Letters

No Hudson fan here

To the editor:

I think (Ashley Toland is) off base on Connie Hudson. She is my Councilwoman. She rubs me the wrong way.

For instance, she was a nuisance when the council was debating the Business Improvement District. You may remember that she wanted the City Council to have veto authority over the BID’s annual budgets. What a joke!

She was barely on the job before she went “big government knows best” for the BID. I think those taxed entities within the BID are plenty capable of organizing a budget without Connie’s help.

And then she blocked the city from selling the SARPC building, at least temporarily. She cannot recognize a money saving measure when it rests beneath her nose.

She enjoys wielding what little power she has. And it shows. It is most unattractive.

And why did she stay neutral in the Senate 34 primary runoff? Did she get her feelings hurt when she lost? Probably.

David Dexter

Mobile

Fairhope article unfair

To the editor:

Your recent article, “The Other Side of Fairhope,” was so full of distortions and factual errors it’s hard to believe a sober reporter produced it! Suffice it to say, every time the leadership of the minority Pt. Clear/Twin Beech neighborhood plays the race card, the whole community loses.

If they don’t get better leadership there, ruthless real estate speculators and developers will soon surely squash what’s left of it like a bug.

James Watkins

Fairhope

A deliveryman’s beef

To the editor:

You decide to take your spouse out to dinner. Let’s say you go out to Lonestar or Outback to get a nice steak. You are seated, orders taken, you are brought your food, you eat, and then the bill comes. If your server was at least coherent enough to bring everything out on time and do a good job refilling your drinks, you are going to leave a tip right? Right. So how much? Ten percent? Fifteen percent? Maybe even 20 percent? This is a standard practice when going out to eat, so why should tipping be such a problem when you have the same service brought to your door?

I work in the delivery business (we deliver steaks if that narrows it down) and let me say that the people of Mobile are very disappointing when it comes to the tipping department. A delivery driver provides people with the same services a restaurant does, but we bring the food to your door so you don’t even have to leave the house! So why don’t we get treated with the same gratuity that servers do?

It is a very rare occasion that I get tipped over 10 percent. We may not refill a drink, but we do twice as much when it comes to service. We risk our necks in this crazy Mobile traffic everyday. We knock on strangers’ doors not knowing whether a smile or a gun is on the other side. Plus, now that it’s summer, we have to deal with the horrendous downpours that are produced everyday between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., just to bring you food so you don’t have to get in a car and drive or turn on your stove to heat up a frozen meal.

Some people want to argue that we obtain a delivery fee. If you look at your receipt, you will see that most of the time it is between one and two dollars, of which we get a percentage to cover our gas. Now that gas is $3.00 a gallon, a dollar is hardly enough to cover a 10-mile trek across town.

Some people like to believe that delivery jobs are for kids in school that are trying to make drinking money for the weekend, which is very unfair. More than half of the people I work with are over the age of 20 and are trying to pay for rent, bills, school and other necessities that other people go to work for every day.

These are responsible adults that are working a job where they expect to make tips! You wouldn’t be a server to make $2.13 an hour just for the hell of it. You do it for the tips. Our job revolves around tips! It is our livelihood that keeps food in our mouths and a roof over our heads and gas in our tanks.

So next time you order something for delivery, think about it for a second, and think about what kind of luxury you are obtaining: you are getting front-door service from people just like you. That tip that you give could mean the difference between a light bill or sitting in the dark. If you are going to order out, make sure you have the money to give the person what they deserve. If your food is there in time and you are greeted with a smile, take in to consideration how you could make someone’s day with a 15 percent tip.

J. Jossey

Delivery driver extraordinaire

Mobile

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