I have read with skeptical interest the various news and opinion pieces concerning the debate over the minimum wage, and, most recently, those articles about tipped workers and the plight of server Heather McIntosh and her beef with her former employer, Michelle Corry.

This week, Ms. McIntosh got a column on Tuesday and front-page news coverage on Wednesday. No surprise. A little Google search would reveal that this is her ax to grind as part of Mainers for Fair Wages and the Maine People’s Alliance. And that is her prerogative.

But maybe she and others facing this “plight” should step back and reflect. If one has chosen to do this line of work for 21 years, and is so poorly paid and treated, then why is one still doing the same thing?

Here is what made the Wednesday news article so alarming. Ms. McIntosh admits that she uses loans – on which we presume she pays interest – to pay her bills. She’s just raising the cost of each of those current bills by the future interest she will pay on those loans. And she will just dig a deeper hole.

If you keep doing the same thing over and over, you are likely to get the same results. That, too, is her prerogative, but one for which I have no sympathy.

Robert Billings

Yarmouth

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