Think that's bad, remind me sometime to tell you why casinos should never ever have animal acts because of the invariably stupid things other employees will do around the animals.
how bout you tell us now ;)
One of those Reno casinos had a lion act. Nothing much mind you, just an old, long-in-the-tooth lion doing simple tricks. The lion had a cage well back behind the performance areas for between shows, in an employee area only. No problems there, right? Only two people (outside of security/management) even had access to that specific area. One person being the animal handler for the show and the other being, tadum, the janitor. And this is where surveillance learns a valuable lesson about not ignoring the janitorial staff and watching them, too.
The janitor didn't actually open the cage or anything like that. But, he did stick his arm through and pet the lion. Fortuitously, the lion actually enjoyed that. However, the janitor, after scratching the lions chin for some minutes, dropped his hand and chucked the lion pretty solidly under its chin and jaw. Unfortuitously, the lion did not actually enjoy that. The lion proceeded to let the janitor know that it did not appreciate his sense of humor by biting the janitors hand off just above the wrist.
The thing of it is, the janitor was allowed to clean in that general area, and there was no sign telling him not to pet the lion or smack it in the face (I guess you just can't take anything for granted these days), so he was covered by work insurance. And, being disabled, it was either put him in a desk job of some sort or pay him to sit at home. Heck of a way to get promoted in the office.
Anyway, the casino I worked at wisely chose not to have any animal acts (we never got to have any fun, gosh darn it!) . . . well, other than the normal human 'animals' that work or play at a casino.