An open letter to anyone that has food delivered to their location

Dear hungry persons,

My name is Drew. I am a delivery driver. Specifically, I am a delivery driver for a sandwich place that stays open until 3 or 4 in the morning. Our store is located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which has a fairly large college. Our drivers deal with lots of things; trains, shitty traffic on game days, drunks, bad drivers, people that like to scream "JIMMY JOHN'S!" at us for no good goddamn reason, people that think we're a taxi cab service.

Now this letter won't apply to some of you. This letter is aimed at a specific group of people. Namely, shitty tippers. You know who you are; the person that has a $9.75 order and tells the driver to keep the change from a ten dollar bill, the person that has a $20 order and writes the largest possible zero on the gratuity line of the credit card receipt. You are the people that I have a problem with.

What you don't seem to understand is that me, and most other delivery drivers, make less than minimum wage. The tips that we receive make up that difference. Some days, I do pretty good. It's nice to leave work with $40 that I didn't have when I went to work. Other days, it's not so good. Shucks, the other day, I made 6 deliveries before I got as much as one dollar.

Tips are how delivery drivers, food servers, bartenders, etc. survive. It's how we pay our bills, pay our rent, buy our food. And in the case of drivers who work for companies that don't provide gasoline for their shifts, it's how we buy the gas so we can do our job. When you don't tip, we secretly hope that the fleas of 1,000 rabid animals attack your genitals (I do, anyway.)

So please, shitty tippers of the world, try to see where I'm coming from. I have to make a living just like you. Hell, I used to be one of you but I reformed my ways. Trust me, you'll feel better when you tip a fair amount.

Sincerely,
Drew

On a lighter note, it's been a while since I rambled on here. Not much has happened. This shitty tipper thing has been my biggest complaint. That and needing a new car battery. Yeah, I can't get my car to start without someone to jump me off. That's not good when you deliver food for a living. My brother and Livy came to town for the weekend. We all had a hoot and holler. I'm really enjoying how my Fridays and Saturdays have gone from sitting in a bar until 2 or 3 in the morning to sitting outside with friends and drinking with them. It's more fun, and much cheaper.

I've been working this fucked up schedule of closing one night and being back the next morning to work the lunch shift. I'm trying to pick up shifts that no one wants. I don't think I've slept more that 4 or 5 hours at a time. It's catching up to me. I'm tired all the time now. I don't want to leave my apartment. I just want to sleep. But I can't, because I have bills to pay and working 4 days a week won't cut it.

If anyone actually reads this, I'll be home this coming weekend. Let's have a couple of pints, play a few songs, or anything.