Rick Spurlock, the slot operations manager for the resort for the last four years, was given an unceremonious heave-ho, according to sources familiar with the situation. Spurlock had come to Las Vegas from Detroit to work for the then-MGM Mirage-owned Golden Nugget.

The ouster of the popular executive was the latest in a series corporate cleansing being carried out by Landy’s and its CEO, Tilman Fertitta, the source says. "They have decided the old Golden Nugget employees don’t fit in with Landry’s culture,” the source continues, adding that the company is now systematically getting rid of existing higher-level employees inherited from previous regimes.

This jibes with ongoing reports of Landry’s micromanaging the downtown casino from corporate headquarters in Houston, including schlepping in restaurant managers from Texas to indoctrinate Vegas employees in "the Landry’s way." (No word yet on whether they brought Landry’s alleged mantra of smaller portions, higher prices and less service with them … a trifecta that was said to have been the death knell for the Joe’s Crab Shack chain.)

If Nugget employees aren’t nervous already, I’ve been hearing for months that Landry’s aims to boot the Culinary Union out of the Golden Nugget … or at least extract major wage concessions from the union. Since the Nugget was still MGM Mirage property at the time of the last contract negotiation, its unionized workers earn what their coevals on the Strip do — more than the "downtown" rate. That’s a disparity Landry’s is reportedly itching to erase from its ledgers.