Seat change buttons

What is so freaking hard about a poker room buying a couple of lousy seat-change buttons for each table?

Again, for those who don't waste all their time in casinos, a bit of background. People often want to move to a different seat at a poker table. This can be to get strategic positional advantage over a difficult opponent, to sit where they can see the community cards better, to get a better view of the football game on TV, because they think seat 9 is the lucky one, or whatever. In most places, you just ask the dealer for a seat-change button, which he pulls out of the tray and tosses your way. Then when a seat opens up, that person has first dibs on whether to move to it. If it's not the one he wants, the seat is open for whoever wants it (really smart places also have a "second seat change" button), and the guy with the button gets first crack at the next opening. It's a very simple procedure, with little room for disputes breaking out.

But for reasons that I have never been able to figure out, some casinos don't use them, and the situation is reduced to a free-for-all. Player A tells a dealer, "I'd like seat 7 when it opens up." The dealer says OK, but by the time seat 7 becomes available, two more dealers have rotated through, and three players have left and been replaced by others. Now Player A picks up and starts to move to seat 7, thinking it's his God-given birthright, but a newer player, who wasn't around when the intial land claim was filed with the long-gone dealer, asks, "Can I move to seat 7?" The dealer, having no idea about previous discussions, says, "Sure," and now you've got the makings of a dispute.

You know how the whole Israel-Palestine thing basically comes down to claims about whose ancestors were there first? Well, you get the same kind of problem with seats at a poker table. The new player is, as far as he knows, the first to have asked for the seat. The guy who's been waiting for two hours to get there certainly feels entitled to it. And it becomes a big mess.

The whole thing can be avoided by a stupid, dinky little plastic disk that says "First seat change" on it, plus the investment of three seconds to ask and receive it. Done. Settled. Problem avoided before it begins.

So why doesn't every casino take advantage of this? Flamingo, I'm talking to you. Planet Hollywood, I'm talking to you. (There are lots of others equally guilty, but I'm sufficiently vague in memory as to where I've seen this conflict erupt that I don't want to put down other names here, for fear of being in error.)

Just get the damn seat-change buttons and start using them, OK?