How often do you have car trouble? It’s basically the same story at my job, although we don’t have official points going to a record. In customer service jobs, they try to allocate the exact right amount of people to run the operation. Too many people, and the payroll ends up cutting into a narrow profit margin. Too few, and they don’t have enough people to run the operation, and you get a backlog of pissed off customers. The reason they’re so intense about tardiness is that if you’re late, you’ll inconvenience other people and the business as a whole.
If you do regular preventative maintenance on your car, you should be fine. You could also check the traffic on google first thing when you wake up, and find a few alternate routes to work. Crazy things will always happen, but you can get car trouble and traffic under control to a certain extent. With jobs like this, if you’re sick you should find someone to cover your shift as far in advance as possible, and let management know as early as you can. Etc.
It might take some getting used to, but it becomes… I don’t know, just another part of everyday life? Also, salaried jobs in the service industry are notorious for this. If they say you “may work weekends,” it means you will work weekends. 50 hours a week means a minimum of 50 hours a week. Whatever schedule they are telling you now- that’s the best case scenario, and it could get far worse. Last year we had like ten major snowstorms where I live, and I went to work in all of them.
This casino has a variable schedule and a big emphasis on timeliness- it sounds like they’re a busy operation running on low labor. A lot of businesses like to keep their staffing as close to the minimum as possible without everything descending into chaos. Financially, that’s the most efficient scenario.
You may find that your job is indispensable to the company and that you’re under pressure to work extra hours or not to take time off. I don’t want to scare you- again, that’s kind of just how it is in some industries. But it’s not for everyone, so you should think hard about it.