NDM Interview Series | Art Ordonez

Patrick Goodman
Non-Desk Matters
Published in
7 min readFeb 14, 2017

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I had the distinct pleasure of being introduced to two things recently: a tasty bistro called The Red Yeti and a fine gentleman named Art Ordonez. One had a broad selection of menu items (I chose the Trio of Tacos, delish btw), and the other has had quite an interesting career journey.

Art has worked on movie sets, had a job as a stunt double, and spent a good portion of his career in casinos. He is also the father-in-law of Red e App’s own, Andrew Nova, who helped organize this interview. Thanks, Andrew for arranging the interview and to you Art, thanks for sharing your stories about working on movie sets and even having to break up a fight in a casino.

Your story and your work, matter.

Andrew Nova and Art Ordonez

A transcript of our conversation is below. Small edits were made for easier reading. The audio is linked as well. Give it a listen and you’ll be sure to laugh more than once. Lastly, I’m not going to apologize for the restaurant background noise in the audio. Those tacos were worth it!

Patrick Goodman: So, sitting here with….

Art Ordonez: Art Ordonez.

PG: All right, I want to talk about how non-desk matters a whole lot in your life. Just so you know, we’re recording this and will be publishing it and it will be on the non-desk matters site, you ok with that?

AO: Yea that is fine.

PG: Awesome. So I’ve got to know — what was your first hourly job, your first non-desk job?

AO: I worked in the show business for a while. I was second AE (assistant editor). My very first movie was The Life of Anwar Sadat. We made that in Canada. Then I went through a series of jobs. I was assistant of the set dresser, assistant of the wardrobe. We were in Italy for a long time.

PG: Really. How long were you there?

AO: Ohh, I was there since I was 11 or 12 years old until I was 24 or 25. Working on a lot of movies doing the Conans. It was a lot of work we were doing. The best job that I had there, I was assistant to the second unit director. That was probably the most interesting. We had two thousand extras in the movie Dune that I had to manage.

Hannah Beasley: That sounds hard. Herding cats I’m sure.

AO: Yea, because you had to provide — It’s not just the wardrobe — you have to get makeup, you have to go buy meals, you have to provide transportation, you have to make them behave. I mean it was.

PG: Like herding cats.

AO: Yea. It did the job. I enjoyed it.

PG: How long did you do that?

AO: 10 to 11 years. I had a contract with Raphael de la Renta’s daughter. That was the person I was working with most of the time until I got married and moved back to the United States. My wife (at the time) was finishing med school then moving back to Italy. One thing led to another and that didn’t happen.

PG: So when you were supporting actors, do you remember what you made? Like your first hourly wage?

AO: Well we were contracted by production for like six months. I would say we were making $7-$800 a week. It wasn’t a bad job. My other jobs — they paid a whole lot more. I was a stunt double in the movie Dune.

Andrew Nova: There’s a scene where he falls, where he actually falls and tumbles down a sand dune.

AO: That’s me.

PG: Stop. We have got to find that clip for this post.

AO: It was a lot of things that pay a whole lot of money. I’ve had to shave my head, turn my hair orange for about two months because I was part of a movie where they do surgery on somebody’s head. I got a lot of money for that, like $5,000. I was 27 years old and making more money than I ever thought. That was a good deal.

PG: That’s cool. So, you came back to the states?

AO: I was hoping that I would be in the states for like six months maybe a year. I came to the United States hoping to get a little side job so I started working at Domino’s Pizza. That was something that I didn’t see myself doing for a long time. I heard they were doing interviews for jobs at a casino. So I said, “What can go wrong, let’s give it a shot.”

PG: What casino was this?

AO: Harrah’s Casino. I went there for school, in Florida. I think, back in those days we were making like $15 or $20 an hour. So I didn’t think it was a bad job.

PG: Were you in table games?

AO: Table games, yes. I was a dealer — that was my first job in the casino.

PG: What was your favorite card game to deal?

AO: I guess baccarat just because it’s the most amount of money. I had never seen that much money in my life just going across the table. I was like “Wow!”

PG: OK. So how much was kind of like a normal person betting and then what was the extreme you saw people bet?

AO: Well normal people were probably placing $200 bets. The most extreme was over a million dollars.

PG: Did people win million dollar bets?

AO: Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. You look at their bets like, Wow that’s my house, my retirement, my kids college.

PG: What was the biggest tip or toke you ever got? [toke = token of appreciation]

AO: Well as a dealer you disperse tips among the other workers, but the biggest tip I had was over $500,000. Yes. It’s been interesting. Met a lot of celebrities.

PG: Remember who?

AO: Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Joey Porter. We became good friends. He got fired from Pittsburgh. Also, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

PG: Were you dealing baccarat to them or something different?

AO: Well I jumped from being a dealer to a floor supervisor, to a pit manager, to shift manager so throughout my career, I dealt to Michael Jordan back in the day. That was interesting because he was my hero. I enjoyed it. Sometimes [my coworkers] at French Lick don’t understand.

PG: Is that where you are now?

AO: Yes.

PG: What’s your job there?

AO: I’m a floor supervisor.

PG: Got you.

AO: Right now in my life I’m trying to build an easier life. I don’t care for the stress. I’m content. Not really happy with the salary but you gotta take one with the other.

PG: Not to be too personal but I’m just curious because a lot of people don’t know: on average, as a dealer you make $15 maybe $20 an hour. What do site supervisors and pit bosses make? Is there a cap where they get to for the salary?

AO: No, depends on experience and the place where you work. Where I work, we don’t get paid a lot of money. But the job is so simple that you take it. Throughout the day, the average tips are about $17-$20 an hour plus the base of $7-$10. Nightshift tips are about $25-$35 depending on the day. Plus your hourly wage of $7-$10, so a lot of people would rather work nights.

PG: I’m sure more traffic, people bet higher.

AO: [When I was in] Florida, at Hard Rock casino, it depended on the week. They average about $40 an hour but there are times you make more or less. A floor supervisor can make $2–300 a day.

PG: Interesting. What’s been the craziest, funniest or most memorable story from all your casino experience?

AO: I guess when I was managing at Hard Rock. There was a gentleman who owned an insurance company. He was in a dispute with another player. I got a call and was asked to come and talk to him. So I said “Ok, what’s going on?” And the guy said “He’s calling me names” and the other said “Well, he called me names first.” So I said, both of you guys calm down or both of you have to leave. So the guy with the most money grabs a stack of $25,000 in chips and throws it at me and says “You can’t throw me out of here, I have more money than you will ever see.” So he’s throwing all these chips and people are getting up from the table to pick them up and he said, “You got to pick them up.” And I said, “Nope, you’re leaving right now and I don’t care what happens to your chips.” Of course those chips are microchipped. The casino always knows who they belong to so if you pick up one of those you can’t cash it unless you have a conversation with the player. Everybody thought they were rich for one minute. That was the most fun I ever had.

PG: Cool. Interesting. One last question for you. If you could trade jobs with anybody in the world and they would do your job at French Lick as a supervisor, who would you trade with and why?

AO: I guess it would be Chris. He’s the guy that controls the resort and the casino. Sometimes I think that some of his decisions are not well thought through. He manages from the gut a lot of times. We pay the consequences of some of those decisions. He puts people in positions that he has a relationship with. So everybody knows somebody who knows somebody, and people at the bottom of the totem pole pay the price of that. Sometimes financial results are not the same. So we get the restrictions. Sometimes we’re not able to do what we’re supposed to do because we are restricted by the budget that got cut so he’s been saying that we can’t do this or that. If I get chance, one day, I will change things. Different ways. But, that would be the only person I would switch with.

PG: Thanks, it’s been great. Thanks for the insight and remind me not to argue with you with $25,000 in chips in my hand.

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