black. The chance of this happening is 37 to 1, the payout is 35 to 1 and a glass of Champagne, it turned out. I decided to quit while I was on top. In the end I gave all my chips to a colleague who was playing Texas Hold ‘Em, convinced that he probably would have a better return on them than me. This was despite the fact that he’d managed to lose most of his chips in the same game just a few minutes earlier.

I’m not someone who embrace risk on a day-to-day basis, so it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I’m a terrible gambler. Because of this realization, I’ve decided to revise an item in The List: #49, “play in a high stakes poker game”, is changed to “try my luck at the roulette table”. The two are similar - they both cover gambling - but roulette is a type of gambling that doesn’t require any skills - it’s just about luck. The only problem now is that I blew all my good roulette karma in a make believe Las Vegas.

Social events like this is just one of many good reasons to work in BEKK. If you are on the lookout for work in a medium sized consulting company that cares about their employees, you should have a look at the the current job openings. Tell them I sent you.