By Donald H. Harrison
BARONA INDIAN RESERVATION, California – We came here serendipitously on Saturday night. Our friends the Burstains live in Escondido. We live in the eastern portion of San Diego. We wanted to meet somewhere in between for dinner.
“Let’s try the buffet at one of the casinos,” said I. “Let me check restaurant listings on the internet,” said friend Gerry. He called back after a short while, “Barona has good ratings.”
So it was here to Barona that we came for a buffet—and then perhaps, for a little gambling, maybe enough to win back the $17 cost of the buffet – or so we thought. I went east on State 52 to the new connector with the State 67, to the exit at Mapleview. I took a right, a quick left on Wildcat Canyon Road and followed its winding way
past the sign announcing that we were entering the sovereign Barona Indian Reservation. As we came down from the hills into the valley, the hotel and casino dominated the horizon. We parked in a 5-level parking lot; took an elevator down to the second level, where a long hallway, with movable sidewalks like those in airports, connected us to the casino.
As the hallway joined the casino, there was a booth at which one could join the “Barona Club,” which was no more complicated than presenting identification and receiving an electronic card which one could stick into a slot in the gaming machines. The more money or credits you fed the machine, the more points you accumulated on your card. Some nice prizes awaited people who accumulated sufficient points. This seemed like a Chuck E. Cheese franchise for grown-ups.
The Burstains arrived shortly after we did. We found our way to the well-regarded buffet, only to learn that there was an hour and 15 minute wait. The lady at the front explained that not only was the normal crowd swelled by people enjoying a Labor Day Weekend holiday, but also by visitors who had attended a Pow-Wow on the reservation sponsored by the host Barona Band of the Kumeyaay Indian Nation.
“Maybe we should gamble first,” we said. The buffet lady took my name and handed me an electronic pager. “Good
luck!” she smiled.
We walked through the main part of the casino to the no-smoking section in the back. Neophytes, we investigated the various electronic slot machines, not at all sure how to operate them or how to play the various games that they offered. We put a dollar in one of them and nothing seemed to happen, except for a “cash out” button lighting up. We tried to spin the dials without result. My recourse was to press a red button with the word “service” on it.
Along came a smiling young woman named Taylor. She explained that if I pressed the “cash out” button a printed receipt with a bar code would come out of a slot. That voucher in turn could be put back in the machine and we could then place bets in any amount we wanted.
Taylor patiently showed us how the mechanism worked, unfailingly smiling and pleasant – even though we were only playing the nickel machine. I told her apologetically that we weren’t exactly high rollers. “Doesn’t matter,” she assured us. “The important thing is for you to have fun!”
I was impressed by her positive attitude.
Clearly she understood that by making visitors comfortable—and welcome—she was helping to assure that however much money we ended up gambling this visit, we’d probably want to come back.
Nancy and I tried to figure how much we won or lost on the nickel slots over the course of the 75 minutes before our pager lit up. Near as Nancy could figure, our grand total winnings amounted to a dime. Clearly Barona would go broke if they had to depend on the likes of us.
The buffet had numerous stations, among them seafood, rotisserie, barbecue, salads, Chinese, Mexican, and desserts. There were probably other stations as well, but I never got past the rotisserie section with its carved prime rib and turkey and various kinds of trimmings. There really was more than sufficient food at even one that one station. I saw no point in trying to sample goodies from all of them, but as I watched people load their plates, I realized I might be in the minority.
A young waiter/bus boy named Val was assigned to our table. He brought us drinks, coffee, cleared empty dishes as they kept piling up and was unfailingly pleasant and cheerful. We asked him if he went to school in the area, and he responded that he was a student at Cuyamaca College – and that his real love was soccer. He said he expected to play in the near future in Germany.
Listening to the pleasant chatter—and to Val’s unfailing cheerfulness—it occurred to me that he and Taylor, back in the casino, probably had been through the same hospitality course stressing the importance and benefits of good customer service. It was as if my wife Nancy and I and Gerry and his wife Judy all had the initials “MMFI” carved on our foreheads for “Make Me Feel Important.” Taylor and Val, and in fact, all the Barona personnel we met did just that.
Although we spent considerably more on dinner than we won at the slots, I went home quite impressed.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
File: Around SD County 02