Rake collection boxes

The photo above was taken at Fiesta Henderson, but it could have been anywhere, because all casinos seem to do things the same way, as far as I can tell. When it's time to change the rake collection boxes, a security guy comes around to the poker tables and leaves a new, empty box at each table. They come back later to pull the full box out of its slot in the table and insert the new one. The problem is that the empty boxes are often left sitting out for a long time--10 or 15 minutes, anyway.

For a long time I wondered why they used this two-stage procedure. Finally I asked and somebody explained it to me--it's something about minimizing the amount of time that the cart that carries the boxes has to remain open.

But I can't tell you the number of times I've seen players and employees (particularly dealers) trip over those damn boxes. They leave them right between/behind the dealer and the ten seat, and with carpet patterns being what they are, they're not always easy to see. (You can see one in the foreground above, and another in the background.)

I would be very surprised if there has not already been a significant injury (broken hip or ankle, maybe) and a resultant lawsuit in some casino over this practice. It's an obvious hazard.

Surely somebody can come up with a way to handle changing the boxes securely without leaving objects on the floor that people trip over. I don' t know the needs or inner workings of casino security, so any suggestions I might have would probably miss something significant. But I know that there has to be a better way, even if I can't identify exactly what it is.