Latasha Sherrod is an Eastern alum who is currently employed in two jobs and still lives in Charleston. Her first job is as a caseworker, but the residents of Charleston and Eastern students have seen her and known her as the pizza delivery woman for the local Pizza Hut. While she works two jobs, she is still struggling to make ends meet, her delivery job pays less than the minimum wage and the real trouble is that she is severely tipped less than she should or is flat out not tipped at all for her services.

The omittance of tipping is, unfortunately, not a rare occurrence, as students are not giving out the tips needed to most pizza delivery drivers.

“Students tip very rarely and I get tips from Charleston residents about 80 percent of the time,” said Sherrod.

Fellow pizza deliverer Tony Gross, a senior physical education major, for the local Domino’s Pizza makes a mere $5 an hour and agrees that Charleston residents tip more than the average Eastern student. The reason could be that college students have little money to tip a deliverer.

However, Sherrod has another theory. Despite the fact she is not tipped as well as she should, she is not particularly angry about that because she thinks the students have not realized they should be tipped for their services.

Some Eastern students; however, have said that they do tip. When asked, most have stated they tip the usual $2 or $3 because it is the right thing, while others have said that they judge whether or not to tip their drivers based on their performance (how fast it takes them to get to their destination).

Gross is used to this idea however and said that even if the driver is a little late that their tips should not be determined by how fast they are. Gross said that a deliverer should be tipped regardless of how fast they got there.

“My tips are what I spend on gas and beer, I use my paycheck to pay the bills,” said Gross.

With the rise in gas prices and maintaining a standard of living, the deliverers depend more than ever on tips to get by; Sherrod plans to leave Charleston in the near future, when she does and how she’ll support herself currently may depend on who she is delivering to.